Can Modern Neuroscience Help Explain One of Christianity's Oldest Questions?
- 23 hours ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 1 hour ago
Written by Timeout Taumua, Award-Winning Author
On behalf of Brainz Magazine, let us introduce Timeout A. Taumua, a multi-award-winning author of The Magnificence of the 3, an expository book about the scientific nature of the Bible. The book and the author had been dubbed by some prominent editorial reviewers as "a rare work constructed by a rare being" and "a rare book by a rare person".
Few questions have challenged believers and skeptics alike more than this one. For generations, Christians have affirmed that God is unchanging. Yet even the faithful struggle to reconcile scriptural teachings with these contrasting narratives. The God portrayed in the Torah often appears uncompromising in judgment, while Jesus teaches forgiveness, mercy, compassion, and love for one's enemies. This contrast has fueled debate among theologians, philosophers, and critics for centuries.
Richard Dawkins famously described the God of the Old Testament as "the most unpleasant character in all fiction," while acknowledging Jesus as one of history's great ethical innovators.[1] Whether one agrees with Dawkins or not, his observation highlights a question that deserves thoughtful examination through scriptural facts rather than faith or scorn.
My search for an answer beyond traditional theology
As I grew disillusioned with my church, I found myself asking questions that faith alone could not fully answer. My search was never motivated by hostility toward the Scriptures. Instead, it grew from a desire to understand why the same Bible seemed to present two dramatically different portraits of God, among many other apparent contradictions within the faith.
That search eventually led me to write The Magnificence of the 3, where I explore recurring biblical patterns involving the number 3, alongside structural patterns found in science. While researching those patterns, I began asking a different question: What if the Bible symbolically preserves humanity's neurological development? That possibility became the foundation of a new way of reading the biblical narrative.
The triune brain theory and the biblical narrative
One framework that captured my attention was neuroscientist Paul MacLean's Triune Brain Theory. Although aspects of the model remain debated within modern neuroscience, it continues to provide a useful way of describing three broad dimensions of human behavior: survival, associated with the reptilian brain, emotion, associated with the limbic brain, and higher reasoning, associated with the neocortex, or the smart, modern brain.[2]
Viewed symbolically, these three stages appeared to mirror the overall progression of Scripture. Rather than seeing disconnected stories, I began to see a narrative moving from instinctive survival within the preflood generation, through emotional development under the laws, toward the deliberate moral reasoning of the New Testament.
Genesis and humanity's survival instinct: The reptilian brain
The opening chapters of Genesis portray a violent world struggling for survival. Human corruption, conflict, and destruction dominate the narrative, culminating in the Flood.
From my perspective, these accounts resemble behavioral characteristics associated with humanity's earliest survival instincts. Coincidentally, these social behaviors parallel traits associated with the reptilian component of the triune brain: compulsive, territorial, and sexually aggressive behavior focused on preserving survival genes.
God's interactions with humanity during this stage of human development also appear uncompromising, emphasizing judgment for survival preservation in a world defined by primitive violence. God's response also reflected a trait associated with the reptilian brain: violence.
Whether interpreted literally or symbolically, Genesis presents survival as humanity's first great challenge, one that is scientifically defined here through the triune brain theory.
The limbic or emotional development of the Old Testament brain
As the biblical story progresses, a noticeable shift emerges. Rather than the immediate judgment seen again in Genesis with the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, opportunities for repentance, reconciliation, and restoration were added to the social structure of God's relationship with Israel, a tribe chosen to teach humankind about God and His laws. God established a sacrificial system through which sinners could show remorse, and in return, He granted forgiveness, thereby preserving individual survival, unlike in previous judgments. Other narratives appear to reinforce this transition.
The story of Ruth depicts a Gentile woman becoming part of Israel's royal lineage through King David and Solomon, the same lineage through which Jesus returned to Earth. Likewise, the Book of Jonah presents God extending mercy to the Gentile city of Nineveh after its people repent, rather than destroying them without warning. To me, these stories depict the neurological changes God underwent over time.
Jesus and the emergence of compassion
The New Testament introduces another remarkable transition. As I claim, God returned in human form as the Son, Jesus, to expand His tribe beyond Israel. The need for tribal expansion can be understood through another scientific theory: the social brain hypothesis. This theory provides an answer to why the human brain is much more advanced than the brains of other mammals of the same or larger size. The answer is that humans have much larger social circles than these other species. The bigger the tribe, the bigger the brain.[3]
Jesus begins His public ministry with the Sermon on the Mount, emphasizing forgiveness over vengeance, humility over domination, compassion over retaliation, and reconciliation over division. As a result, Jesus created a club of two billion Christians and Catholics.
God evolved, and so did mankind. Shall we consider these changes in God's social behavior and the coincidental expansion of His membership as elements of Charles Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest?
Could Scripture symbolically reflect human brain development?
My proposal is not that neuroscience proves the Bible, nor that the Bible proves neuroscience. I neither confirm nor deny the validity of the triune brain theory. After all, it is generally accepted that the fetus divides its brain into three sections before entering the world.
Rather, I suggest that the biblical narrative may symbolically preserve humanity's progression from instinctive survival toward emotional maturity and, ultimately, self-sacrifice so that others can survive. The progression from man sacrificing to God in order to survive to God sacrificing Himself so that man could survive can, for faithless seekers, be explained only through the triune brain theory.
Viewed this way, the apparent contrast between the God of the Torah and Jesus becomes part of a biblical progression that is Darwinian in nature, rather than evidence of contradiction. Whether both sides accept this interpretation or not, it offers another way to explore one of Christianity's oldest questions: Why is the God of the Old Testament different from Jesus of the New Testament?
Faith and neuroscience: Finding common ground
As I propose in The Magnificence of the 3, the Bible's primary purpose is not simply to describe humanity's journey to heaven but to preserve a symbolic framework for human brain development. From this perspective, it is significant that immediately after the seven days of creation, Scripture introduces the Tree of Knowledge, the Garden of Eden, and the Tree of Life. In my interpretation, these correspond symbolically to a brain neuron, the brain itself as a vast "neuron forest," and the principles designed to shape human thought and behavior, represented by the Tree of Life or the Ten Commandments.
Neuroscience seeks to understand how the brain influences human behavior. Scripture, viewed through this same lens, seeks to shape that behavior through moral instruction, culminating in Jesus' teaching of sacrificial love for the benefit of others. Whether one approaches these ideas through faith or science, perhaps both disciplines are exploring different dimensions of the same human experience.
Why this conversation matters
I do not expect every reader to agree with my conclusions. My hope is much simpler. If neuroscience encourages us to understand how the human brain develops, and Scripture encourages us to develop wisdom, compassion, and self-control, perhaps each can contribute to a richer understanding of what it means to be human.
Whether one approaches these questions through faith, science, or simple curiosity, meaningful progress begins with a willingness to ask difficult questions.
Perhaps the greatest opportunity lies not in proving one discipline right and the other wrong, but in sacrificing our egos to distance ourselves from the reptiles. After all, even Richard Dawkins believes Jesus is cool.
Read more from Timeout Taumua
Timeout Taumua, Award-Winning Author
Timeout decided to join our community to share the scientific meaning of biblical stories that God revealed to him, such as the identities of the Ark of the Covenant, the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge, and the Tree of Life, including parabolic tales depicting the splitting of the atom. In light of the 26 book awards, a Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award, and the nature of our community, these discoveries should be of interest to some of us, if not all.
References:
[1] (Dawkins, 2016)
[2] (The Concept of the "Triune Brain," n.d.)
[3] (Team, 2024)
