MAY 18 2019
FATE OR PREDESTINATION?
Last week I read an intriguing interview with Dr. Hannah Critchlow. She broached a topic that has fascinated me for a long time: the matter of METANOIA, the Greek word for MIND-CHANGE. Of course she did not mention metanoia, but the concept definitely was there. , funded by readers
In her new book, THE SCIENCE OF FATE, the Cambridge professor, a neuroscientist, examines the role of fate in our lives. She asserts that much of our life is predetermined at birth, which diminishes the extent how much we are in control of our destiny: “Once you build up a perception of the world, you will ignore any information to the contrary.”
She writes, “It threads through different cultures and is deeply rooted in the way that we speak today; for instance, we often say that babies are born destined for greatness…. The genes, the basic neural circuitry that acts as foundation for his life is already there.”
Dr. Critchlow writes that anxiety, obesity, depression and addictive behavior have all been revealed to have a quite high hereditary basis. But of course, all these behaviors may be amplified and reinforced by the decisions of our parents.
She also confirms something that I have learned in life: “opposites attract”.
Another angle.
My spouse became a Master Grapho-Analyst and in a course, taught by a priest who had a doctorate in psychology, also a grapho-analyst, he taught the same concept that ‘opposites attract’. This also was based on personality types, already discovered by the ancient Greeks: (1) the choleric; (2) the sanguine; (3) the melancholic; and (4) the phlegmatic.
This priestly doctor renamed the 4 classes as (1) elephant, (2) butterfly, (3) frog, and (4) turtle. We have 5 married children, all in long-time stable relationships, and none have married in the same category: all married opposites. And so did I.
My parents were a butterfly (my father) – turtle combination; my wife’s parents were a butterfly (he, a preacher), elephant pair. Often salesmen – my father – politicians and preachers are butterflies, whose characteristics are cheerful, extrovert, spontaneous, humorous, talkative, while elephants, people like me, are aggressive, competitive, strong, perseverant, arrogant, leaders. Frogs and turtles make an excellent fit. Frogs are serious, intense, loyal, friendly, and make good teachers. Turtles are calm, gentle, neat, stubborn, disciplined, make good lawyers.
Dr. Critchlow discovered the same: opposites attract.
The interviewer asked her, “What else does neuroscience tell us about a successful relationship?”
She answered, “If you image the brains of the couples who have
been together for a long, long time and ask them to think about their partner,
their brain will react in the same way as a drug addict’s. You can almost say
this couple is addicted to each other.
And here comes the crucial question, “So what does neuroscience tell us about how you might go about changing someone’s mind or winning an argument?”
Dr. Critchlow answered, “It’s very difficult. Once you have built up a perception of the world, you will ignore any information to the contrary. Your brain is already taking up about 20% of your total energy, so changing the way that you think is going to be quite cognitively costly. And it might be quite socially costly too”.
And coupled with that, came the next question, The subtitle of your book is “Why your future is more predictable than you think”; ultimately, you argue that there is no such thing as free will?
She said, “We are just processing information within the cartography of our mind that gives rise mechanistically to our behavior. So the decisions that we think we are consciously deciding on and making, actually it’s all just an illusion that can be reduced to what our brain is telling us to do.”
My question: “Does her thesis prove “Predestination”?
If I understand her correctly, then she proposes that much of what we do and think is already preconditioned by our genes and upbringing. This makes it very difficult to break away and become a new person, change one’s personality.
And that brings me to METANOIA, a change in our mindset. According to Dr. Critchlow, a change in one’s mindset is next to impossible.
This statement made me go to my library, where I pulled four books on HEALING AND THE MIND.
I first read a book by Dr. Bernie S. Siegel, a surgeon, entitled, “Peace, Love and Healing.” The book was published in 1989; I bought it in 1990, and have now read it again after almost 30 years.
Its subtitle is “Body-Mind communication and the Path to Self-healing: an Exploration.” Loving care, a cheerful attitude, faith, all aid recovery. Toward the end he quotes Henri Nouwen, a Dutch Catholic priest, a close associate with Jean Vanier; he lived for a while in one of the Arche communities.
Here’s the quote, “In his book Out of Solitude Nouwen tells us what it is to care. He begins by explaining that caring is not the attitude of the strong toward the weak: caring takes place between equals. The word ‘care’ has its roots in the Gothic kara, meaning to grieve, experience sorrow, cry out with. The person who really cares must join with the person in pain. Sometimes it is all that can be done, which is hard for anyone to accept, especially hard for doctors, trained as we are to be fixers and mechanics, not healers or caregivers.”
Healers before penicillin were trained that way. As a 10 year old in 1938 I had a bladder infection. The doctor prescribed bed-rest and came every day. Doctors then had little in the way of drug treatments; instead they had to know their patients and the circumstances of their lives to heal them.
My second book was by Dr. Herbert Benson, Professor of Medicine at Harvard, who wrote, “Timeless Healing: the Power and Biology of Prayer.”
He has devoted the last 35 years of his life to finding scientific evidence to provide an answer to the question, “Does prayer have a therapeutic effect?”
He sought to provide a “bridge” between Medicine and Religion, which would help find a treatment for many diseases. After so many experiments conducted over 35 years at the Benson–Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine, Herbert Benson believes that there is indeed a relationship between prayer and health. He writes, “We found that there is a link between the physical condition of a person and any repeated activity of concentration he does, which involves control over random thoughts. Most people make it through prayer. So, we believe that when a person repeats a prayer over and over again, it can help cure a disease, especially if it is caused by stress.”
“Yes, there is a link between prayer and healing!” writes Dr. Benson. “We studied people who prayed repeatedly and were very focused during the prayer. The magnetic resonance imaging showed that there was a decrease in metabolism, heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate and brain activity.
Thus, we gotscientific proof that prayer affects body functions and fights stress.
At the same time, the scientific team focused only on the possibility when a patient prays for himself, as the experiments were not directed towards the possibility of others to pray for a patient’s health. All major religions contain that power.
Bill Moyers, in his introduction to the third book I consulted, Healing and the Mind, wonders, “Why is it that about 60 percent of outpatient visits to primary care physicians are related to stress or mind/body interactions?” This is confirmed in ancient medical science, which told us that our minds and bodies are one. The Latin phrase, Mens Sana in Corpore Sano comes to mind.
Under the aegis of PBS Bill Moyers wrote this beautifully illustrated book, dividing it into five major sections
- The Art of Healing
- Healing from within
- The Mind/Body Connection
- The Mystery of Chi
- Wounded Healers.
Bill Moyers interviewed numerous medical experts asking them how thoughts and feelings influence health and how healing is related to the mind. He even traveled to China to experience a culture whose model of human health is so different from the American one. In this 368 page book he convincingly shows that minding the ‘mind’ connection, patients heal faster, leave the hospital sooner and do better once they get home.
Dr. Deepak Chopra wrote Ageless Bodies, Timeless Mind, with as subtitle, “The Quantum Alternative to Growing Old”. In it he also pursues the mind/body approach, and shows that, by following his prescription for anti-aging, the effects of aging are largely preventable.
I can testify that, ever since I quit smoking in 1959, started running in 1960 and became a vegetarian a few years later this regime has paid off for me.
That the Mind/Body connection is important leaves no doubt. However the four books are more than 20 years old. Now, with organized religion rapidly losing ground, computerized medicine surging, information technology accelerating, and the personal touch lacking, the Mind/Body symbiosis is bound to suffer.
Will Dr. Critchlow’s discovery further stall that development?
Back to the beginning.
Dr. Hannah Critchlow, in her book, THE SCIENCE OF FATE, examines the role of fate in our lives. She asserts that much of our life is predetermined at birth, which diminishes the extent how much we are in control of our destiny: “Once you build up a perception of the world, you will ignore any information to the contrary.”
If she is correct in her assessment, this Cambridge professor and neuroscientist and an astute student of our nerve-system, further sets back the entire mind/body phenomenon.
Earlier I posed the question, “Does her thesis prove “Predestination”?
Predestination is the teaching that God foreordained all that will happen, including the salvation of some and not of others. She asserts that much of our life is predetermined at birth, which diminishes the extent how much we are in control of our destiny.
Romans 8:30 tells me that, “And those he
predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he
justified, he also glorified.” That to me points to predestination, that oh-so
controversial doctrine.
Yes, Dr. Hannah Critchlow asserts that much of our life is predetermined at birth. She believes that to a large extent our destiny is shaped at birth. She believes in FATE. I believe in PREDESTINATION. Are they the same?
Fate in Ancient Greece is a phenomenon that is inescapable; through interaction and close relationship with the gods, the fates of humans may be extended, but cannot be changed.
I am a religious person, and I believe that we are not mere random acts, creatures that are born, live and die, and then disappear into the eternal void, leaving little or no trace. I am fortunate that I have known my grandparents on both sides. I have lived with them and observed them in their daily lives. Both my paternal and my maternal grandparents were members of the same large rural church, and both were elders there. They too shaped me spiritually as much as my parents did physically.
I do admit that the Predestination concept is confusing. Dr. Critchlow claims that life is pre-determined, that we cannot change. Predestination says the same, but also implies that we remain responsible for our actions. Yet in many ways it resembles the Greek concept of FATE.
And how does all this relate to the Mind-Body phenomenon, to Prayer and Healing, to Peace and Love? Perhaps my reasoning here is somewhat farfetched, but I do believe that when we make Christ the center of our existence, see him as the ultimate human being and pursue the KINGDOM vision, where we consciously relate to the Earth and all that lives, then we will LIVE a Mind-Body-Spirit existence, the life God intended for us in the Beginning.
When all our actions – including seeing one’s body and all of creation as holy – are geared toward THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM, when we already now strive to live forever in perfection, then we are destined for eternity, where life-to-the-full will be experienced.
Christ did not come to bring religion. Christ came to teach us how to live.