Anthropocentric Arguments

A Mystery Never Explained

Recently I heard a philosopher of science refer to man’s possession of consciousness as a mystery defying natural explanation. He claimed that our receipt of impressions and our exercise of thought are simply facts to be accepted, and he hinted that these are probably unexplainable because reality is, after all, only a dream, and therefore it is impossible to know anything about the world beyond the dreamer’s mind.

Yet to prove that we cannot afford to ignore the mystery of consciousness is not difficult. Modern intellectuals have hoisted high a picture of man that all who seek membership in their club must endorse as a true rendering. The picture shows him as a slight evolutionary advance beyond mere apes, and therefore with mental faculties that an ape could share if his cortical programming received a little boost. Indeed, the same club that dominates higher education was at one time confident that computers would, as they became larger and more complex, eventually join the animals and mankind in their possession of conscious minds capable of intelligent dialogue.

Therefore, to combat this antireligious orthodoxy that is dangerously intolerant of contrary beliefs, and to shine light on the path to real truth, we must carefully consider whether consciousness could be the ultimate achievement of merely biological brains. If we do, we discover that the bankruptcy of Darwinism and of naturalism in general is nowhere more evident than in their inability to explain consciousness. Indeed, to explain it without resorting to a Creator who Himself possesses consciousness is impossible.

Definition

What is consciousness? In simplest terms, it is an ongoing sense of self-existence, as well as an awareness of self’s moment-by-moment experience. This can be either of two kinds: internal or external. To distinguish between them is evidently a task that normally can be done automatically, without any process of learning, by a conscious being who is wide awake. He can recognize whether impressions are coming from outside his body or from inside. The former are conveyed by the five senses. The latter enter awareness without going through any sensory channel, and they take various forms.

1. A human being and probably many animals as well are capable of recalling past impressions. The common term for impressions that come more than once to the awareness of a conscious being is memory.
2. Man and all higher animals are conscious of internal sensations that we call emotions.
3. A peculiar form of experience that man evidently shares with many higher animals is dreaming. For man, impressions masquerading as reality can even take the form of hallucination.
4. Human beings are unique in their awareness of internal sensations that we may describe as present or remembered thought in the form of abstract reasoning, often employing language.

All these forms of experience—memory, emotion, dreaming, thought—can be regarded as activities of the mind.

Origin

At issue between Christians and atheists is the question, "What is the origin of consciousness?" There are only two possible answers. Either it arose by chance in the course of evolution, or it was bestowed on living things by a Creator. The first explanation assumes that consciousness can be manufactured by ingeniously combining material particles and programming their activity.

But how does the brain differ in its material composition from something nonliving? All things in our world are made of atoms mostly in combination with other atoms, all bathed to a greater or lesser extent by a sea of radiant energy. This general description of physical reality fits brains as well as mud and stars and mountains. Is the experience of an atom in one location fundamentally different from the experience of an atom somewhere else? Even to speak of an atom’s experience is, of course, silly—yet not if evolutionists are right, for it is their belief that at some point in evolution a mass of atoms began to have experience. They began to be aware of their collective existence separate from other masses of atoms. But how was this transition to consciousness possible? Reality had not fundamentally changed for each individual atom. Each still floated in the midst of other atoms and endured the usual tugs and pushes. Yet evolution demands that we make the story even more incredible. Masses of atoms in living tissue achieved self-awareness not as individuals, but as one united being.

The difficulties in this scenario are as follows. An atom inside a living thing does not fundamentally differ from every other atom in the world. Since nonliving things give no sign whatever of possessing consciousness, we may assume that they are unconscious. A reasonable inference is that their constituent atoms, as well as atoms in general, are also unconscious. We are therefore justified in affirming two conclusions.

1. The consciousness possessed by higher animals and man could not have arisen by merging the consciousness of individual atoms.
2. Nor can consciousness reside in a mass of tissue, for it consists of nothing but atoms lacking the property of consciousness.

Naturalists dodge this argument by supposing that a mass of tissue similar in construction to a computer might be programmed not only to process data, but even to be aware of what it is doing. Really? Merely by some fancy traffic of electrical impulses it is possible to produce consciousness? If that is true, then maybe another way to produce it would be to employ motor transport in an enormous, planet-sized machine of highways and garages. But the truth is this. Computers are essentially no more than an assemblage of circuit boards. None of the small components of a computer is capable of consciousness. Therefore, the machine cannot become aware of itself through merger of self-awareness in individual components. Nor can consciousness be first attained by the machine operating as a whole if it contains nothing but mindless circuit boards.

All this is so obvious that it seems pointless even to express. Yet modern man is so prone to evolutionary fantasy that even the obvious must be shouted from the housetops.

Yet evolutionists reply that the ongoing operation of senses attuned to both external and internal sources of data—at least in the higher animals—amounts to consciousness. They insist that consciousness fitting this description began to evolve in the nervous tissue of lower animals. Presumably,the struggle for survival produced an increasing ability to receive and process input both from the surrounding world and from self-monitoring systems within the body—an ability that grew until eventually it rose to the level of actual self-awareness in the form of consciousness. Yes, consciousness certainly promotes survival. But where exactly is the seat of consciousness within the nervous tissue of primordial animals or within the brain of higher animals? Again, evolutionary theory breaks down because of its failure to admit that no atom or sea of atoms, however complex, is capable of self-awareness. Nor can any mere flow of nervous impulses between brain cells be mindful of itself. Why not? For two reasons.

1. Self is a rudimentary idea. Conscious beings actually have a concept of self. A concept is recognition of an essential sameness between things perceived at different times. Besides self, higher animals also know many other concepts. A dog recognizes his master as his master, his dish of food as a dish of food, etc. Moreover, by his automatic reaction to many familiar things, he is aware of a desire to respond in a certain way, whether to attack in rage or to flee in fear or to approach in fondness or simply to rest in contentment. In other words, his conscious experience includes many emotions. But his capacity for abstract thought is insufficient to give names to the concepts he knows, although he can learn some names used by people. Higher apes can, doubtless by the process known as conditioning, learn to recognize dozens of names and even to express some of them in sign language. A mere computer, however (and evolutionists view the brain as only a supercomplex computer), merely processes internal and external data. It might be programmed to channel all data concerning food into the same memory bank, but the machine itself would lack any "idea" of food. Likewise it lacks any idea of self.
2. An idea encoded in physical phenomena is meaningless without an interpreter. The interconnected molecules forming a brain are no smarter than the letters on a billboard. The paint forming the words is wholly ignorant of their meaning. The brain is a similar case. However the concept of self is written on it, the inscription is meaningless to the mass of neurons. They are wholly blind to the significance of what they are doing. In their management of data, they cannot leap above rigid programming to any form of intelligence, and no amount of sophisticated engineering can empower them to interpret the signals they are storing or transmitting. Hence, there must be more to man and the higher animals than mere flesh and bone. Their minds must include some interpreter, some reader, of encoded ideas.

In nature, we therefore find a divide between conscious and unconscious forms of life that evolution could never have bridged. There is a second divide as well—between animals and man.

The basic difference between them is that although both can form ideas, only man is capable of relational thought. This has two basic forms: analysis and narration. Analysis requires the ability to compare things in terms of their properties and to classify them accordingly, whereas narration requires the ability to describe what is happening in terms of causes and effects.¹ The main tool of relational thought is language. No mere animal can even approach man’s ability to exercise these higher faculties of a mind. Man’s intellect is God’s gift to man so that he can emulate the first Creator by creating new things that are also good things. He wanted man to be both an intelligent being and a moral being.

Attempts by evolutionists to coax apes into exercising relational thought have been a woeful failure. It is a hopeless enterprise because just as machines and biological brains are incapable of conscious ideas, so apes and higher primates are incapable of reasoning. We see therefore that there are three levels of being in God’s creation. At the lowest level are all material objects, plant life, unicellular organisms, and primitive animal life. At the next level is more complex animal life. At the highest level is man.

What accounts for the superiority of man to mere animals and of animals to everything else? We find the answer in the Bible. The mental capabilities shared by man and higher animals may be attributed to their common possession of a soul. But the power to think in the sense of engaging in the creation and evaluation of ideas belongs to man alone. Why? Because he alone has a spirit.

Three Components of Human Nature

Paul’s statement, "For in him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28), is not speaking generally about all things in our universe, but particularly about living things. In man’s attempt to fit living things into a convenient scheme of classification, he has traditionally divided them into two or three kinds: the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, and (if he is unwilling to view man as an animal) the human race. This threefold division best understands what differences and similarities are in fact fundamental.

The plant kingdom includes all organisms that grow and reproduce, yet lack any feature that cannot be explained as merely matter in motion. All of the complex biochemistry observable in plants complies with the basic laws of physical science. No outcome defies exact prediction based on these laws. Not only plants, but also unicellular organisms and perhaps many simple multicellular organisms generally viewed as belonging to the animal kingdom also operate in a mechanical way. In their origin and operation, we see no evidence of any nonmaterial component.

But all higher animals are different. Unlike lower animals, they are truly alive in the sense intended by Paul when he says, "We live." They are true possessors of life because in addition to a physical body, they also possess a nonphysical soul. A soul is not the exclusive property of man. When speaking of animals, Scripture acknowledges that they also possess a nephesh, translated "creature" in the accounts of creation (Gen. 1:21, 24; 2:19) and the Flood (Gen. 9:10, 12, 15, 16)² but generally translated "soul" (Gen. 2:7; Ps. 16:10; 34:2; Isa. 61:10; and many others).³

The wisdom in placing people in their own kingdom of living things becomes obvious when we recognize that they represent a still higher order of complexity. Besides a body and soul, they also have a spirit.

And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Thessalonians 5:23

For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Hebrews 4:12

What precisely are the distinct manifestations of body, soul, and spirit? A body is the physical organism possessed by higher creatures. Earlier, we pointed out that consciousness based on an awareness of self arises from possession of a soul. One of the soul’s most prominent features is emotion, understood as self’s awareness of its own desires based on largely automatic responses to the world around it. In the Bible, love is attributed to the soul, never to the body or the spirit. No mention of the last two appears in Jesus’ summary of the law, for example, where it would be natural to add them if they were capable of love.

And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.

Luke 10:27

When referring to heart, strength, and mind, Jesus was teaching us what kind of feelings proceed from a proper love for God. They are deep ("all thy heart") and strong ("all they strength") as well as dominant in our thoughts ("all thy mind").

As for man’s spirit, there is good evidence that it is the seat of abstract knowledge, whether self-knowledge or knowledge in general.

For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.

1 Corinthians 2:11

Most of the desires typical of a soul, together with the feelings reinforcing them, belong to the higher animals in some measure. Every dog owner knows that his pet is capable of fear, rage, affection, territorial possessiveness, playfulness, and even sadness.

Sources of Sin

The Bible teaches that from man’s threefold nature as body, soul, and spirit arise three kinds of lust—lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life.

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

1 John 2:16

"Lust of the flesh" refers to sinful desires rooted in the biological drives of a human body. These are not the totality of sinful desires, however, for man is a composite being. All three components of man —body, soul, and spirit—carry the inherited stigma of the Fall. All three are depraved. We infer from John’s way of identifying the last two lusts that the soul is subject to wrong emotional responses to the external world, as perceived through the eyes or the other senses ("lust of the eyes"). And the spirit is subject to devilish grasping for equality with God ("pride of life").

It has often been observed that when Satan approached Jesus in the wilderness and presented Him with three sly temptations (Luke 4:1–13), he was sifting Jesus for these three kinds of lust. If He had turned stone into bread, He would have displayed lust of the flesh. If He had grasped for possession of the kingdoms brought before His sight, He would have displayed lust of the eyes. If He had sought acclaim by descending supernaturally into the Temple, He would have displayed pride of life.

It was necessary that the second Adam—the one sent into the world to offer Himself as a perfect sacrifice for sin—prove Himself free of every fault found in the first Adam. In disobeying God’s command, the first Adam and his wife yielded to the same three lusts that were missing in Jesus (Gen. 3:6). The fruit enticed Eve because it was "good for food" (it appealed to lust of the flesh), "pleasant to the eyes" (it appealed to lust of the eyes), and "to be desired to make one wise" (it appealed to pride of life).

The temptation of Jesus probed all three components of His nature: His body, His soul, and His spirit. Because it was comprehensive, the author of Hebrews was able to say that He was "in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. 4:15).

A Balanced Perspective

The amazing ability of human beings to engage in thought—to create splendid buildings and beautiful works of art, to compose grand symphonies, to write ingenious stories and essays, even to discover the laws of physics and chemistry and to probe deeply into the most profound philosophical questions—all these achievements of man display the ingenuity of his Creator. God endowed man with a mind and conscience brilliant enough to warrant the assertion of Scripture that he was made in God’s image (Gen. 1:26–27). But next to the golden tray of divine gifts also appear some dark boxes that man must refuse to open. With a capacity for abstract reasoning and moral judgment comes a capacity for evildoing. With privilege comes peril. Thus, every man must resolve in his heart that in God’s war to build a perfect everlasting kingdom, he will declare sin as his enemy and stand on God’s side.