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Mind, Brain, Monism, Dualism
and The Existence of God
"Cosmological Arguments" in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, Charles Taliaferro and Paul J. Griffiths, eds. (Wiley-Blackwell: 2003), p. 252.
On the other side, the hypothesis of divine creation is very unlikely. Although if there were a god with the traditional attributes and powers, he would be able and perhaps willing to create such a universe as this, we have to weigh in the scales the likelihood or unlikelihood that there is a god with these attributes and powers. And the key power ... is that of fulfilling intentions directly, without any physical or causal mediation, without materials or instruments. There is nothing in our background knowledge that makes it comprehensible, let alone likely, that anything should have such a power. All our knowledge of intention-fulfillment is of embodied intentions being fulfilled indirectly by way of bodily changes and movements which are causally related to the intended result, and where the ability thus to fulfill intentions itself has a causal history, either of evolutionary development or of learning or of both. Only by ignoring such key features do we get an analogue of the supposed divine action.
"The Argument from Reason" in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland, eds. (Wiley-Blackwell: 2009), p. 350.
Defenders of materialism usually use three types of arguments to criticize the family of arguments I presented earlier. They use Error replies if they think the item that the antimaterialist is setting up for explanation can be denied. They use Reconciliation objections if they suppose that the item in question can be fitted within a materialist ontology. Moreover, they also use Inadequacy objection to argue that whatever difficulties there may be in explaining the matter in materialist terms, it does not get us any better if we accept some mentalistic worldview such as theism. We can see this typology at work in responses to the argument from objective moral values. Materialist critics of the moral argument can argue that there is really no objective morality, they can say objective morality is compatible with materialism, or they can use arguments such as the Euthyphro dilemma to argue that whatever we cannot explain about morality in materialist terms cannot better be explained by appealing to nonmaterial entities such as God.
J.P. Moreland (Routledge: Jun 24, 2008), 242 pages.
In Consciousness and the Existence of God, J.P. Moreland
argues that the existence of finite, irreducible consciousness (or its
regular, law-like correlation with physical states) provides evidence
for the existence of God. Moreover, he analyzes and criticizes the top
representative of rival approaches to explaining the origin of
consciousness, including John Searle's contingent correlation, Timothy
O’Connor's emergent necessitation, Colin McGinn's mysterian
"‘naturalism," David Skrbina's panpsychism and Philip Clayton's
pluralistic emergentist monism. Moreland concludes that these
approaches should be rejected in favor of what he calls "‘the Argument
from Consciousness." ~ Product Description
J.P. Moreland, on his blog at Amazon.com (June 12, 2008).
Recently, I've been doing a lot of thinking about consciousness and how it might contribute to evidence for the existence of God in light of metaphysical naturalism's failure to provide a helpful explanation. Some of my thinking has culminated in the recently released Consciousness and the Existence of God (Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion) (Routledge, 2008). Consciousness is among the most mystifying features of the cosmos. Geoffrey Madell opines that "the emergence of consciousness, then is a
mystery, and one to which materialism signally fails to provide an
answer."i
Naturalist Colin McGinn claims that its arrival borders on sheer magic
because there seems to be no naturalistic explanation for it: "How can
mere matter originate consciousness? How did evolution convert the
water of biological tissue into the wine of consciousness?
Consciousness seems like a radical novelty in the universe, not
prefigured by the after-effects of the Big Bang; so how did it contrive
to spring into being from what preceded it?"ii Finally,
naturalist William Lyons argues that "[physicalism] seem[s] to be in
tune with the scientific materialism of the twentieth century because
it [is] a harmonic of the general theme that all there is in the
universe is matter and energy and motion and that humans are a product
of the evolution of species just as much as buffaloes and beavers are.
Evolution is a seamless garment with no holes wherein souls might be
inserted from above."iii
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779), Part IV.
If reason (I mean abstract reason, derived from inquiries a priori) be not alike mute with regard to all questions concerning cause and effect, this sentence at least it will venture to pronounce, That a mental world, or universe of ideas, requires a cause as much, as does a material world, or universe of objects; and, if similar in its arrangement, must require a similar cause. For what is there in this subject, which should occasion a different conclusion or inference? In an abstract view, they are entirely alike; and no difficulty attends the one supposition, which is not common to both of them.