The Case for a Creator (44 page)

He smiled after that last statement, then added: “However, that’s a pretty difficult position to maintain while you’re conscious!”

THE EMERGENCE OF THE MIND

“Still,” I protested, “some scientists maintain that consciousness is just something that happens as a natural byproduct of our brain’s complexity. They believe that once evolution gave us sufficient brain capacity, consciousness inexorably emerges as a biological process.”

“Let me mention four problems with that,” Moreland insisted. “First, they are no longer treating matter as atheists and naturalists treat matter—namely, as brute stuff that can be completely described by the laws of chemistry and physics. Now they’re attributing spooky, soulish, or mental potentials to matter.”

“What do you mean by ‘potentials’?”

“They’re saying that prior to this level of complexity, matter contained the potential for mind to emerge—and at the right moment, guess what happened? These potentials were activated and consciousness was sparked into existence.”

“What’s wrong with that theory?”

“That is no longer naturalism,” he said. “That’s panpsychism.”

That was a new term to me. “Pan
what
?”

“
Panpsychism
,” he repeated. “It’s the view that matter is not just inert physical stuff, but that it also contains proto-mental states in it. Suddenly, they’ve abandoned a strict scientific view of matter and adopted a view that’s closer to theism than to atheism. Now they’re saying that the world began not just with matter, but with stuff that’s mental
and
physical at the same time. Yet they can’t explain where these pre-emergent mental properties came from in the first place. And this also makes it hard for them to argue against the emergence of God.”

“The
emergence
of God?” I asked. “What do you mean by that?”

“If a finite mind can emerge when matter reaches a certain level of complexity, why couldn’t a far greater mind—God—emerge when millions of brain states reach a greater level of consciousness? You see, they want to stop the process where they want it to stop—at themselves—but you can’t logically draw that line. How can they know that a very large God hasn’t emerged from matter, because, after all, haven’t a lot of people had religious experiences with God?”

“That wouldn’t be the God of Christianity,” I pointed out.

“Granted,” he replied. “But this is still a problem for atheists. And there’s a second problem: they would still be stuck with determinism, because if consciousness is just a function of the brain, then I’m my brain, and my brain functions according to the laws of chemistry and physics. To them, the mind is to the brain as smoke is to fire. Fire causes smoke, but smoke doesn’t cause anything. It’s just a byproduct. Thus, they’re locked into determinism.

“Third, if mind emerged from matter without the direction of a superior Intelligence, why should we trust anything from the mind as being rational or true, especially in the area of theoretical thinking?

“Let me give you an analogy. Let’s say you had a computer that was programmed by random forces or by nonrational laws without a mind being behind it. Would you trust a printout from that machine? Of course not. Well, same with the mind—and that’s a problem for Darwinists. And by the way, you can’t use evolution as an explanation for why the mind should be considered trustworthy, because theoretical thinking does not contribute to survival value.”

Moreland’s comments reminded me of the famous quote from British evolutionist J. B. S. Haldane: “If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of the atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true . . . and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.”
⁵⁵

“Here’s the fourth problem,” Moreland went on, “If my mind were just a function of the brain, there would be no unified self. Remember, brain function is spread throughout the brain, so if you cut the brain in half, like the girl who lost fifty-three percent of her brain, then some of that function is lost. Now you’ve got forty-seven percent of a person. Well, nobody believes that. We all know she’s a unified self, because we all know her consciousness and soul are separate entities from her brain.

“There’s one other aspect of this, called the ‘binding problem.’ When you look around the room, you see many things at the same time,” he said, gesturing around at various objects in our field of vision. “You see a table, a couch, a wall, a painting in a frame. Every individual thing has light waves bouncing off of it and they’re striking a different location in your eyeball and sparking electrical activity in a different region of the brain. That means there is no single part of the brain that is activated by all of these experiences. Consequently, if I were simply my physical brain, I would be a crowd of different parts, each having its own awareness of a different piece of my visual field.

“But that’s not what happens. I’m a unified ‘I’ that has all of these experiences at the same time. There is something that binds all of these experiences and unifies them into the experience of oneself—me—even though there is no region of the brain that has all these activation sites. That’s because my consciousness and my ‘self’ are separate entities from the brain.”

Moreland was on a roll, but I jumped in anyway. “What about recent brain studies that have shown activity in certain areas of the brain during meditation and prayer?” I asked. “Don’t those demonstrate that there’s a physical basis for these religious experiences, as opposed to an immaterial basis through the soul?”

“No, it doesn’t. All it shows is a physical
correlation
with religious experiences,” he replied.

“You’ll have to explain that,” I said.

“Well, there’s no question that when I’m praying, smelling a rose, or thinking about something, my brain still exists. It doesn’t pop out of existence when I’m having a conscious life, including prayer. And I would be perfectly happy if scientists were to measure what was going on in my brain while I’m praying, feeling forgiveness, or even thinking about lunch. But remember: just because there is a correlation between two things, that doesn’t mean they’re the same thing. Just because there’s a correlation between fire and smoke, this doesn’t mean smoke is the same as fire.

“Now, sometimes your brain states can cause your conscious states. For example, if you lose brain functioning due to Alzheimer’s disease, or you get hit over the head, you lose some of your mental conscious life. But there’s also evidence that this goes the other way as well. There are data showing that your conscious life can actually reconfigure your brain.

“For example, scientists have done studies of the brains of people who worried a lot, and they found that this mental state of worry changed their brain chemistry. They’ve done studies of the brain patterns of little children who were not nurtured and loved, and their patterns are different than children who have warm experiences of love and nurture. So it’s not just the brain that causes things to happen in our conscious life; conscious states can also cause things to happen to the brain.

“Consequently, I wouldn’t want to say there’s a physical basis for religious experiences, even though they might be correlated. Sometimes it could be cause-and-effect from brain to mind, but it could also be cause-and-effect from mind to brain. How do the scientists know it isn’t actually my prayer life that’s causing something to happen in my brain, rather than the other way around?”
⁵⁶

THE RETURN OF OCKHAM’S RAZOR

As we talked about the human mind, mine was drifting back to my first interview with William Lane Craig, during which he brought up a scientific principle called Ockham’s razor. As I listened to Moreland defend the concept of dualism, it dawned on me that Ockham’s razor would argue in the opposite direction—toward the view that only the brain exists—because it says science prefers simpler explanations where possible. It was a challenge I decided to pose to Moreland.

“You’re familiar with the scientific principle called Ockham’s razor,” I said to him.

As soon as the question left my mouth, Moreland knew where I was headed. “Yes, it says that we shouldn’t multiply entities beyond what’s needed to explain something. And I assume your objection is that Ockham’s razor would favor a simple alternative, such as the brain accounting for everything, rather than more complicated explanation like the two entities of dualism.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Surely this undercuts the case for dualism.”

He was ready with an answer. “No, it really doesn’t. Actually, Ockham’s razor favors dualism, and here’s why,” he said. “What’s the intent of Ockham’s razor? The thrust of this principle is that when you’re trying to explain a phenomenon, you should only include the elements that are necessary to explain the phenomenon. And as I’ve demonstrated through scientific evidence and philosophical reasoning, dualism is necessary to explain the phenomenon of consciousness. Only dualism can account for all of the evidence—and, hence, it does not violate Ockham’s razor.”

I wasn’t ready to give up. “But maybe we just don’t have all the evidence yet,” I said. “Maybe your conclusions are premature. Physicalists are confident that the day will come when they’ll be able to explain consciousness solely in physical terms.”

Moreland’s reply was adamant: “There will never, ever be a scientific explanation for mind and consciousness.”

His forceful and unequivocal statement startled me. “Why not?” I asked.

“Think about how scientists go about explaining things: they show that something had to happen due to antecedent conditions. For example, when scientists explain why gases behave the way they do, they show that if you hold the volume constant and increase the temperature, the pressure has to increase. That is, when we heat a pressure cooker, the pressure goes up.

“When scientists explain that, they don’t just correlate temperature and pressure. They don’t just say that temperature and pressure tend to go together. They try to show why the pressure has
got
to increase, why it couldn’t have done anything other than that, given the temperature increase. Scientists want to show why something
has
to happen given the cause; they’re not content simply to correlate things and leave it at that.

“And this will never work with consciousness, because the relationship between the mind and the brain is contingent, or dependent. In other words, the mind is not something that
had
to happen. One atheist asked, ‘How could a series of physical events, little particles jostling against one another, electric currents rushing to and fro, blossom into conscious experience? Why shouldn’t pain and itches be switched around? Why should any experience emerge when these neurons fire in the brain?’ He’s pointing out that there’s no necessary connection between conscious states and the brain.

“So in the future scientists will be able to develop more correlations between conscious states and states of the brain, and that’s wonderful. But my point is this:
correlation is not explanation.
To explain something scientifically, you’ve got to show
why
the phenomenon
had
to happen given the causes. And scientists cannot explain the ‘why’ behind consciousness, because there’s no necessary connection between the brain and consciousness. It didn’t have to happen this way.”

DEDUCTIONS ABOUT GOD

It’s no wonder that Alvin Plantinga of Notre Dame University, a dualist who is frequently called the greatest living American philosopher, surveyed the current body/mind debate and concluded: “Things don’t look hopeful for Darwinian naturalists.”
⁵⁷

Faced with data and logic that support dualism, and unable to offer a plausible theory for how consciousness could have erupted from mindless matter, atheists are pinning their hopes on some as-yet-undetermined scientific discovery to justify their faith in physicalism. And some aren’t even so sure about that—physicist and atheist Steven Weinberg said scientists may have to “bypass the problem of human consciousness” altogether, because “it may just be too hard for us.”
⁵⁸
In other words, it’s failing to give them the answers they want.

As for Moreland, he agrees with Plantinga’s bleak assessment for atheists. “Darwinian evolution will never be able to explain the origin of consciousness,” he told me. “Perhaps Darwinists can explain how consciousness was shaped in a certain way over time, because the behavior that consciousness caused had survival value. But it can’t explain the
origin
of consciousness, because it can’t explain how you can get something from nothing.

“In Darwin’s notebooks, he said if there was anything his theory can’t explain, then there would have to be another explanation—a creationist explanation. Well, he can’t explain the origin of mind. He tried to reduce consciousness down to the brain, because he could tell a story about how the brain evolved. But as we’ve discussed, Lee, consciousness cannot be reduced merely to the physical brain. This means the atheist creation story is inadequate and false. And yet there is an alternative explanation that makes sense of all the evidence: our consciousness came from a greater Consciousness.

“You see, the Christian worldview begins with thought and feeling and belief and desire and choice. That is, God is conscious. God has thoughts. He has beliefs, he has desires, he has awareness, he’s alive, he acts with purpose. We start there. And because we start with the mind of God, we don’t have a problem with explaining the origin of our mind.”

I asked, “What, then, can we deduce about God from this?”

“That he’s rational, that he’s intelligent, that he’s creative, that he’s sentient. And that he’s invisible, because that’s the way conscious beings are. I have no inclination to doubt that this very room is teeming with the presence of God, just because I can’t see or touch or smell or hear him. As I explained earlier, I can’t even see my own wife! I can’t touch, see, smell, or hear the
real
her.