What questions will a human head transplant bring to light?
We had a very interesting sermon in church this morning. It was about Acts 28 Verse 1 - 18 when Paul safely went onshore on the island of Malta. The sermon was about Paul, which was in earth and had a human body just like we do. I do not want to repeat the sermon in this article, but I want to take you through my thought process after church.
I have mentioned before that I believe that I have a weird brain, which always think of questions and then try to find the answers. So here goes:
My thought process this morning.
Trinity
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity holds that God is three consubstantial persons in - The Father, the Son and the Holy spirit - as in God in three divine Persons. The three person are distinct, yet are one "substance, essence of nature" Source Wikipedia
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Human Trinity
I always remember that we must Love God with three "things" as well.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
This is where my mind started to ask weird questions again…
What if we can do a head transplant
So if the progress in medical technology allows us to do a Head transplant, we will open the door to very interesting theological questions. We have a brain which in my mind is our computer, which runs everything. This will be transplanted with the head. So if we take a head from one person and a body from another person, we have now split the heart from the brain.
Heart Ache
When you are hurt in a relationship where you break up with a wife / husband or girlfriend/boyfriend, most people will refer to this as a "heartache" I guess there is a medical explanation that it is not really anything in the heart that is hurting, but something in the brain. This was my first question, but we can still logically figure out that it is not really the heart that aches, but rather something in the brain.
One Head on another body
This is however another question, if we take a head from one body and attach it to another… Logic tells me that there are 4 components here (Head A + Body A), and (Head B and Body B)
Let's assume for a moment that we will be attaching Head A to Body B. And that the rest of the bodies will not be alive after the operation. One of the two bodies will die. Now my question to myself was, who is the person that is still alive?
Will it be Person A or Person B. Again, my logic tells me that it will be Person A that is still alive, as the head from person A (including the brain), is just attached to person B's body. I do not believe that Person A will have any of person B's memories, as all memories from Person B will surely stay behind in the old head (brain)
But what about the souls of Person A and Person B
I thoroughly believe that we all have a soul, which will live on after our human bodies die. My question now is that if Person A lives, and Person B is dead, Person B's soul will now move on to the next life after death.
This triggered the biggest question of all. Where does the soul live? In our brains or in our hearts?
Is our soul in our heart?
If the soul is in our hearts, we have a problem, as we will now have a person (Person A) with the normal memories of his life, as the memories is in our brains, but he will then have the soul of Person B if it is in the heart.
Is our soul in our head?
If the soul is in our heads, it is an easier answer, as Person A will have the brain and a new heart.
The soul is all around us
If I really think about this, I do not believe that the soul is either in the heart or in the brain. If we look at a soul being physical energy, it is all around us.
I just googled this, and it is actually happening in December 2017
World first human head transplant going ahead
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Love the comment thanks :)
It seems that the brain is a kind of interface, which on the one hand ensures the functioning of the organism, and on the other provides a connection of body and soul, allowing the soul to control the body. It is a kind of adapter between the spiritual world and the physical.
Very interesting view :) I like it
This is a great post but it's 3 o'clock in the morning and I'm just now seeing this exclamation point
I'm going to have to think on this overnight sorry I didn't get to it so much sooner.
Excellent work yet again exclamation point you make the absolute best posts.
I'm using a new tool to dictate my replies now though!
https://steemit.com/steem/@williambanks/commander-steem-reporting-for-duty-also-celebrating-my-2-000th-post
I love your last post and the tech so much that I wrote a post to support you from "Where is this tech today." I used some data from the Internet Trends 2016 report to substantiate.
Thanks and yes this is some cutting edge & scary stuff.
Looks like it's the same group that did the monkey's head transplant in the 1970s.
I had no idea people believed in the Trinity. That's such a hard concept for me to wrap my mind around. But perhaps I've always viewed the trinity as the spiritual equivalent of the Hensel Twins with one extra head. To my mind the scripture were always very clear on this.
To me they say that there isn't a Trinity i.e. 3 beings in on form. But 3 distinct beings united in purpose. It's the purpose you are asked to worship, not the agents of that purpose. This is why the word for used for God is nearly always plural, "Elohim" and not "Eloi". Except When Jesus is on the cross and his words are "Eloi, Eloi lama sabacthani". My God, My God don't forget me. Which also means that at some point, even Jesus had doubts.
As you mentioned, it's not just your "heart" that aches when you speak of love or heartache. But I think the part you miss is that no part of you ever aches. All sensation is felt within the brain itself. The brain has an internal map of the location of every nerve in the body. Each nerve is just a sensor that transmits an electrochemical signal to the brain and the brain takes it from there.
The brain's job is assigning the input a meaning and part of that meaning is the location the sensation is coming from. The brain is also perfectly capable of blocking those signals, as well as inventing sensations that are not there.
Replacing the body with "fresh flesh", is likely to cause both patients to simply perish. At a minimum though the "donor" will perish. This begs the question of how voluntary is the donor. You see, there is something quintessential about life. We don't really know exactly what this is, but what we do know is that there is medical death and clinical death. You can come back from "medical death", meaning your heart can be restarted etc.
However no one has ever come back from "clinical death". There is a point where no amount of science can bring a body back to life. Even the multipotent stem cells they have been harvesting from cadavers aren't quite dead yet. The max so far has been 5 days for a refrigerated body. 3 for a body that was less well cared for. Which BTW means the physical resurrection of dead Jesus may have been a scientific possibility.
Anyways, this "head transplant" shows that if there is a soul, it's a feature of the brain not the body.
So whereforever thine head is, thus too is thy soul. What about when you have more than one head though?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycephaly
@jacor
Same as a blood transfusion. We are the total of our entire body. Your heart doesn't hold information about identity, neither does your brain. We are not something special. We just think we are because we are afraid of dying.
The separation of heart, mind and soul is medieval compared to what we know about medicine today. Soul was invented because people did not know what neurons were and how electrical signals fire in our bodies. In theory you could re-program someone to act entirely differently if you have control over their brain. We know this with 100% accuracy when we observe effects of medicine and drugs in our brain or even an experience that causes trauma. Our neurological being that spreads through an entire body is the sum of its experiences.
This is where religion fails to answer important questions and instead recycles old ideas. It bases its theories on old terminology. It's like saying that there are only four alchemic elements (fire, earth, water, wind) when we have the periodic table of elements in our disposal.
This is your brain. It spreads everywhere
Yes this is a real body donated from the chinese goverment
@kyriacos,
As always I love your comments and you have a very interesting view on this :)
What is the explanation of the body that was donated. This does not look human?
BTW, do you believe us humans a have a chance for a successful head transplant as suggested in the article at the bottom of my post?
I visited the excibition for the first time in New York. It is indeed fascinating although it might be disturbing for some. The bodies are mostly ex-convicts donated from the chinese goverment. What you see above is our entire neuron system as it spread from the brain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodies:_The_Exhibition
I think so far it is hard to accomplish such a task because individual nerves are close to impossible to be connected together and transfer the same signals to the rest of the body. neurons are tiny wires. nothing more nothing less.
The endoneurium curries different charges and we have not figured out yet how to "synchronise" it once it is severed or even damaged. So trying to recconect two of them together is what is the problem for this procedure so far. nothing else.
no "soul" issue at all. It is just a technological problem.
Thanks for the great answer. I would love to see the exhibition. and hope that it will still be possible for me. I do not believe that we can see the soul, maybe in another dimension . This can only be answered when we pass on to the next life :)
Wasn't this question raised by the first heart transplant?
My instinct is that your brain is where YOU reside. Everything else is just pumps and bellows.
This was my reaction too.
I am sure that this is impossible.
I tend to totally agree with you @konstantin :) Hoping to get @williambanks 's opinion on this.
Interesting idea if the Soul is in the head or the entire body. I honestly never considered that aspect before. I would assume yes, because it's where thoughts come from and your emotions and your emotions are the heart of your soul.
Very interesting indeed. The point of the emotions is the heart of the soul is just as interesting :)
It raises a host of questions about inherited traits and if those traits are apparent in the new person
Yip, a lot of questions.
Future is coming but not that fast :)
nice article