The Challenges of Neuroscience for the 21st century Evangelical Apologist

My dissertation - 

Do we sin because we are sinners or are we sinners because we sin?  Cognitive Nolition, Neuroscience and Kenotic Soteriology 

is an interdisciplinary proposal for a kenotic theological doctrine of moral cognition, one that accounts for the salvific status of amorals who suffer post-natal brain trauma resulting in declarative memory loss and false memory, infancy deaths as well as preconscious retrocausal urges such as found in victims of Tourette's syndrome.

Abstract: This dissertation adopts postfoundationalism’s methodological quest for convergence in the interdisciplinary dialogue between theology and the neurosciences with reference to sin and cognition. Evolutionary creationism serves as a template towards a kenotic doctrine of moral cognition that arises from reflections on creation, sin, and repentance. Paleoanthropology elucidates the evolutionary emergence of humans via the consequent biological adaptation for speech that enabled the cultural evolution of moral cognition and religious dispositions. Moral cognition consists of awareness, judgment, and performance. Sin refers to (i) an existential state of spiritual immaturity or impurity to which we are all born (which attracts no guilt and demands no cognitive repentance), and (ii) volitional acts of defiance seeking autonomy (which attracts guilt and demands repentance). Neuroscience raises questions about freedom of will and whether the doctrine of sin can account for the salvation of the amorals, who cannot volitionally sin and do not need to repent. As for freedom, our capacity for cognitive nolition by a neurological veto can reverse preconscious urges and preserve room for a doctrine of culpable volitional sin. The classical doctrines of creation and forensic atonement cannot account for the existential sin of the amorals. We conclude that a kenotic theological doctrine of moral cognition with a soterial atonement best accommodates the distinction between existential and volitional sins, necessary to account for the salvation of the neurologically impaired, as well as the construction of nolition as a neurological veto in the brain. Its significance includes a fresh articulation of soteriology with implications for jurisprudence, medicine, sociology, and the neurosciences. We are thus existential sinners by birth but volitional sinners by choice.

Here are the contents page of the original dissertation:

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE: THE POSTFOUNDATIONAL QUEST FOR CONVERGENCE

1.1 Introduction: Interdisciplinarity in Science and Theology

1.2 Sin and Moral Cognition in Science and Theology 

1.3 Postfoundationalism  

1.3.1 Experience and Belief

1.3.2 Truth and Knowledge 

1.3.3 Individual and Community 

1.3.4 Explanation and Understanding

1.4 Postfoundational Rationality

1.5. A Postfoundational Theology? ………………………… 14

           

CHAPTER TWO: EVOLUTIONARY CREATIONISM

2.1 Introduction: Theology of Evolution and Evolution of Theology 

2.2 Creation and Nature

2.3 A Scientific Doctrine of Creation?

2.4 A Trinitarian Doctrine of Creation

2.5 Jurgen Moltmann’s Evolutionary Doctrine of Creation

2.5.1 God the Holy Spirit in creation

2.5.2 Theological basis for a doctrine of creation

2.5.3 The Creator

2.5.4 God’s Image In Creation 

2.5.5 Embodiment - The end of all God’s works 

2.5.6 Responses to Moltmann

2.6 Conclusion …………………….36

CHAPTER THREE: ANTHROPOLOGY

3.1 Introduction: The Embodied Mind

3.2 The Sciences of Human Origins 

3.2.1 Paleoanthropology 

3.2.1a Bipedalism

3.2.1b The Prefrontal Cortex 

3.2.1c Cognitive Fluidity

3.2.1d The Language of Speech 

3.2.2 Geology 

3.2.3 Molecular Biology

3.3 Philosophy of Human Origins

3.3.1 Embodied Evolutionary Epistemology

3.3.2 Speech

3.3.3 Moral Cognition and Religious Disposition 

3.4 The Theology of Human Origins 

3.4.1 Fallen Angels or Rising Beasts?

3.4.2 The Imago Dei (selem elohim) 

3.4.3 Was Adam the First Human?

3.5 Postfoundational Approach to Religious Experience 

3.6 Neurotheology or Theoscience? 

3.7 Conclusion ….................................87

CHAPTER FOUR: NEUROSCIENCE AND MORAL COGNITION

4.1 Introduction: Neurophysiological Challenges to Brain, Mind and Self

4.2 Neuroscience: The Science of Mind 

4.3 Moral Cognition

4.3.1 Moral Awareness

4.3.1a Consciousness 

4.3.1a.i The Neurobiology of Consciousness .

4.3.1a.ii The Philosophy of Consciousness 

4.3.1a.iii A Theology of Consciousness and the Soul

4.3.1b Imagination & Belief-Formation (Music & Speech) 

4.3.2 Moral Judgment 7

4.3.2a Emotions 

4.3.2a.i Musical Emotions and Religious Belief 

4.2.2a.ii How Emotions Enable Moral Belief 

4.3.2b Memory 

4.3.2b.i The Biology of Memory

4.3.2b.ii The Philosophy and Plasticity of Memory

4.3.2b.iii The Theological Basis of Memory 

4.3.3 Moral Performance9

4.3.3a Amoral Freedom 

4.3.3b Preconscious Freedom 

4.4 Conclusion ………...................... 141

CHAPTER FIVE: EXISTENTIAL SIN AND COGNITIVE NOLITION 

5.1 Introduction: Theological Solutions 

5.2 Sin 

5.2.1 How Sin Became Inheritable

5.2.2 How The State of Original Sin became the Guilt of Individual Sin

5.2.3 The Culpability of Sin 

5.2.4 The Hermeneutical Problem 

5.2.5 A Third Interpretation of Sin 

5.2.6 Existential and Volitional Sins 9

5.2.7 The First Volitional Sin

5.2.8 The Biblical Fall 

5.3 Cognitive Nolition 

5.3.1 Nolition and the Moral Mind 6

5.3.2 The Self-Discipline of Nolition

5.4 Conclusion ………………………184

CHAPTER  SIX: A KENOTIC THEOLOGY OF MORAL COGNITION

6.1 Introduction: A Kenotic Doctrine of Moral Cognition

6.1.1 Ontological, Volitional and Eschatological Kenosis 

6.1.2 Altruism and Agape in a Selfish Universe 

6.2 A Soterial Doctrine of Atonement

6.3 Kenosis & Repentance

6.3.1 Mental Disability and Cognitive Repentance

6.3.2 Epectasis 

6.4 Kenosis and Nolitional Veto 

6.5 Conclusion …….…….…….……199

I am currently editing it for public consumption and plan to be ready for submission to a publisher before August 2011.

Appreciate your prayers, y'all