Cogito ergo sum (“I think therefore I am”) — René Descartes

There’s an almost fretful anxiety in the voices and writings of materialists when they discuss consciousness. Inevitably, they become frustrated and angered when theists point out science’s inability to explain it. For rationalists, they are certainly more often given to emotionalism.

To the atheist, since consciousness can’t be observed, measured or explained, it must therefore not be real. This is preposterous. The fact that I’m writing this, and readers are reading it, means consciousness exists.

Despite the laws of physics and the claims of “rationalists” who insist that only things that can be explained by science actually exist, consciousness actually exists despite how obvious it is. But consciousness does, in fact, exist. It’s the reason you’re able to recognize these dots, squibbles and squiggles that make up the English alphabet and allow you to read this article.

In the case of consciousness, the soul or God’s existence, science can’t offer a great deal to understanding it. Regardless, my own consciousness is as obvious to me as is the consciousness of all those beings whom I encounter in my life. If consciousness isn’t accepted a priori, then exactly with what are my opponents disagreeing with me? It’s impossible for a being to contradict me without resources to his consciousness.

As the Italian solid-state physicist, Marco Biagini, explained in a recent interview, “Consciousness is neither a property of matter, nor of any physical, chemical or biological process.” We don’t need science to prove the existence of the soul. Rather, it’s our ability to reason which finds in science the confirmation of the transcendent nature of consciousness to matter and its processes.

In other words, our reason analyzes both the scientific theories and the observable phenomena — in this case, consciousness — and rationally understands that physics can’t offer us an explanation for it. Despite their inability to accept or explain the qualia, our existence as conscious persons flies in the face of their ignorance. The fact that we’re discussing this topic proves it exists and proves that science is severally limited in explaining something as obvious as consciousness. Consciousness exists, and there is no compelling (let alone proven) scientific explanation for it.

 

The Nature of Consciousness and the Soul

Science can’t account for the existence of our self-evident consciousness without admitting the existence in us of an immaterial (i.e., non-physical) soul — our very identify as a being with consciousness.

The immutable laws of science are useful for examining natural phenomena (i.e., physical, chemical and biological data) but consciousness isn’t quantifiable. It has no dissectible parts, and if there is a gene responsible for it, the Human Genome Project has yet to identify it. We must be prepared to accept that there is no physical cause for the development of human consciousness. Every other non-human creature since the Dawn of Time has subsisted quite well without having been unduly burdened and constrained due to it. It doesn’t fit the materialistic model. Nor can evolution explain it. Since evolution didn’t provide us with consciousness, we must look elsewhere for its origin. As nothing natural produced our consciousness, we must look outside of nature, something supernatural, for answers. Thus, our consciousness is the most direct proof of the existence of our soul and of God, the Creator of our soul, our inner self.

It’s been argued that our consciousness is merely an illusion foisted on us by the chemicals in our brains. There are many flaws with this pseudologic and pseudoscience:

How do the proponents of this idea know consciousness is an illusion? As a stage magician, I know my tricks and those of my fellow conjurors are illusions because a trick underlies what appears to be reality. What is the “trick” that produces or simulates consciousness? Scientists haven’t uncovered this great secret, so I wonder why it is that they insist otherwise pretending they’ve uncovered an indisputable fact. Perhaps this is a dogmatic tenet of their faith in scientism, without which their religion would disintegrate. 

Though the same argument has been used against Christians, it is misapplied. Atheist scientismists insist that they only believe in things that can be proven. But, as pointed out already, consciousness has yet to be explained and proved to be a biological/chemical function. Just because an atheist were to propose a materialist theory to explain such a phenomena, that means nothing unless that theory is proven. Logicians refer to this faulty thinking as the “Fallacy of Theory/Reality Shift.”

If consciousness is a genetic or chemical expression, why haven’t scientists located it on human genome?

Evolution works on the same principles as does economics. Tigers, for example, have developed a hunting strategy that allows them to save their energy by lying in wait allowing their prey to stumble upon them. The problem with this strategy is that, should a prey animal not stumble by, the tiger in question has wasted a great deal of energy for no gain whatsoever. Similarly, why would nature impose such an expensive bit of hardware — the atheistic conception of the universe is materialist — as consciousness without a better cost-benefit analysis. Consciousness serves no evolutionary function. It would have been better had nature not provided us with one. The same goes for the qualia we experience, including guilt, moral sense and existential angst, among others.

Soviet physicist Andrei Linde, while working on issues resulting from his mathematical models of the Big Bang, became interested in the mystery of consciousness and speculated that, like space, time and quantum fields, consciousness may be a fundamental component of the universe. Linde proposes that a complete description of reality can’t be gotten to without an integrated whole of all of those components which, he claims, emerged simultaneously. Thus, with the appearance of man, the universe was able to observe itself. Without a sentient mind observing the universe, the universe would be dead.

This can hardly be considered a “cosmic coincidence.”