The Case For a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God

Strobel interviews philosopher J. P. Moreland about human consciousness and whether materialist explanations can adequately account for the existence and nature of the human mind. Moreland distinguishes between the physical brain—the three-pound organ of neurons and synapses—and the immaterial mind, arguing that consciousness, thoughts, beliefs, desires, intentions, and subjective sensations cannot be reduced to mere neurological processes or identified with brain states. Moreland explores what philosophers call the “hard problem” of consciousness: why physical processes in the brain, which can be observed and measured, should give rise to subjective first-person experiences and self-awareness. He presents several distinctive features of consciousness that seem to require something beyond mere matter. These include the unity of consciousness (consciousness as an integrated experience rather than fragmented sensations), intentionality (the ability of thoughts to refer to things beyond themselves), qualia (subjective experiences like the redness of red or the painfulness of pain that seem irreducible to physical description), genuine libertarian free will, and the immediate first-person knowledge people have of their own mental states.

Moreland argues that if human beings are purely physical organisms without immaterial souls, then consciousness either becomes inexplicable or must be denied altogether as an