After graduating from Caltech with a degree in physics, Scott Sperling pursued computer science and ended up working in rocket science. He’s also been a Christian for decades and has applied his analytical mind to Bible study, especially on his website ScriptureStudies.com. In this interview I ask him about his paper, “A Hypothesis for the Mechanism of Bodily Resurrection” in which he explains how God can raise the dead on the basis of DNA and the neural connectome. He does not see any need for the existence of an immaterial soul or dualism to account for biblical resurrection.
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This interview is now one of several that I expect will stay with me long after the episode ends.
After I began investigating Christianity a few years ago, I recognized that the most compelling Biblical interpretations are those that are as simple as possible while still corresponding to the the best explanations of the natural world and our rational ability to create and understand meaning.
Like Scott, I had also found scant evidence for anything like a dualistic soul in either scripture or science. My formal training in education and learning science is what led me to hypothesize that the resurrection could simply be a reconstruction of the last-state encoded brain, infused with the ineffable spirit of God.
This made even more sense to me when I recognized the Bible also clearly and repeatedly describes us as first and always human creatures, formed of earth, destined to return to the earth, but given special properties through design and God’s spirit. It would be a horrible system shock to exist without our bodies, as most of our memories and much of our identity is based on our bodily experiences. Our minds are literally a by-product of our bodies interacting with the world.
I look forward to reading Scott’s paper today! Thank you for the blessing of this interview.
Hi Sean, really enjoyed hearing from another physicalist (although his views of “breath of life” seem a bit unclear and confusing–I feel the Bible makes it clear it’s the gift from God that animates souls–fish, animals, humans, etc.). However, in continuation of the convo we had in Arkansas, the idea that God must have a piece of a person, like a molecule of their bone, in order to re-create them exactly as they were so they aren’t a “clone,” to me, is putting God in a box and telling God he is unable to do something as miraculous as what he did with Adam–make humans from the elements of the ground (which, essentially, are protons, neutrons, and electrons, the basis of all matter). Countless people died thousands of years ago. Countless people were burned to death or completely disintegrated (such as in volcanic explosions). I guess, using that theory, all those people are truly lost because God just can’t put them back together like Humpty Dumpty (no disrespect here).
The “old you” can become the “new you” with God putting into your new glorified body your exact (or corrected DNA) with all the neural connections (experiences/memories) and you will still be “you” and not a clone. Again, it’s limiting God’s ability. I asked you if you thought God could “snap” his proverbial fingers and make everything vanish from existence. You said yes. Then I asked if he could again snap his fingers and make everything all reappear (not a parlor trick but real disappearance) and you said yes. Would you say every single living thing brought back into existence is now a clone? I hope you would say no. Because this, to me, is no different from God choosing a time to re-create a person without needing some former material (or some spiritual component that the Bible teaches about nowhere) to make you “you.” I think it’s logical some fear this because the idea of completely not existing is scary to some, and it’s a fear of death that leads to this need to believe God is storing a piece of every person somewhere–so he won’t forget or be unable to re-create them. You might also consider that this line of reasoning creates problems for being a “new creation.” Because if we are all going to be new, with different kinds of bodies, like Jesus’s, something that until Jesus’s resurrection has never existed, then are we not, our “true selves”? The old will be completely gone, replaced by the new. Yet, we will still be ourselves (way different, perhaps, than a clone of the old would be).
I remember reading something John Piper wrote about how Christians should never be cremated because they risk God being able to resurrect their bodies! Really? I’ll stop here because you know what I believe about all this! Appreciate you so much and all you do.
I think the clone problem is worse than you may realize. Let’s grant that God can create or recreate a physical body with the genetic and mental mapping necessary to “be me” if God grants that body life. Sure, maybe.
What, in principle, stops God from making a dozen identical physical copies of my last physical state and grants each of those bodies life at the same time? If the information is what makes me “me,” it appears there are now a dozen distinct “mes.” This is a problem. It doesn’t matter if God won’t ever do this. The problem is that nothing seems to prohibit him from being able to do it. Nor does anything seem to prohibit someone other than God from doing it, as long as they have a perfect copy of my informational profile and the technical ability to create and animate a corresponding body.
This is a difficult bullet to bite, but I don’t think there’s a principled way to argue that the dozen resurrected copies aren’t all me if personal identity is a physical pattern. But if they’re all me, what does it mean to be uniquely “me” at all?
The other issue is that the clone argument is still an objection to divine judgment. If I awaken someday at judgment and deny that I’m the same individual as God is claiming to judge, in some sense I’m correct: Within my present psychophysical state, it’s not clear whether I am the person who once lived or a copy with that person’s memories. But which one I am is essential, for God would be unjust to reward or punish me for the actions of someone else whose memories I happen to have. Unless that ambiguity can be resolved, the mere possibility that God is unjust undermines belief in God’s judgement generally. This isn’t a trivial problem, and it can’t be solved by saying God can prove which version you are if our model of personhood has unresolved questions. So the clone problem must be coherently and clearly addressed to ensure God’s justice, which is a very rough burden for an argument to have to carry.
When Jesus was raised he seems to have had the same actual body, complete with the wounds from his crucifixion. Scars wouldn’t be in one’s DNA as they are environmental effects and not genetic ones. Memories are also not in DNA, so “we” are more than DNA for sure.