Tadpole Nerve Endings in a Quivering Brain
“A new man is arising…and yet I am sorry to lose God!”[1]
Who said this, who is the new man, and why does it matter?
It was Dmitri Karamazov who announced the choice between God and a new man. You would be forgiven for not recognizing Dmitri’s name. He was the fictitious character that Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky created in his novel The Brothers Karamazov.[2] In this hidden gem of a story, Dmitri is torn between sin and redemption confused about his belief in God and his sense of reality. Or, as Clifford Geertz would say, what is real and really real.[3]
More about Dmitri and the new man shortly, first let’s talk about the author.
Dostoyevsky is regarded as one of the finest novelists in the literary world whose 19th century views on modernism, existentialism, psychology, theology, and literary criticism still influence many of our 21st century ideas about society. Except one of them – neuroscience.
Compared to today’s understanding of neuroscience, Dostoyevsky’s generation were quite comical in their conclusion about how the brain functioned. It was comical because neuroscience was quite rudimentary back then, when scientists believed all human reality was influenced from quivering nerve ends like tadpole tails in the brain. You’ve heard the phrase “my head is swimming” due to a headache or nausea, but tadpole tails in my head? Now, that’s humorous.
Back to Dmitri, God, and the new man.
It is not hard to comprehend how Dostoyevsky’s fictitious character, Dmitri, was torn between sin and redemption knowing one thing to be real yet believing something entirely different. Though he does not mention it in his novel, it sounds a lot like St. Paul’s frustration torn between two opposing things writing, “What a wretched man I am!”[4]
However, St. Paul worked through his frustration concluding the redemptive work of Christ conquered sin,[5] whereas, Dmitri opted for the new man whose behavior could not be counted as sin, rather, as a predetermined set of codes informed by quivering nerve tails like a tadpole in his brain. So, Dmitri concludes, “All this [God stuff] is nonsense!”[6]
Now, why is a 19th century Russian novel is important today?
Despite today’s advanced studies in neuroscience, it seems to me there are people who may have tadpole-like things swimming in their brains. Such people can convince themselves of anything to create their own reality, or the opposite of what is really real. Interestingly, Steven Pinker succinctly puts the dichotomy of what is personally real and what is universally really real this way, “The conscious mind…is a spin doctor, not the commander in chief.”[7]
If the mind is a spin doctor, people can believe something to be true that is untrue, much like the emperor in Hans Christian Anderson’s tale The Emperor’s New Clothes.[8] What was real for the emperor was his apparent new clothing, but what was really real to an honest boy in the crowd was his absolute nudity! In many ways, there is an arrogance about the emperor. I shall come the issue of arrogance again shortly.
If our conscious mind only informs us about the story of our actions, I could get away with telling you that I identify as anything within the four common identities of being human: ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, and class. Though I am white, male, middle-aged, heterosexual, and middle-class – my mind as a spin doctor informed by its quivering nerve tadpole-like tails – I could paint a very different picture.
Though there are many examples of this lunacy, I’ll highlight a popular one.
If I was a male athlete who had no chance of winning against competitors of my own gender, my spin doctoring mind might tell me I’m losing because I’m really a woman. So, I go ahead and identify as a woman and compete against women because it’s real to me, despite what is universally really real: I’m a man. In this case, Dmitri would say, “The new man…sorry, woman…is arising.”
The example is not a humorous joke, its lunacy. Currently, High School track athletes in Connecticut like Selina Soule, Alanna Smith, and Chelsea Mitchell are fighting to stop trans athletes from competing with females. Remember Riley Gaines competing for the University of Kentucky swim team against Lia Thomas – formally Will Thomas – that featured on national news? Such a competition was not only unfair, but Thomas used the same changing room as Riley and other female swimmers. If Richard Rowland was alive today, he would repeat his now famous phrase, “the lunatics were now running the asylum![9]
Highlighting female athletics as one of many examples is precisely why Dostoyevsky’s novel is important today, seen in the dilemma of his character Dmitri. His mind – or his spin doctor – convinced him that what he thought was real could not possibly be counted against him because his brain was pre-programmed a certain way. Though prescience theories in Dostoyevsky’s day can be considered comical, apparently, rudimentary ideas about neuroscience have been fully revived today as fact. If so, I echo the words of Rowland.
Is it really real?
I am not a neuroscientist, or anything close to it, but I can say with some conviction that a cursory read of basic neuroscience informs us that our brains are not wholly developed by information through our senses; or, as 19th century scientists would say, what we feel from the quivering tadpole-like nerve tails in our brains. Theologically, it is God who determines our gender.[10] Scientifically, it is the man (or sperm) that determines our gender.[11] Sociologically, a rising number of parents are letting their children decide their own gender.[12] I suggest the third option is a bad case of tadpole-like nerve tails swimming around in the parents’ brains.
Being male or female is not malleable. It cannot be bent by the ideology of progressive parenting. There are things about being male or female that do not require parents to agree or disagree with. Certain things that have been true, are true, and will continue to be true regarding the identity of male or female. Despite what the new man (or trans man or trans woman) accepts as personally real, certain things are universally really real. Anything else is rather arrogant and precisely how we can be sorry to lose God.
Let’s go back to Dmitri.
Dostoyevsky’s character struggled in himself largely because he wanted to justify his behavior or excuse himself by claiming his brain was pre-programmed that way. In this sense, Dmitri’s truth was the commander-in-chief while his spin doctoring mind told him the story of why his personal truth was, well, truthful. In short, there was no greater reality than how Dmitri perceived it. There is a definite arrogance in that too.
So, the idea of losing God is overtly smug because to lose Him implies He was there in the first place. The arrogance of it all is to claim something true that God and science say is untrue. The smugness of excusing all this lunacy is to claim we have an entirely predetermined or pre-programmed brain. Nonsense.
Now in terms of gender dysphoria, it's more than smug, its highly pretentious of the new man to
self-identify as any of the current 107 human gender identities[13] once you lose God and replace Him with quivering tadpole-like nerve endings in the brain to justify personal truth in the face of universal truth. The new man (trans or otherwise) is not only smug and arrogant, also childishly insecure.
Let me explain.
When my children were very young, they dressed up as their favorite superhero. Our living room was no longer a space filled with comfortable furniture; in their infant minds it was quite something else. It was nothing short of Gotham City where the furniture resembled high-rise buildings for their chosen superhero to climb. Funny, right? However, if any of my children acted like this today, not only would they destroy the furniture, I’d think they were a bunch of lunatics, or the rare extremes of Comic Con…but I’ll leave that thought for another day.
Look, the world is full of Dmitri’s, and I am one of them sometimes torn between sin and redemption, or between what I think is real and what is universally real. But like St. Paul, though I feel wretched from time to time, the redemptive work of Christ gives me peace of mind and heart. Despite my concluding confession, I am not suggesting that I struggle with gender identity for a simple reason: I have not allowed my impressionable cognitive brain to be filled with tadpoles that lead to lunacy.
[1] Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts and an Epilogue by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Macmillan Company. 1922, 635.
[2] Published as a serial in The Russian Messenger from January 1879 to November 1880
[3] Clifford Geertz. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. Basic Books. 1973, 126-140.
[4] Romans 7:24 NIV.
[5] Romans 8:37 NIV.
[6] Ibid. 1922, 635.
[7] Steven Pinker. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Penguin Books. 2016, 43.
[8] First published on 7 April 1837 with The Little Mermaid in the third and final installment of Andersen's Fairy Tales Told for Children in Copenhagen, Denmark by C. A. Reitzel.
[9] First used by Richard A. Rowland in 1919 as the head of Metro movies when famous movie stars Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford opened the movie company United Artists to protect their work and control their careers. The words ‘lunatic’ and ‘asylum’ are not politically correct today.
[10] Psalm 139:13-16.
[11] DNA Diagnostics Center. “Which Parent Determines the Gender of the Child?” Feb. 26, 2023.
[12] ABC News. “Boy or Girl? Parents Raising ‘theybies’ let kids decide.” July 19, 2019.
[13] Sexual Diversity. “How Many Genders Are There? Gender Idenity List”. SexualDiversity.org, May 2023.