Prior To The Pascal Interlude of the previous two articles, this segment of the Hard Questions series has been a summary of classical proofs of the existence of God. We had two articles each on the teleological argument (design) and two more on the cosmological argument (first cause). We will skip a third traditional argument, and move on to two somewhat less forceful but still useful considerations. They are the nöological argument, or argument from the presence of mental events, and the axiological argument, which has its basis in the fact that human societies have a general form of moral awareness. The essential issue in both is that we are now considering non-physical aspects of the universe.
The teleological argument and cosmological arguments derive from scientific evidence. The former relies on the specific and complex nature of the universe that indicates the necessity of an intelligent force, or designer/ creator, and the latter goes a much simpler route by showing that the existence of any matter or energy whatsoever still requires an ultimate explanation and source of origin outside the physical realm. Both of these arguments are quite sound and have withstood the flow of changing scientific paradigms over many centuries. In fact, they are stronger than ever, given our current understanding of the universe, with a known point of origin, law of entropy, and startlingly precise “adjustment” of dozens of physical parameters necessary for life. Never has the evidence for God enjoyed such ease of access for any honest and willing soul. While we can never, as limited humans, prove such matters with absolute certainty, we can say that the evidence we do have points very strongly to the existence of God; therefore, the position of theism is far more tenable than atheism.
I will not develop the arguments from consciousness and morality as forms of proof or evidence in the same manner as the previous two arguments. Instead, I will describe what they’re about and how they add to a conviction that we already have about the reality of God. They do add further weight to the basic principles already invoked by the other two, but their main use is to advance our thinking from the somewhat sterile and deistic notion of God as “first force, creator/designer” to a personal God with whom our lives engage. They advance our overall apologetic by helping to clarify the nature of the God whose existence we are demonstrating. In other words, if the teleological and cosmological arguments at least brought us to a deist conception of God, do we now have further arguments to advance us to evidence for a personal God of traditional theism?
Our Concept of God, from Force to Person
Shortly I will define three levels of the concept of consciousness. For now, we need only the basic idea of consciousness: it refers to mind and thought. We are now dealing with non-physical evidences for God, and that leads us to a fuller concept of God than the God manifested by an ordered, physical universe.
By entering mind and morality into the picture, we are developing the notion that the God of the physical creation is not a “force that” but a “God who,” a God who has the aspect of personhood. We are now demonstrating a God who not only creates, but also interacts with beings of that creation in a personal way. Such a God, having the quality of personhood, has also a specific character and interacts with humans according to that character. Hence, we ask the next question, “What is the nature of our interaction with the personal creator God?” This question in turn leads us into the category of Hard Questions that follows next in our overall plan, that is, “Why do we have a restricted community that denies association with others who recognize a personal creator God, but see the nature of that interaction differently?”
The complete line of thought runs like this:
- The physical universe requires a transcendent, personal Creator.
- We recognize the reality of non-physical entities such as purpose, thought, and abstract ideas (e.g., love, mercy) in our otherwise physical universe.2
- If God is not bound by the order of the physical universe, then God is on the order of a realized entity, that is, mind.
- If a mind, then God has the quality of personhood.
- Personhood implies and necessitates a specific nature and character of that person.
- Any interaction with a specific character is therefore also specified.
- Although the being of God is singular and specified, people have vastly varying conceptions about the nature and identity of God.
- People worship and follow religious practices in accord with their view of the nature and identity of God, forming groups to collectively embrace their religious values.
Thus, the axiological and nöological arguments bring us to the cusp of the issue of exclusivity, a stumbling block to many believers. Another writer has recently addressed this issue in the Tidings, and we will also pursue this area more fully later this year, God willing. The outline above will obviously require additional documentation and argumentation before it will suffice as the basis of forming an exclusive community. At this point, I am only showing the inherent connection between proofs of the existence of God in general and arguments for a specific relationship to that God.
The essential feature of the above is that God is more than a creative force that explains the existence and order of the universe, but God is a personal being who explains the presence of human persons who have a consciousness sufficient to interact with God in a way no other created entity can. Animals, though living creatures, are not persons, and abstract ideas such as love or beauty, although godly, are not persons. Only humans have the unique combination of possessing both a living, physical being and also a level of consciousness sufficient to manipulate abstract ideas such as faith, love, forgiveness, humility, and the other values prerequisite for a relationship with a personal God. The nature of this relationship depends on the conception of the personal aspects of God.
How do we know if the particular interaction that we pursue with God is in accord with the character of God? This is the ultimate quest of religion, and future articles propose to discuss various dimensions of this question.
Three Levels of Consciousness
Consciousness can refer to various levels, or aspects, of mental process. We will consider three of these.
- Firstly we start with the most basic, which includes anything we would call a thought: a memory, belief, analysis, impression, association, curiosity, and so on. Although it is sometimes unclear just how much human consciousness differs from other animals, that is not the issue here; we are only interested in the existence of thought. A thought is not an abstract idea, like the disconnected concept of beauty. A thought is not a physical entity, yet it is real in that it has causative powers. A person having a thought of beauty can also have an associated emotion, such as desire or pleasure. Emotions, in turn, can have a physiological manifestation, especially negative emotions, which can have profound negative results. If Romeo thinks that Juliet has taken poison (even if she hasn’t), he might feel so bad as to do something untoward to himself.
- The second level of consciousness refers to the uniquely human aspect we call self-consciousness, or awareness of self. We speak here of a larger notion than the self-consciousness that sometimes leads to embarrassment. Being conscious of one’s own person hood means that we can place ourselves in the context of history (how others at different times faced different situations of life), society (how our actions affect others, how other people might think about the same situation and decide differently), geography (an idea of global life), cosmology (where we fit in the universe), life-span (we know that we have an end coming), and biology (that we are fundamentally animal structures overlaid with higher cognitive capacities). Each of these preceding awareness’s contributes to our overall self-awareness, which in turn allows us to have relationships with God and others, and to plan our life’s activities and goals.
We are not only aware of our person hood, we are aware of our awareness. To possess self-awareness, or consciousness at this second level, spells the difference between an animal and a person. I think we are quite safe in saying that, although some animals have some basic aspects of thought, they lack any of the awareness capacities detailed in the paragraph above. This also gives us a good working definition of a person: a living being who has the mental capabilities to place his or her life in context. It gives us the opportunity for a level of meaningful life not available to other creatures. The types of thoughts that occupy the second level of consciousness have an evaluative quality that can discern between that which is animal, native, and selfish versus that which is planned, intentional, and directed towards relationship-building and serving. God, of course, has the capacities of person hood to the maximal degree.
- Our third level of consciousness is that of morality, or moral consciousness. Here we overlay the second level with yet another evaluative mantle. At this level, thoughts and actions answer to more than utility or survival value; they also now answer to an inherent “goodness” or “badness.” At this level, we find consciousness manifested as conscience. We are now clearly beyond the conscious capacities of non-human animals. It is here that the axiological and nöological arguments join.3 Morality here does not refer to any ethical system in particular, but only the realization of the moral dimension, morality for the sake of morality. Here again, unlike the animal world, we have an overlay on what we do: an act can reveal a value behind it. Take, for example, giving to others in need. This would be considered not just an activity that benefits another, but also one that has an overlay of “good.”
When activities, and even thoughts (e.g., envy), have a moral dimension to them, we have encountered this third layer of consciousness. Here we are not only conscious of our doings in a social context at a utilitarian level, but also our doings as they relate to values. Regardless of what the specific acts might be (e.g., vengeance is wrong per Biblical morality, yet highly valued as honorable in some societies) we are not here proposing to argue for the morality of any given act or thought, but only to state that the existence of the moral dimension in any form indicates a yet higher level of consciousness than either a simple thought itself (the first level of consciousness) or the awareness that we have consciousness (the second level). At each level we have a higher organization of thought process: thought itself, followed by awareness of the thought process, followed by moral valuation. Needless to say, moral values are quite real, quite abstract, and, like other thoughts, nonphysical. They are mental constructs.
How Does Mind Differ from Brain?
The salient point of the nöological argument is that mind (consciousness in general) differs greatly, perhaps infinitely, from any physical entity. To illustrate the difference between mind and brain, we only need to consider the most basic meaning of consciousness, which signifies anything in the realm of thought.
A brain is physical; that is, it is made of matter; it has mass, takes up space, and has other physical and biological properties. A human brain has several distinct areas; it is really a collection of several functional parts that work closely together. Like other organs of the body, it is made up of cells and tissues. A brain is part of the realm of life, so already we know that it is very special in the universe. However, we can say more; we can easily argue that a human brain is the most complex and amazing structure in all of the universe. At the very least, we can safely say that the brain has one unique capability in all of nature: it can produce thought. However, many parts of the brain have nothing to do with producing thought, although they might react to thought. Areas in the brain stem, cerebellum, and mid-brain control various body functions such as blood pressure, temperature, sleep, appetite, reflexes, and balance. Our concern will be with the part of the brain known as the cortex, which is responsible for thought, memory, personality, and emotions. These comprise what we call mind, which is not physical.
Mind has no mass; it is not visible. We cannot see mind on an MRI or PET scan. We can see brain structures and even brain activity, but we cannot see a mind or thought. When we have a thought, we have a non-physical image in our head, what we sometimes call “our mind’s eye.” The image is real in that it exists, but it has no physical properties; it’s just a mental image.
Thoughts occupy no space and they have no mass, texture, color, or taste. Nonetheless, they exist and possess causative powers that interact with the physical brain. Mind is the collection of all the thoughts, memory, emotions, values, and personality characteristics that constitute a person. Love, fear, joy, anxiety, hope, desire, obsession, hate, jealousy, peace, contentment and other abstractions that constitute the real meaning of life all belong in the realm of mind or thought.
Let’s return to the physical brain again and set clearly the nexus of the problem of consciousness. The human brain has about as many neurons as stars in the Milky Way, about 100 billion, forming trillions of interconnections. Brains function electrochemically; a brain relies on electrical signals that release certain molecules (neurotransmitters) at the end of the axon of each cell to communicate with the dendrite of another brain cell. But chemicals and electrical impulses (which themselves result from ionic differentials and thus are also chemical at their origin) are all physical phenomena. They are movements of molecules and electrons.
How is it that such physical arrangements somehow transcend the physical realm and produce thought, or store memory? How is it that we can think, we can evaluate, analyze, hate, and love? How do these processes arise from electrical impulses and chemical messengers? We could liken the electrochemical function of nerve cells to other aspects of human physiology. Heartbeat regulation, digestion, respiration, filtration in the kidneys, and so on, all rely on the same sort of chemical and electrochemical processes at their most basic level, yet they produce no associated mental state. The human body has no other process that compares with this marvelous facility of thought, and we do have some remarkably complex and sophisticated physiological equipment. The brain stands alone in producing something of a different realm; it produces non-physical entities that interact with the physical parts of the body just as if they were real physical switches or controls.
This is a great mystery. But how does it lead to a belief in God?
Why is it Evidence of God?
The solution to the dilemma of how physical processes can beget nonphysical phenomena is more than just an intriguing question; it is one of those questions, like the question of the origin of life, that invites response from both scientific and theological quarters. But what’s the theological connection? Actually, there are two links to the theological world. One is that the possibility of a purely natural explanation of how physical matter can cause non-physical phenomena is extremely unlikely, perhaps, by definition, impossible. If so, then that demands a non-naturalistic explanation, and that most likely involves God.
Theists contend that no physical arrangement by itself, no matter how complex, will ever produce consciousness. Naturalistic scientists, of course, are content to keep looking for the solution, as it surely constitutes one of the great questions of science. However, if consciousness is simply not a physical property; it can only come from a non-physical source, which would seem to be God.
The second point of contact is that God is a mental being. God has all the capacities, in infinite amount, of every aspect of consciousness. God is the infinite conscious being; therefore, if humans are also conscious beings, it seems likely that God has something to do with their having such consciousness. The entity “person” exists because persons are made in the image of God, who is the perfect instantiation of personhood. Persons, real conscious entities, can only occur if made by God.6
The form of the argument is not, “we are conscious beings, therefore it is perfectly obvious that God must have made us.” However, we can consider which of two competing worldviews, naturalistic (atheistic) and theistic, offers the more likely explanation for the presence of conscious beings on earth. We will ask the question this way: “Given that we do have conscious entities in the universe, are these better explained by a theistic or an atheistic worldview?”
Given atheism, the universe can’t even get started. Even allowing the existence of matter as a given, but still with no direction whatsoever, is it likely to develop thinking life? Is it admissible to allow physical constituents, with no guiding or empowering force, to end up with mind, when even the physical basis of mind, brain, seems complex beyond naturalistic explanation? We can see the hurdles are many, the alleged result improbable to the nth degree, and the decision to adopt naturalism as an explanation of our universe exceptionally unreasonable.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One