Synapse and the Soul

This is Russell Moore inviting you to join me on The Russell Moore Show, where we look for signposts in a strange land standing fast to what really matters. Every week, I talk with thinkers, artists, and leaders about faith, culture, and living a life of integrity. Kingdom over culture wars, truth over tribalism, pilgrimage over partisanship, witness over winning, and Christ over everything. Join us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. The human brain is the most complex structure in the known universe. 86 billion neurons, trillions of connections. A mystery we're only beginning to understand. So it makes sense that when you think of a brain, you probably think of power. The supercomputer running everything you do. But power isn't the same as tough. The brain is fragile, shockingly fragile. The neurons don't have the capacity, so after six minutes, if there's a completion of oxygen, they'll die. Six minutes. That's all it takes for your memories, your personality, your ability to move or speak to disappear. That's why it's really critical when a stroke's happening to get care immediately. Diane Lane is a neuroscientist. She spends her life studying brains, how they fire, how they fail. There's nothing that can be done for the cells that have already died, but you want to try and prevent that spread. The problem, too, is once that happens, they release a lot of chemicals that causes something called penumbral damage, and then the cells in the area, the neurons in the area also start dying and it just keeps growing. So when the unthinkable happened, Diane had the ability to do more than just stand by and wait for updates. My mom had a stroke and I looked at all her MRIs and you know where she had neural damage. She discovered her mom hadn't had just any stroke. She had a stroke in her Bazzler artery. The Bazzler artery is the brain's power line. Block it, and it's like cutting electricity to your whole body, which is usually fatal. Diane could see the damage. She was paralyzed and couldn't speak. Her mom wasn't elderly. She had it when she was 50, so she was relatively young. But it was clear, her life had just changed forever. The road back to any type of normal was long. Half a decade passed. She couldn't walk, she couldn't speak, but eventually, very slowly, things started changing. She regained those functions over years, it took her a long time, but she was very determined to overcome it. What Diane was watching is something scientists call neuroplasticity. The brain can't regrow dead neurons. But the circuits that remain can slowly rewire, forging new pathways, rerouting signals. Sometimes, even recruiting whole new regions to take over lost functions. It's like rerouting traffic when a bridge collapses. It's not quick, it's not perfect, but it's one of the brain's most astonishing powers. It's ability to adapt. The astonishing is it was, there was no way around this simple truth. Diane's mom wasn't the same person. Her personality changed dramatically, and the sad part about it is she was aware of it, so she felt like she had to apologize because she said, "I know I'm not responding the way I used to." For Diane, the scientist and the daughter suddenly collided. And as a neuroscientist, that really made me think because I never really thought about her as her neuroscience functions, but as mom, right? And that, you know, she was cuddly and supportive and, you know, all these things. And now, once that laughed, it made me think, "Wow, it really is the function of our brain to a certain extent." But she was still my mom. It's a strange kind of grief to lose someone while they're still here. To love them while wondering if they're still them. If an injury to our brain can change our personality, our memories, our beliefs, we have to wonder, "Is my brain me?" Tonight on Wonderology, we're asking if three pounds of gray matter decides who we are. If changing our brain permanently changes us. And whether there is something more fundamental to who we are than the neurons firing inside our schools. I'm Jesse U-Banks, a storyteller and journalist. I'm Faith Stoltz, a science educator. So, let's get curious. To ask is my brain me? We first need to explore the brain. Not in a book, not in a diagram, but up close. So, to begin our journey, we are joined by Jim Stump. He hosts the Biologos podcast, "Language of God." Hey there! A few months ago, Jim and his colleague Colin Hugerworth hit the road. They were chasing a question, one that starts in the brain. What exactly is a brain? And what does it do? And today, they are letting us ride along to the University of Notre Dame. Well, I'm very glad to have some company. We're there to meet Diane Lane, the neuroscientist from earlier. So, where do we start? Well, we started in a neuroscience lab. It's bright and clean and quiet. But we walk in and right in front of us on a black resin table are these plastic tubs. Some labeled brains inside. And sure enough, there are. Well, because it's just the paraphernal of the hide, you don't want that out. It hurts us more than it hurts the brain for us to touch on. Yeah, and it's still like keeping the brain together than anymore. And of course, when you realize you're looking at organs from real people, the first thing you have to ask, what do you know about where these came from? Do we know? I don't know too much other than we do know age at time of death and whether it's from a male or a female, but that's pretty much all. As we get settled, she quickly lights up. Like, she's about to share a secret. I can't help myself. I diagnose these brains. And I'll show you some things that I noticed about this one. She pulls out two jars. So, I'm going to start with these two brains. And then another. However, there's a really cool one. Well, I might as well just pull it out as well and pull these out. And this is a whole brain with the spinal cord still attached. Okay. What? It's just strange to see even me as a neuroscientist every time I see this, it's just a very bizarre to see. Okay, so she pulls out these brains. She pulls out one that's got a spinal cord still attached, which is, I've got to imagine it's like visually shocking. Can you describe it for us? So, there's this really weird sort of paradox in my mind in thinking about this experience, because obviously I bring to the experience what I know these things are, right? But if I hadn't had that, they'd look so like ordinary, like these hunks of meat sitting out on a butcher's table. But then you start to pick at them and pull them apart. And you know that they're full of these neurons and these remarkable things that are what makes me me. And you're just amazed to be holding this in your hand. Okay, this one has everything still a little bit more intact, so I can talk to you about, let me just get the excess paraphernalde hideoff, so we're not breathing so much of it. How long ago was this person alive, do you know? So, we obtained these at different time periods, but early 2000s, 2005, 2011 is roughly when. So, sorry, I'm making a bit of a mess here, but this is the whole brain with the spinal cord attached. She points to the base of the spinal cord, long strands dangling from the brain. And the interesting thing about the bottom of the spinal cord is in our body. It is like this, it's just these strands are neurons coming down. It looks a bit like the back end of a farm animal. And that's why it's called the cotta-queena? Latin for horse's tail. Because it looks like a horse's tail to the early anatomist. She has us put on gloves, which I had assumed was to protect these very delicate organs, but no, it turns out it's to protect our hands from the formaldehyde that the organs have been sitting in. That is not at all what I thought you were going to say. I completely assumed that it was because of the, you know, how delicate these things are. Okay, so you've got it in your hands like, what does it feel like? It is heavier than you think it's going to feel. And some of that is due to the fact that it absorbs some of the formaldehyde over the years. Normally our brains weigh about three pounds, right? But it's small enough that even that three pounds is really dense. And it doesn't feel like this delicate organ. It feels like a glob of flesh. And it's kind of firm, but it gives to it a little. And the best analogy I could think of even when I was poking at it was this is kind of like a gummy bear. Not the stale ones, but the really fresh ones that still have some give to them. And then Diane draws my attention to this one part in particular. These are the meninges of the covering of the brain and they're incredibly tough. Now don't try and tear it, but just put some tug on there. And she has us tug at it. It's like leather. And that's because our brain sits in a cranium that's actually very rough. Do you mind handing me a couple of paper towels just so that I'm not dripping everywhere? So that was one guy's brain, but every other jar on this table has a brain that once belonged to a person. With a name and a story. But some of these have been donated just specifically from people who have affiliation to Notre Dame. So you know, we have to be respectful that this once was a person who had a life. When you're holding a brain, it starts to raise some unsettling questions. You can swap out a heart or lungs or a gallbladder and it's still me. But this organ replace it. Who am I? The brain is the biological foundation of our identity. You alter the brain. You alter the self. You're saying that and actually I'm sitting and literally sitting here going like that is so true. Like if you had to like dissect like an arm, a leg, even a heart. Yeah. Nothing. Nothing. In my brain, if I were to hold up somebody's heart, you wouldn't go, oh, that's that. I mean, you don't have that same sort of reaction. And again, there's nothing in the visual sort of experience of it. It's what we bring to this knowing that this organ between our ears is a lot more central to who I am than is my liver or even my heart. And if my brain shuts down, does the essential part of me vanish or ask that the other way, put my brain in a different body? Would it bring the same memories, the same quirks? Would that still be me? How much of me is biology? How much is something else? And where does the Christian view of the soul fit into this? And these aren't just science questions. These are questions of the self. So we've looked at what the brain is and to begin answering these questions, we need to move on to the second part of your mission. What does the brain do? The human brain is three pounds of soft tissue, mostly water, fat, and protein. It sits inside your skull, plugged into the body through the spinal cord. Every heartbeat sends it fuel. Every breath feeds it oxygen. Inside are billions of neurons, tiny cells carrying signals. There are glial cells in there, there are immune cells in there, macrophages, and oligodendrocytes which make the mile in around the neurons. So there's a lot beyond just neurons. You can maybe think of your brain kind of like a spider's web, but web is a network. And so we have these strands, these neurons that are all connected, and you touch one of them, one single thread on the web and the whole thing trembles. That's your brain. Lots of activity, lots of interconnection. And when the whole web lights up, that is electricity in motion. You stub your toe, you hear a joke, you fall in love. Every one of those moments rides on neurons firing in patterns. Each spark leaps a microscopic gap. It lands on the next neuron, and the signal keeps moving. And it's not just a few of these. There are more than 85 billion neurons firing in your brain. And each of those has how many connections to others here? Oh, I mean, infinite. One neuron can link to an endless array of others. All together, the network holds more connections than stars in the galaxy. Billions of sparks firing in patterns all at once. Somehow, that's what makes the outside world show up inside your mind. Which is wild. That pain or joy or memory. All of it is electricity running through tissue. So the brain isn't a filing cabinet. It's a living web of constant activity. So advanced that even our best computers can't quite mimic it. So think a little bit about the ways this web shows up in ordinary moments of life. Moments you might barely notice. Take pain. You're walking down the street. Your toe clips the curb. Wham. Your shin smacks concrete. Instantly the web shakes signals fire across the strands. Some of them are shouting move the leg and others shout pay attention. But the loudest cluster sparks the feeling itself. That's the surge that makes you say ow. And it's not just broken bones. Some of the same brain regions that register physical pain. Also light up when your heart breaks. When someone leaves. When grief knocks the air out of you. For instance, if you've ever lost someone or, you know, slip students broke up with someone. Sometimes you feel pain. And yes, it is. Emotions going to that descending pain system. And it can activate the nerves that augment pain. That's why sorrow feels physical. Because to your brain, hurt is hurt. Different causes. Same trembling web. The closer we look at the brain, the more it resists simple answers. The natural reflexes of life. The mundane ordinary parts we take for granted. A laugh, a memory, a flash of pain. These turn out to be complex and layered and mysterious. Sometimes when I've gotten into this, people talk about this thing right here. Is the most complex physical system we've ever come across. Way more than any of these computers sitting around. But I'm still intrigued every time I look at my phone. How does this work? And here's one last thing Diane told us. Neurons like to take the same routes. The way connections and the brain develop is through our experiences. Pretty much all neurons act this way. The more pathways activated, the more it becomes strengthened. Neuroscientists summarize this with what fires together, wires together. Let's say every time you see a person, instead of smiling, you grumble at them. And somehow it gets rewarded. That shapes your personality now that you're kind of a grouchy person. Because somehow that was getting rewarded in those pathways far more. So the brain doesn't just respond to life. It rehearses, it repeats. And over time it even builds a version of you. Which means what we do most profoundly shapes both who we are and who we are becoming. That rhythm of the brain, patterns repeating, building us over time. That's going to matter a lot for where we go next. Jim, thanks for joining us. My pleasure, thanks for coming along. Every memory you've stored, every habit you've built, every burst of creativity, every struggle you carry. All of it depends on this three-pound organ. Take the brain away and everything you call you seems to disappear. So if our brains decide so much of who we are, what happens to us when they change? When we return, a man fights to change his brain. And in the process, make himself into someone new. We'll be right back. Hey there, I'm Clarissa Mall, producer and moderator of Christianity Today's flagship news podcast, The Bulletin. Join Russell Moore, Mike Cosper and me each week as we discuss breaking news and current events that matter to you. Every Tuesday and Friday, you'll enjoy wise, measured, deeply Christian conversation about the people, events, and issues that are shaping our world. Find us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and join our Bulletin community. Welcome back to Waterology, Jesse U-Banks. Faith Stolts. Before the break, we stepped inside the brain itself, a living web, a billions of neurons. A web that holds our memories, our fears, our love, our quirks. So, if who we are lives inside that web, what happens when the web changes? That web of neurons is always changing. Our brains are never static. Sometimes that change comes suddenly. A head injury, dementia, a stroke, like Diane Lane's mom, sudden and irreversible. And that opens questions, we'll return to in a bit. But other times, change creeps in slowly, like water cutting through stone. Habits, repeated day after day, so normal that we stop noticing. Yeah, you know, the single moment could have been a hundred moments. This is Carlos Whitaker. Because we all get that notification on Sundays. If you allow your phone to send it to you, where it slides across your screen and it says you've averaged however many hours and minutes a day, this week on your phone. Carlos lives in Nashville, speaker, writer, creator, always on the move. But right now, he's staring down proof he doesn't want to see. So I always get that moment every Sunday, like it comes across, but we just swipe it away. For Carlos, the phone isn't neutral. It's a lifeline and a trap. It was Instagram was number one. That was by far above and beyond anything else. That was my, you know, drug of choice. Every Sunday, the same report, seven hours. Oh, that was that sucks. It's horrible. And then you just don't think about it again. He's been telling himself, it's not a big deal. At home, life is full. A busy, loving family. But rarely, the fully present version of Carlos. My phone, I didn't even think was a bad thing. Like I didn't even think it was affecting me. But it is. Screens hijacked the brain's reward system, the same circuits, drugs and gambling activate. Every scroll, every ping, a hit of dopamine, then the crash. And the only way back up, more screen. So I was like, well, that's two entire cycles of the sun a week that I'm looking at a screen. That's horrible. He keeps going with the math. If I lived to be 82 years old, my math told me that I would end up spending more than 12 years of my remaining life looking at a screen. But for Carlos, math and research aren't enough. He wants to know what he's already lost. So he finds a neuroscientist. He goes through hours of standardized cognitive testing, recalling number sequences, recognizing words and faces, reaction time drills. When the results come back, one number hits hardest. Carlos is working memory lands right in the middle, dead average, the 50th percentile for men his age. For someone who's built a life on quick wit and sharp recall, average feels like decline. Like he's become someone he doesn't want to be. Sometimes our brains refuse to change. They hold us hostage, injury, disease, decline. But Carlos is different. His brain isn't collapsing. It's adapting. To screens, to scrolling, to distraction. And if his brain has already been reshaped, then he has been reshaped too. So Carlos decides to fight back, to see if his brain can change again. And in the process, whether he can change too. And so I said, if I really want to do something, let me do it. So he makes a plan, not a vague resolution, but a concrete experiment. Are there any subcultures in America that aren't struggling like I'm struggling with my screen? For seven weeks, no screens. Two weeks with monks, two with Yamash, three at home. Carlos wants his brain back. But he doesn't realize yet what not looking at screens is going to cost him. Next thing you know, I was booked for 14 days to live at the monastery. He arrives, steps out of his car, hands his phone to a friend, like leaving a weapon at the door. And walks into a world without screens. You know, we are the first generation to not have access, regular access to solitude. And when things get taken away, when silence is reintroduced into our life, there is a moment of being terrified. The terror hits instantly. His brain, wired for stimulation, goes haywire. I couldn't make the thoughts stop in my head and I look at a bird. On board, you know, like take a walk. I'm bored. And so the silence, the first day was like super loud. Literally my body was like detoxing. I was coming off of whatever this drug is. Literally, like my heart was palpitating. Boredom turns to worry. I looked in the mirror and I saw this like mole, like a new mole on my cheek. And immediately reached into my phone because I wanted to like Google like, like what is this? And I'm like, do I have like melanoma? But there is no phone in this pocket. Days later, the mole finally fades. But the panic doesn't. It shifts. They were just these gigantic questions. I had to like start digging into, you know, who is God? Right? I mean, I'm telling you when we don't have these screens in front of us that allow us to get simple answers to probably weigh more complex spiritual questions than we give those questions credit for, you can go south really fast. And that's really what happened to me. Silence begins pulling hidden things to the surface. Being alone in your thoughts without access to information, just like every other human being did from, you know, 1973 to the dawn of time, I just had to sit with not knowing something and not knowing something was scarier than I thought it would be. Without his phone, Carlos is left with the one place that he can't escape, his own brain. What we're really saying is that I don't have any tolerance for me. This is Kurt Thompson, psychiatrist and author of The Soul of Desire. When I'm bored and when I'm this one and that, those are abstract words that I'm using to talk about might precede internal state of affairs. It's me that I cannot tolerate. He says that when we can't bear ourselves, our own thoughts are inner life, the brain panics. And most of us don't stay with that panic. We run. We grab at the quickest fix, anything to quiet the feeling that we can't stand being us. In many respects, Adam and Eve took the fruit because they couldn't tolerate themselves. We don't know how to sit in our own skin and our own minds. We want solutions fast. But that's not how Jesus lived. In Matthew 11, he says, "All things have been handed over to me by my father." He did not say I have taken all things. He had to wait for things to be handed over to him. Like this powerful picture of humility. Jesus waited for things to be revealed for life to unfold. We have a hard time waiting for things to be handed over to us. And so my phone is always going to be available to me. Which is why something as small as not being able to Google can send Carlos's brain into a frenzy. Because the body reacts first, the pulse quickens, the chest heightens. Long before the mind finds words for what's wrong. The body knows what the brain is still catching up to. After a week at the monastery, a new rhythm starts to form. First few days were horrible, but then suddenly I was like, "Oh, I think I get it." I'm beginning to understand why some of these men would make a choice to every single day do the exact same thing. There was an order to the silence, and I suddenly began to fall in love with the silence. Silence was beautiful. He gets used to the quiet, used to life away from screens, used to be in a loan with his own thoughts. He spends two weeks with the monks, stillness, prayer, silence, then a sudden jolt to his experiment in airport. Flying without a phone. We just don't do this anymore, right? And I'm like looking down, trying to not look at screens. I would go to a urinal. There's a screen in front of the urinal. They're everywhere. Next stop, the Amish. I became a sheep farmer as much as I could in 14 days, and all they do is talk and work and talk and work. I mean, I asked him day one, I said, "Why, why? You guys just talk." And he literally looks at Carlos, we don't have Facebook. From monks to Amish, from violence to community, from stillness to labor, four weeks of discovery, then three more at home with his family. Seven weeks, no screens. Now, it's time for the test. The question hanging over his journey isn't just about his brain, it's about him. If screens once reshaped who he was, is he stuck that way? Or can people really change? To find out, Carlos went back to the neuroscientist and retook the tests. I went from the 50th percentile of memory of men in America to the 99th percentile of memory. What? Yes. That was the kicker. I literally went to the 99th percentile. I was remembering, it would spit out 27 numbers and letters in a row, and I have to wait for 30 seconds, and then I'd type them back in like a freaking machine. And so, literally, that was the thing for me. When I went from the 50th percentile to the 99th percentile, I was like, that's it. For me, I can't get back on my phone like I used to. So, that was the kicker. The doctor told him his brain's transformation was astounding. He said he saw about five years of healing in those seven weeks. And it matters that it was a memory test. When we were distracted, memory disappears. But when we're paying attention, things stick. Carlos' scores don't just show a stronger brain. They show a more present Carlos. My daughter looked at me and she said, "Dad, this is the purest version of you I've ever seen." At the end of my three weeks, like the day before, I flew back to LA to get my phone back. My wife's crying. You know, she's just like, "I'm just going to miss this version of you." Carlos shows what's possible. The brain can adapt. Change is real. And if the brain changes, we change. But not every story bends that way. Diane Lynn's mom, her stroke didn't rewire her brain. It's stripped it. Neurons died, pathways vanished. And much of what she lost, no amount of practice could bring back. For Carlos, plasticity opened the door. For Diane's mom, fragility slammed its shut. One brain adapts, another collapses. Side by side, they tell opposite truths. Both are real. The brain is resilient. And the brain is fragile. Plasticity and fragility coexist. So, if that's true, if our lives rise and fall with our brains, are we nothing more than what they permit? We have to go further, beyond neurons, beyond scans, to a question buried underneath it all. Is there something more fundamental to me than my brain? When we return, we dive into the mysteries of the soul. We'll be right back. [Music] Wonderology, Jesse. Faith, today's question. Is my brain me? We've been inside the brain, billions of neurons sparking like a web of light. We've seen how when the brain changes, we change. Which leaves us asking, am I nothing more than what my brain allows? Or, is there something deeper, something beyond biology, something more to me than my brain? If you ask most Western Christians this question, they'll likely give you one answer, the soul. And while most Christians wouldn't equate their beliefs about the soul with Jacob Marley in a Christmas Carol, that's still the picture most of us carry, a glowing mist, a see-through body, something detachable, something that floats away. This is how we imagine people after they die, not a brain, but something else. There's an immaterial soul that is connected in some way to your brain, but isn't the same as your brain? This is philosopher Eric Schwitz-Gibble, author of the book, Perplexities of Consciousness. He says people have long believed in two selves, one material and one immaterial. And if you think there is an afterlife, then that soul kind of continues to exist after your body and your brain decay. And maybe it can exist in heaven in a disembodied form or maybe gets put into a new body or who knows exactly how that goes. In this view, the real you isn't neurons firing. It's the immaterial self, the part that remembers, that loves, that carries your values forward. But you are that soul rather than the flesh and blood brain. And what matters to its being you is not what it's composed of. What matters is that it's going to have the same reactions to your loved ones that you would have, and it's going to have the experience of remembering good times. And it's going to have the same values and all the psychological stuff. That's the comfort. The me I know, lifted out of my body, still loving, still remembering. But Eric says that if you follow that idea too far, it gets weird. Because when people talk about the soul, they're often just circling the same questions we ask in psychology. Multiple personality or dissociative identity disorder. Or when we watch sci-fi. Transporters in Star Trek. It's the same puzzle underneath. What counts as me? Is it simply wherever our consciousness resides? Look, if I could somehow take my consciousness, my behavior, my interaction with the people around us, and instantiate it in something other than a flesh and blood organ, wouldn't that still be me? So where do we get this idea that the real me is a ghost just driving a body? Well, Plato called the body a prison. Descartes called us a ghost in the machine. Over time, sermons and hymns repeated it enough until it felt biblical. A lot of people point to the New Testament words of the Apostle Paul, who often contrasted the flesh and the spirit. But scholars point out that wasn't Paul's point. When he said flesh and spirit, he wasn't splitting body from soul. He was contrasting a life turn inward with a life open toward God. Still, those streams merged. Greek philosophy from one side, a misread Bible from the other, and that became the Western default. You, my friend, are just a ghost in a body. And then a new idea emerged. Forget the soul, you are actually just a brain. And that is how we got stuck between two thin options. But what if both sides have missed it? Let's take a different look. An ancient Jewish look. Your soul is in the Hebrew mind. It's the essence of your being. This is Marty Solomon. He hosts the Bama podcast, helping people see the Bible through its Jewish roots. And in that world, the soul isn't a ghost driving a body. It's not your body. It's your body and your spirit. And like today, we would use things like our emotions and our intellect and our consciousness. And we would have other words for them. It would be body and spirit. But your soul is all of it. Like your soul is you. A soul isn't something you have. A soul is something you are. Everything you can think of that makes you you. All of it combined. The sum total of that is your soul. Which means this. When Jews talked about the soul, they meant an embodied life. A whole person. Material and spiritual woven together. More than a body, but never apart from the body. And if that's true, death creates a problem. What happens to a soul without a body? The Christian answer is resurrection. Not a scape, but embodied life again. The spiritual and the material reunited embodied like Jesus. And this is where those earlier questions come back. When someone's brain breaks, when memory slip away, when personality fades, when brains never fully develop in the first place, is there still a real vim inside? If the soul is just a ghost floating off somewhere, then the body doesn't really matter. And if we're nothing more than our brains, then when the brain goes, the person is just gone. But if the soul is the whole embodied person, then resurrection means God makes us whole. Even when disease or injury kept us from ever being whole in the first place. Resurrection isn't about leaving the body. It's about continuing through it. It was hard, it was. I mean, I even used the word terrifying. Which brings us to why resurrection isn't just theology. For Carlos, it's personal. Let's rewind. Back to his second week at the monastery. I was reading a Bible, and I think I was reading one of the Gospels, and I was reading about the resurrection. And it just felt like a fairy tale, all of a sudden. If resurrection is a fairy tale, then maybe you really are just a brain, just a body, nothing more. So Carlos does what you do in a monastery. He takes it to confession, to a monk named Father Francis. I was crying and telling him like, "I don't know if I believe in resurrection anymore." Carlos expects answers. And he's just kind of has a smile on his face looking at me. Father Francis doesn't argue. He doesn't quote verses. He simply says. Carlos, your God has become too small. Which brings us back to that ancient Jewish picture of the soul. Because in that world, doubt isn't about winning an argument. It's about whether your whole self, your soul, is still open to God. That's the test of the soul. Does God have you or does God only have you when he meets your demands? That's the test of the Nefesh. Nefesh, the Hebrew word for soul. Instead of answers, Father Francis gives Carlos an invitation. There's a storm coming. I want you to hike up the mountain. I want you to go to the cemetery and I want you to watch the storm roll in, and I want you to do one thing. And he said, "I want you to behold." Behold. Not prove. Not explain. Just behold. So Carlos climbs. The storm breaks open the sky. And in the thunder and rain, he feels it. A soul alive. Neurons firing. All caught up in something bigger. I think God is way bigger than this tiny little box that I placed him in. Gosh, I am so small. So is my brain me? Yes. Without it, nothing else is possible. And yet? The brain can't explain everything. There's something more to us. Back in the lab at Notre Dame, Diane is holding a brain in her hands. I mean, I don't know what death is, and I don't know why it all stops. But fundamentally, I think there's something different between us. She motions to the brain. Equipment. Not a ghost in a machine. Not a brain alone. Science and soul. Neurons and meaning. And this is the hope of the Christian story. That even when neurons falter, the soul is not erased. The resurrection is an escape from the body. It's God making all things new. We are people of measurable biology. And immeasurable hope. [Music] Your journey into wonder doesn't have to end here. If today's episode sparked something in you, we've got more. Check out Science with Faith, our exclusive after show where Faith impacts the deeper layers of science and faith behind each episode. Or, dive into everything from nothing. Our special mini-series hosted by Jesse, exploring evolution and Christian faith. Both are free and waiting for you at wonderologyshow.com. That's wonderologyshow.com. Also, if you'd like to hear more from Jim Stump, check out the language of God podcast from BioLogos. They're uniquely unique series on being human, including the episode on biology and the human brain. Special thanks to Jim Stump, Colin Hooker, who were of Carlos Whitaker, Diane Lane, Kurt Thompson, Eric Schwitzgibble, and Marty Solomon. You can hear more about Carlos Whitaker's experience of trying to get his brain back in his book, "Reconnected." How seven screen free weeks with monks and Amish farmers helped me recover the lost art of being human. Wonderology is a production of Christianity today and partnership with BioLogos. It's hosted by Jesse U-Banks and Faith Stults. Today's episode was written by Jesse U-Banks. Science back checking and guidance from Faith Stults, Jim Stump, and Colin Hookerworth. It was produced by Jesse U-Banks. Our associate producer is Mackenzie Hill. Editing by Rachel Acres. Music by Jesse U-Banks. Host production by Wind Hill Studios with sound design, scoring, mixing, and additional story editing by Mark Henry Phillips. Additional music from Mark Henry Phillips. Eric Petrick and Mike Cosper are the executive producers of CT Media Podcasts. Matt Stevens is our senior producer. Wonderology is generously funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Explore the profound questions of life that inspire awe and wonder by visiting Templeton.org. And if you enjoyed this episode, send it to a friend. And leave us a rating and review to help more people find the show. God invites us to experience the awe of all that he's made. But the known and the not yet known. (bright music)