Creation Moment 5/11/2025 - Mystery of the Mind & Will

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, 

and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; 

and man became a living soul.

Genesis 2:7

"Those two powers are intellect and will.

In general, intellect refers to the capacity to think abstractly about concepts instead of specific objects. It is the ability to reason, use judgment, have concepts, and use logic and language. For example, emotion may prompt a lonely man to think about adopting a puppy. Reason bids him to think about the responsibility he is taking on for, perhaps, fifteen years.

--Will is the ability to choose based on reason. 

--In this sense, will follows on intellect. 

--The intellect is directed to knowing truth. 

The will is directed to seeking good. A properly functioning will

should prompt the man to make a decision based on what is best for the dog as well as for himself, not merely on the emotion he is feeling as he cuddles the dog at the pet adoption center.

The intellect tells the will (so to speak) what is good, and the will pursues it. While normal brain function is necessary for the normal exercise of intellect and will, brain function is not sufficient for them. 

Your intellect and will are immaterial—i.e., —powers of your soul.

Abstract thought can have exact and unambiguous conceptual content.
Nothing material can have exact and unambiguous conceptual content.
Therefore, abstract thought is not material.

Materialists counter that our abstract concepts aren’t really exact. They are just very close approximations. But that’s obviously not true—our concepts of geometrical figures or logic itself are genuinely exact. It is matter that is never exact. In fact, the materialist invocation of logic to make their arguments presupposes the precision of logic. If the materialist’s own viewpoint couldn’t be precisely true, it wouldn’t be valid." 

MindMatters