Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

In case you wondered what you are buying when you buy the Darwinist worldview

Denyse O'Leary
August 4, 2011
Intelligent Design
Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

Existence: Where did my consciousness come from?

In “Where did my consciousness come from?,” (New Scientist, 20 July 2011), Anil Ananthaswamy explains:

Think for a moment about a time before you were born. Where were you? Now think ahead to a time after your death. Where will you be? The brutal answer is: nowhere. Your life is a brief foray on Earth that started one day for no reason and will inevitably end.

Usually, the Darwinist puts off telling you that, especially if he is a Christian Darwinist. How does he know it is true? Darwin told him so. And if you don’t say you believe it? Your career could be at risk.

Comments
Mr. Gibson, you said: "And the scientific evidence that brain activity is not only critical to consciousness, but in effect IS consciousness, is pretty exhaustive and compelling." It is nothing of the sort. Read Pim van Lommel's "Consciousness Beyond Life" for a scientific study that pretty thoroughly establishes that consciousness is quite independent of brain activity.Bruce David
August 4, 2011
August
08
Aug
4
04
2011
11:22 PM
11
11
22
PM
PDT
Usually, the Darwinist puts off telling you that, especially if he is a Christian Darwinist. How does he know it is true? Darwin told him so. And if you don’t say you believe it? Your career could be at risk.
Let's suppose just for a moment that consciousness (self-awareness, etc.) is what a living and active brain does for a living, while it lives. This supposition doesn't seem all that unreasonable, given that we've quite definitely traced such things to the activities of our brains. If this is an accurate way to see it, then before you were born, there was no brain to support these processes, nor is there after you die. And the scientific evidence that brain activity is not only critical to consciousness, but in effect IS consciousness, is pretty exhaustive and compelling. But of course, there might be some additional, indetectible substrate on which consciousness rests and which drives it and sustains it. And of course this additional substrate may have existed before you were born (though it left no memories for most of us), and carries on in some unresearchable way after we die. Who could say, since we have DEFINED this additional substrate as not subject to scientific test. So, as usual, we are narrowly constrained by the limitations of physical investigation. We can detect consciousness ONLY when we have a living and active brain, which gives every indication of producing it, and maybe of being REQUIRED in order to produce it. I can't quite parse what "Darwin told him so" means, in this context. I see no problem at all in believing that consciousness includes far more than brain activity. I would hope that some useful, meaningful, replicable experiments could establish this. Otherwise, consciousness for us is like obscenity for Justice Stewart - something we know is eternal, but which lies permanently beyond the competence of science to establish.David W. Gibson
August 4, 2011
August
08
Aug
4
04
2011
06:36 PM
6
06
36
PM
PDT

Leave a Reply