Revisiting the Non-Matter of Consciousness and Intelligence (yes, that is a pun)

 It's been about 9 months since I wrote what is, in my opinion, a monumental work because it debates the very heart of atheism, "Should Atheism be in Modern Education?" Later came the question "Are Humans Just Biologically Advanced Animals?" which expanded on it with new illustrations. This post also goes hand in hand with the original argument on the human mind. I suggest reading it if there are questions about any of the topics below or you want to discuss another side. More information is there, like the best defense of why the mind-brain connection must be supernatural.  

Specific proof the mind and the brain are not the same

Science needs logic. Duh. 

I believe a Christian should be careful saying things like that because it might hurt feelings, but feel comfortable with what was just written because it is blatantly obvious. When a scientist uses the scientific method, it takes their mind along with the physical processes being studied to search for the truth.

There are three laws of logic I can identify. One is the law of identity, which says either A or non-A. A is only A if there is no difference between what is being identified. If something is true for B, but not so with A, B does not equal A.

The law of excluded middle says, only A or B. Even if something is true for both A and B, maybe they are colored green, the law of excluded middle shows that green cannot be A, nor can B be A because both are green. Green is something all by itself, a property other distinct realities can share.

The law of noncontradiction explains two different claims cannot both be true in the same time and in the same sense. Imagine someone standing up and exclaiming "That law does not exist! It isn't true!" They just said it is true that the law of noncontradiction does not exist, and so it can both exist and not exist. That would mean if it's true, the law does exist, and that would contradict the denial

That is self-defeating. A self-defeating claim cannot be true because it denies its own existence. Another example is denying truth. Truth exists, because it cannot be true for truth to not exist.

Here is a major point: identifying the mind as the brain is wrong because it breaks the law of identity. The law of identity gets so insulted it is like the famous event from some Batman movie where Bane broke Batman's back over his knee.

The brain is objective in that it can be studied scientifically (can be observed), is composed of electrical patterns and flesh which breaks down to protons and neutrons, and obeys the laws of physics and chemistry. Our mind is subjective in that even what a neuroscientist can tell about what we are thinking was discovered by first knowing humans were conscious and then applying that truth to the brain, like where our reasoning processes are "housed" or how we feel. We can immediately tell our first-person experiences are not like the rest of the world. And our mind is about so many different things, from imaginary dragons to what is going on with different people. Finally, we are subject to the laws of logic, for even if one decided to believe truth did not exist, they would subconsciously believe that was true, and would be assuming all the laws of logic presented above.

"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." (1)

Exactly! Science discovers material necessities. Literally one of the steps of the scientific method is to "make an observation." They show what matter will do, behaving according to the laws of physics and chemistry. This is far from an immaterial consciousness subject to the laws of logic. (The connection must be supernatural because the brain affects what it cannot touch. In order to break something, matter must apply pressure to a physical object. With building any reality it only has the furniture to put materials together [possibly making literal furniture].)

Recently I was reminded of the existence of dark matter and dark gravity. Scientists know they exist because of the observed effects, but do not really understand what is going on due to lack of information. So perhaps I shouldn't assume nature could not conjure up consciousness?

But that doesn't solve the basic principle of the supernatural connection between material and immaterial. Also, immediate biology on Earth is not comparable to mysterious forces outside of planets in the far reaches of space! The consciousness argument goes by what we do know, and is made stronger than arguments from nature because it rests on a simple matter of principle.

Arthur Peacocke, a physicalist I found cited by J.P. Moreland and Gary Habermas, explained:

"I find it very hard to see why that functional property [consciousness] coded in a certain complex physical structure requires a new entity to be invoked, of an entirely different kind, to appear on the scene to ensure its emergence. How could something substantial, some substance or some other entity different in kind from that which has been evolved so far, suddenly come in to the evolutionary, temporal sequence?" (2)

Can determinism be true?

A couple of years or so, in youth group, I was shown a clip of late Ravi Zacharias proving that people have free will. You can see it on Youtube, and it goes from 0:47-7:05. When he claimed that determinism is violated because a person's beliefs come about by a non-reasoning process, I thought, "But what if it determines the truth by chance?" On the way down the stairs a leader asked me what I thought (I was known as the only one really interested in apologetics), and I told him I found it more convincing to just point out it is impossible to get consciousness and rationality from materials. 

My original post explained that and how it is implausible non-reasoning processes would yield any right answers. Therefore, it shouldn't be believed even if the other two principles didn't apply. But now I realize all three points are in the theist's response to determinism! Of course that is the best choice, because it wouldn't suffice to not zone in on where truth could be justified to exist in the first place. Truth cannot be identified with physical processes, and there's no grounds for thinking any thoughts were true. Therefore the person himself, and especially no one else, should believe their claim to be really, objectively true, meaning it is true for everyone no matter what they believe.

J. R. Lucas wrote:

"If what [a determinist] says is true, he says it merely as the result of his hereditary and environment, and of nothing else. He does not hold his determinist views because they are true, but because he has such-and-such stimuli; that is, not because the structure of the universe is such-and-such but only because the configuration of only part of the universe, together with the structure of the determinist's brain, is such as to produce that result. ...

"Determinism, therefore, cannot be true, because if it was, we should not take the determinists' arguments as being really arguments, but as being only conditioned reflexes. Their statements should not be regarded as really claiming to be true, but only as seeking to cause us to respond in some way desired by them." (3)

Elsewhere I gave my most descriptive argument for atheism denying free will(4). Suffice it here to say that if physicalism is true, there was no Force with free will (such a Cause would have to come from outside the universe) because every existence is just the laws of physics and chemistry causing another event. If only materials exist, we think things only because matter forced us to. 

So how are we supposed to make sense out of the charge, "We are creatures of matter. And we should learn to live with that fact." (5) I have heard a couple of times that while we don't have free will, we think we do, and so can act as if that is true. Why not reap the benefits of being a truly autonomous person, freely willing to care for others, even though we only feel that to be true? 

My response is that question answers itself.

Now I should prove that we can know determinism is self-refuting, because we can know truth. My definition of truth, formed two school years ago, is "a known absolute existence which correctly corresponds to everything, which all human minds are subject to." This is built on it's self-verification properties. They are shown to exist because denying them is self-defeating; hence it is the opposite of self-defeating. 

Is someone really convinced that they know no truth, and so that is true? Truth is absolute, because to say truth is an opinion denies the basic, most fundamental fact that it cannot be true for truth not to really exist. Truth applies to all of reality because to deny any real truth about X, which in this case could be anything a human can think of, is to say it is true there is no truth about X. Finally, human minds being subject to truth was explained above.

Two miscellaneous objections

The matter of conscious robots, who think just like us, was brought up to me by bumping into them in books and having some friends who are the very-intelligent-computer-programming type. It particularly perturbs me because I hardly know anything about that at all. Can AI, or has AI, been able to get a conscious mind just like ours?

But the response is easy. No one invented fire, they only discovered it. That is to say, the laws of the universe are only used by humans and not created by them. So even if we could somehow tell, by observing the effects and determining a conscious self is the only reasonable explanation, conscious robots just multiply the problem for atheism. An immaterial Spirit creating no thing cannot be observed.

Another intriguing question is whether or not minds could evolve. At school, DNA's ability to store information was once mentioned as a response to the consciousness argument. 

Again, everything about DNA is either physical or not. It seems to me that DNA's ability to code for our bodies involves the immaterial. Information being stored in, or supposedly being the same, as simple nuclear base pairings appears to parallel the mind-brain problem.

Antony Flew, a former famous atheist who became a believer in God, pointed out philosophizing about "How did life go live?" is different than biology. "The philosophical question that has not been answered in origin-of-life studies is this: How can a universe of mindless matter produce beings with intrinsic ends, self-replication capabilities, and 'coded chemistry?'" Flew's next sentence sums up my argument for God causing the mind so beautifully: "Here we are not dealing with biology, but an entirely different category of problem." (6)

Then is the fallacy of applying a physical process to what does not physically exist. Immaterials cannot evolve! You cannot stack what takes up no space on top of each other! They are not there to manipulate. The supernatural connection between mind and brain is not identification, and so even advancing the physical side cannot affect what isn't physically present.

Finally, a common charge against evolution is irreducible complexity. (Micheal Behe's monumental work on the subject is presented in the "Are Humans Animals?" post cited at the top.) In order for an irreducible complex structure to work, all parts must be present, or nothing can happen. Consider changing from programming for a foot to realizing truth must exist because it cannot be true for truth to not exist(7). How could this jump be made? They aren't like each other at all. Truth cannot be divided into partially true parts. The law of noncontradiction either exists or it doesn't. 

The end?

In my view, determinism could only be true if God, an intelligent consciousness, programmed us to have right answers. Of course, once we know He exists, the question is if God verified any religion that demands He made us free. Moreover the burden of proof is on the side of determinism, because how can matter determine what it cannot cause or touch, and/or why would God make us feel like we are free but really aren't? 

A common objection against miracles is that they are always the most implausible event. But upon concluding a giant blog project on the resurrection, I pointed out how consciousness actually makes Jesus's miracles more likely(8). The Bible tells us we were made "in the image of God," (Genesis 1:27; James 3:9)(9). God is a supernatural absolute intelligent Spirit, distinguishable from the natural world (John 1:1; 4:24; 14:6).

Science in principle cannot, and so never ever will, find an explanation for why we seem to be made in the image of God. ...and so we are.

Citations/notes:

1. Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2004), 284, emphasis original.

2. Arthur Peacocke and Grant Gillet, eds., Persons and Personality (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), p. 55, emphasis mine. Cited in Gary R. Habermas and J.P. Moreland, Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality (Wipf and Stock: Eugene, OR. 1998), 91.

3. J. R. Lucas, Freedom of the Will (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970), pp. 114-115, emphasis original. Cited in Habermas and Moreland, Beyond Death, 62-63.

4. https://onechristianthought.blogspot.com/2020/10/where-does-jesus-get-his-authority.html

5. Paul Churchland, Matter and Consciousness (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984), 21. Cited in Habermas and Moreland, Beyond Death, 90; cf. J.P. Moreland and Kai Nielsen, Does God Exist? The Debate Between Theists and Atheists (Prometheus Books: 1993), 238.

6. Antony Flew and Roy Abraham Varghese, There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind (Harperone: 2007), 124, emphasis mine.

7. Sorry to say that so much, but I needed the point right there, and can't really shorten that up anyway to fully explain it. Also, what other word would work as well as "truth" and "true"?

8. https://onechristianthought.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-resurrection-of-jesus-reflecting-on.html For citations of three robust historical arguments for Christianity, see the suggested reading at the bottom of this post

9. I remember learning somewhere, I think maybe both in church and independent reading, that not all scholars are unified in complete agreement about what it means to be made in God's image. What I do know is that being an intelligent spirit must be the foundation. As cited in the above text, right after this noted sentence, God as a Spirit is distinguishable from matter. Then, if being made in God's image entails (as Genesis suggests) that we are supposed to work hard, we first must recognize it is true that God created us to be that way.