It’s in the news that Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic went through an MRI examination to determine what he really thinks about various current issues. By showing Jeffrey carefully selected imagery and playing for him unique video clippings, they were able to study his brain’s reactions to determine how he felt toward a myriad of people and situations. The results were surprisingly accurate and insightful.
These days man thinks he can see what God sees. Can he?
You can read all about it yourself in the Atlantic Monthly. Jeffrey, encouraged by a friend, took the examination to see (1) if reading your mind with accuracy was possible, (2) just what was it he really thought about political issues. It was all casually done just to see what sort of results were possible. The results gave Jeffrey new insight into his own likes and dislikes with which he wasn’t truly at grips. Seeing how his mind reacted to various stimuli (everything from John McCain, The Sopranos, to his wife) forced him to be extremely transparent with himself.
I bring this up to make points about two very different aspects of the testing and results. The first one is…
Amazing what we can do these days
The guy saw for himself first hand what he really thinks about… everything that matters to him, with the exception that the brain can’t lie, but it can hide the truth. Jeffrey’s study showed that when he was uncomfortable with being examined for his feelings about George W. Bush, he couldn’t keep still, thus causing the MRI to be useless in figuring out his thoughts on our President. On the other hand, it didn’t lie when he saw images of the actress Edie Falco whom he likes in the television show The Sopranos, and his brain was “somewhat excited”—even appeared feeling guilty for the excitement. This might have been a problem since Jeffrey is married and it could’ve looked bad to his wife. Fortunately, Jeffrey’s brain was considerably more interested in his wife than the TV star based on images he saw in the test of his wife.
The potential here is limitless for the future of research. Imagine what man will do with the ability to know how a person really feels about… anything. The commercial use alone would revolutionize focus group studies. According to the article, some corporations are already starting to use such tests to get more accurate feedback from their customers. And what about politics? Polls of all sorts—many, possibly intrusive—could be done to determine the real character makeup of all individuals. This could determine whether a criminal is still dangerous, and to what extent should he be restrained. Ultimately, people’s dirty little secrets are loosing their privacy—even stuff other people really don’t have any business knowing.
But still self-evident what they cannot do—even with such a great technology
This testing relates back to what I wrote yesterday about homosexuality. This MRI examination of Jeffrey Goldberg is basically the same as the testing performed to determine whether people were authentically genetically “gay.” Even with knowing the results of Jeffrey’s case, this does not change my position on the possibility of determining one’s sexual persuasion by their innermost feelings. The benefit of such testing with MRIs is temporary because people change the way they think and feel towards matters all throughout life. I don’t like the same cartoon shows I watched when I was 8 years-old. I doubt I’ll like the same cars when I’m 45 that I do now.
The assumption that by finding similarities in different people’s current brain function you can determine what somebody was born having a genetic tendency towards is ridiculous. Everyone’s interests change. In the case of many homosexuals, they didn’t start out with the disposition of liking others their same sex. They learn to feel that way. And there are others that have practiced homosexuality that totally change their minds and revolt from homosexuality. Does this inconsistency tell us that inside of their genetic code was the complete person interested in the same sex and the complete person not interested in the same sex? The two dispositions determined by the genes in the same set of genes at the same time? For thousands of years homosexuality was considered a choice of a man’s will—not body. Somehow, scientist, in the last century, think they’ve learned it to be the other way around, but without any evidence backing their theory.
Any way you look at it it doesn’t work. Again, I emphasize that homosexuality is not a genetic condition. It is a moral choice. Their are reasons people practice homosexuality, but none of them are in the interest of helping the body do anything it was built to do. Homosexuality is a reaction to what God designed the body to do His way—doing something He did not intend for the body to do. It appears to be very self-satisfying to fool yourself that for a minute you have control of your body by practicing sodomy. Many others accomplish the same self-satisfying results by doing other things to themselves: lying, stealing, murdering, etc. Not to say that I’m putting homosexuality in with the same quality of sins as the likes of those. I’m just saying people do all of them for the same rational: taking control of their lives and living by their standard of what’s right and wrong.
