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

In this book, “anthropic” (derived from the ancient Greek word for “man”) refers to evidence that points toward the universe’s many qualities that seem geared toward the emergence of intelligent life. While mainstream science has tended to view such evidence as only an apparent feature—more an accidental correlation than a purposeful cause—intelligent design theorists view anthropic evidence as an important indication that the universe has been deliberately fine-tuned to have these particular qualities.

Consciousness refers to the experiential and phenomenological awareness that characterizes human life. Human consciousness—the subjective observation of events and the processing of those events in thoughts, emotions, and acts of will—is something that is difficult to explain from natural causation alone (some would say impossible). While the physical brain and the experience of consciousness are linked, the physical processes of the brain do not currently provide a sufficient explanation for the existence of consciousness. In philosophy, this difficulty is referred to as the mind/body problem or the “hard problem of consciousness.” If consciousness cannot be explained by physical processes, then this would be a powerful indicator that pure naturalism must be false. Philosophers differ on whether consciousness poses a true challenge to materialism and, if so, on what that challenge’s implications are.