I was talking about substance dualism with Rose, and showing her new academic books (one, two) about it. So, I decided to blog something related to that. Today’s post is about Jeffrey Schwartz – a research psychiatrist at UCLA. His research shows that mental effort can change your brain chemistry. Would you like a scientific argument for non-physical minds? Read on, and I’ll show you one.

First, let’s see something completely secular, from UCLA Health, just to explain who Jeffrey is, and what he does:

Thanks to neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to create and reorganize neural connections — people can find relief from anxiety, depression, substance abuse, obsessive-compulsive disorder and everyday mental health challenges, says Jeffrey Schwartz, MD, a research psychiatrist with the UCLA Department of Psychiatry.

Dr. Schwartz outlined his four-step method for dealing with mental health challenges at the Emerging Themes in Behavioral Health conference, April 28, at the UCLA Luskin Conference Center(Link is external).

The four steps combine mindfulness with cognitive behavioral therapy, which results in what he calls “self-directed neuroplasticity.”

Why is this argument for substance dualism? Well, his research shows that when humans exert “mental effort” in certain structured ways, they can actually change their brains. This contradicts the materialist / physicalist view which is that your experience of consciousness is an illusion that is entirely controlled by deterministic chemical processes in your brain.

Here’s a video about his research:

And here’s a summary of the research, published in First Things, and authored by William Dembski.

Excerpt:

Schwartz provides a nonmaterialist interpretation of neuroscience and argues that this interpretation is more compelling than the standard materialist interpretation. He arrived at this position as a psychiatrist specializing in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

[…]From brain scans, Schwartz found that certain regions in the brain of OCD patients (the caudate nucleus in particular) exhibited abnormal patterns of activity. By itself this finding is consistent with a materialist view of mind (if, as materialism requires, the brain enables the mind, then abnormal patterns of brain activity are likely to be correlated with dysfunctional mental states). Nonetheless, having found abnormal patterns of brain activity, Schwartz then had OCD patients engage in intensive mental effort through what he called relabeling, reattributing, refocusing, and revaluing (the 4 Rs).

[…]Schwartz documents not only that patients who undertook this therapy experienced considerable relief from OCD symptoms, but also that their brain scans indicated a lasting realignment of brain-activity patterns. Thus, without any intervention directly affecting their brains, OCD patients were able to reorganize their brains by intentionally modifying their thoughts and behaviors. The important point for Schwartz here is not simply that modified thoughts and behaviors permanently altered patterns of brain activity, but that such modifications resulted from, as he calls it, “mindful attention”-conscious and purposive thoughts or actions in which the agent adopts the stance of a detached observer.

So mind-brain interaction is not a one-way street. Everyone knows that you can alter your consciousness, beliefs, moods, sensations, etc. by changing your brain, e.g. – with drugs. But it turns out that you can also will to focus your thoughts on certain things in order to change your brain chemistry. So the causation is not just bottom-up, but also top-down.

Mindfulness therapies – which are documented in the research papers published by Schwartz (like this one and this one and this one)- assume the existence of free will. Naturalists don’t like this research because naturalists don’t believe in free will. So what do you find more trustworthy? The evidence? Or the philosophy? Me, I trust the evidence more than the philosophy.

I’m monitoring laws, policies and trials of interest to Christians in outside the USA, so that I can get an idea of what will happen here, if the secular leftists win the elections in November. One country that is particularly troubling on several fronts is the UK. They have problems from their weak immigration policies, their green energy policies, their weak crime policies, and their censorship of speech.

Here’s the latest from Christian Concern, about one of the major gay activists in the UK.

It says:

A patron of Educate and Celebrate, the now defunct government-funded gender identity group allowed into thousands of schools across the UK, has this week been charged with multiple accounts of sex abuse against children.

Stephen Ireland, who is also the founder of gay pride in Surrey, is facing more than 30 charges, including rape of a child under 13, sexual assault, six counts of conspiracy to sexually assault a child, conspiracy to kidnap a child, voyeurism, making indecent photographs of children, arranging the commission of a child sex offence, and possession of an extreme pornographic image.

What’s interesting about this is how differently gay activists are treated compared to Christian teachers and chaplains. Christianity is viewed as the source of all intolerance and bigotry. Far from being seen as moral people, Christians are viewed as predators, because of the official UK religions of “don’t judge” and “follow your heart”. Meanwhile, actual predators are given complete access to children.

Look:

The development raises alarm over how Educate and Celebrate have, for example, been given access to nursery age children across the country, while a Christian chaplain, Rev. Dr Bernard Randall, has been reported to counter-terrorism, sacked and blacklisted as a safeguarding risk to children by the Church of England (CofE), after raising concern about the group.

In 2019, Rev. Dr Bernard Randall… gave a sermon on the Church of England’s (CofE) teaching on marriage and human sexuality in a CofE chapel in a school with a CofE ethos.

Dr Randall gave the sermon, which encouraged debate and critical thinking, after Educate and Celebrate had been allowed into Trent College in Derbyshire, to promote queer theory into the morale fabric of the school.

At a staff training day, the group’s leader, Elly Barnes, got staff to stand up and chant ‘smash heteronormativity.’

Dr Randall’s career has been torn apart since he gave the sermon, despite having been vindicated by a string of secular agencies. Yet still the CofE refuse to give him his permission to officiate licence back.

In contrast, Educate and Celebrate have been plagued by scandal culminating with the group quietly folding in January following a low-key announcement by the Charity Commission.

If you look at a few of the photos of Kamala Harris with LGBT activists and drag queens, then you will understand that for her, her LGBT allies are good people – moral people. But Christians on the other hand – we are the devils.

She used the power of law enforcement to go after Christian pro-lifers when they offended abortion providers who were accused of selling baby body parts for profit. So, I expect that Christians would get the same treatment as Dr. Randall, while gay activists would enjoy the same “soft on crime” treatment that Muslim sex-traffickers in the UK get from their secular leftists.

Remember, as I blogged about before, California is a sanctuary for people who want to trans kids. I blogged about how California rips the kids away from their fathers, and force the dissenting fathers to pay the medical bills, while denying them access to their kids. Is that what you want to live under? I sure don’t. And it’s probably causing a lot of good men to think twice about getting married and having children, since the secular leftists seem to be very enthusiastic about handing over the children of good men to child abusers and child mutilators. If you think that good men aren’t counting the cost of paying their taxes to secular leftists and being ruled by them, then you had better think again. We are watching.

One of the women I admire the most today is Kristen Waggoner, an attorney who is president, CEO and general at Alliance Defending Freedom. Kristen takes cases where she has to defend basic human rights, including all the way up to the Supreme Court. She doesn’t often write articles, but she has a new one in World Magazine, where she talks about how Australia censors free speech.

Here is the article.

It says:

“Billboard Chris” defends kids from gender ideology like it’s his full-time job—because it is.

In 2020, Chris Elston, a father of two from Vancouver, British Columbia, decided he could no longer stand idly by as he saw child after child fall prey to gender ideology. So, leaving behind a successful job in finance, he launched a new “career,” engaging people in street conversations while wearing a sandwich board with pithy messages. One reads, “Children cannot consent to puberty blockers.” Another says, “dad [noun]: a human male who protects his kids from gender ideology.”

This is the part that was interesting, especially if you are ever thinking of traveling to Australia for a vacation:

In February, Elston shared a Daily Mail article criticizing the appointment of gender ideology activist Teddy Cook to a panel of the World Health Organization. The article explained that Cook promotes deviant sexual practices, including bestiality and bondage. Elston took to X to state the obvious: that such a person has no business making global policy on mental health.

That’s when Australia’s “eSafety commissioner” demanded that X take down Elston’s post. With Elon Musk at the helm, X refused. The authorities then forced X to block the post in Australia, and X is now suing. Elston is challenging this censorship in court as well, with ADF International backing his legal defense.

I’m sure I’m going to surprise no one when I tell you that Australia’s “eSafety commissioner” is a progressive woman. More often than not, progressive women are always at the bottom of these censorship efforts. They just resort to force in order to silence words that they disagree with. Never marry one of these women. Don’t even date them. It’s not safe.

The reason I linked to this article is because of the interesting evidence that she musters against the most common arguments for transing kids.

Here’s some of her evidence:

One of the most common assertions we hear from activists is that “transition” is necessary to prevent people from committing suicide. That claim is flatly contradicted by the science. In 2011, an expansive Swedish study found that mortality rates among study participants became much worse after “transition” surgeries, with a lifetime suicide rate 19 times higher than the control group. In addition, last year, studies out of Denmark and Finland each reviewed more than 3,000 patients who had undergone transition procedures, both as children and adults, and more than 20 years of records revealed no meaningful improvement in mental health outcomes.

Most recently, a high-profile review commissioned by the English National Health Service found that “the evidence does not support the claim that gender-affirming treatment reduces suicide risk.” The same review echoed warnings that puberty blockers pose “potential risks to neurocognitive development, psychosexual development, and longer-term bone health” among children. These findings were published in the full Cass Review.

As she notes in the article, many countries who were ahead of America on transing children have now put the brakes on it. Sadly, America is lagging behind these other nations. There are a lot of people who are desperate to virtue-signal about their great tolerance: public school teachers, social workers, lawyers, judges, and medical professionals. And of course, transing kids is a big money maker for hospitals, since the kids will be hooked on drugs and treatments long after the surgeries are done.

But there was also this interesting case from Switzerland, too, reported in Daily Signal:

In Switzerland, gender transitions for minors are regulated by the Swiss Pediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes Society (SPED), The European Conservative reports, and under SPED’s regulations, the state can supersede a parent’s refusal to allow their 16- and 17-year-old children to transition if the parents are stripped of their legal authority.

The Swiss child protection agency, or the Service de Protection des Mineurs (SPMi), has full authority over where their daughter is treated, John said. And it has mandated that she receive the “gender-affirming” treatment that her parents believe will harm her.

In late July, the highest court in Geneva (the Court of Justice) ruled against the parents and ordered that they hand over documents necessary for their daughter’s legal “sex change.” If they do not turn over those documents, they face the threat of criminal charges, according to the Christian legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom International.

Check out these articles, and think about what’s at stake in the next election. Would you want people like the Australian chief fascist censoring your speech? Would you like the hospital and the courts to overrule your rights as parents? If not, it would be a good idea to get some of this evidence out in front of your friends and family. That way, they would understand what would happen here if the secular lefts had more political power.

And I also hope this helps you to know how to think about evangelical leaders, who are passionate about Democrat priorities like opening the borders, but silent on issues like this that affect you and your family.