As philosopher J.P. Moreland explains, for consciousness to arise in the absence of God would be to get something from nothing. He argues:
"If there were no God, then the history of the entire universe, up until the appearance of living creatures, would be a history of dead matter with no consciousness. You would not have any thoughts, beliefs, feelings, sensations, free actions, choices or purposes. There would be simply one physical event after another physical event, behaving according to the laws of physics and chemistry...[h]ow, then, do you get something totally different-conscious, living, thinking, feeling, believing creatures-from materials that don't have that? That's getting something from nothing!...the idea of getting a mind to squirt into existence by starting with brute, dead, mindless matter...doesn't make sense."1
Contrast that with theism. On theism, humans are created by an infinite mind i.e. God. Therefore, it is not surprising at all to find that humans have finite, conscious minds. This is exactly what we would expect.
I think Moreland gets it right when he quotes the late Phillip Johnson:
"At the end of the day, as Phillip Johnson put it, you either have 'In the beginning were the particles,' or 'In the beginning was the Logos,' which means 'divine mind.' If you start with particles, and the history of the universe is just a story about the rearrangement of particles, you may end up with a more complicated arrangement of particles, but you're still going to have particles. You're not going to have minds or consciousness."2
Thus, I think the existence of human consciousness is very surprising given atheism, but exactly what we would expect on theism. And I am in good company, as neurophysiologist and Nobel laureate John C. Eccles explains:
"I am constrained...to believe that there is what we might call a supernatural origin of my unique self-conscious mind or my unique selfhood or soul."3
Courage and Godspeed,
Chad
Footnote:
1. Lee Strobel, Interview with J.P. Moreland in The Case for the Creator, p. 263
2. Ibid., p. 264.
3. Karl Popper and John C. Eccles, The Self and Its Brain (New York:Springer-Verlag, 1977, p. 559-560, as quoted by Lee Strobel in The Case for the Creator, p. 250.
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