A condensed version of this article featured on the back page of the September 2023 Creation BC Quarterly Letter.

Guest author: Darryl R. Sletten

“Our consciousness is a fundamental aspect of our existence,” says philosopher David Chalmers. “There is nothing we know about more directly—but at the same time it is the most mysterious phenomenon in the universe.”¹

An animal, person or other cognitive system may be regarded as conscious in a number of different senses. For the sake of our discussion, we’ll focus on  self-consciousness—a more demanding sense might define conscious creatures as those that are not only aware but also aware that they are aware, thus treating creature consciousness as a form of self-consciousness.²

The drug LSD makes it easier for the mind to transcend mundane perceptual habits and see the world in greater detail. The work at Cornell University, whatever its other merits, leads credence to an understanding of the mind-brain relationship that goes back centuries. It was stated perhaps most clearly by Oxford University philosopher Ferdinand Schiller in 1891, when he proposed that “matter is not what produces consciousness but what limits and confines its intensity within certain limits….” This explanation admits the connection of matter and consciousness, but contends that the course of interpretation must proceed in the contrary direction. Thus it will fit the facts as supernatural with materialism rejected and thereby attain an explanation which is ultimately tenable instead of one which is ultimately absurd. It is an explanation the possibility which no evidence to favor materialism can possibly affect.³

A Bible verse that I believe may help to explain consciousness is Genesis 2:7, which states, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”  Another Bible verse to fortify God’s involvement mentioned above and may better explain consciousness is Genesis 1:26-27, which states: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.”⁴

The definition of Spirit—some explanations for spirit are: breath, pneuma, and wind; plus the spirit infuses humans with life and power to do His will. Spirit or pneuma views humans as persons who are aware of and can respond to God. It also emphasizes the capacity of human beings to be conscious of and to relate to God.⁵

Concerning a thought about whether quantum physics may somehow be connected to consciousness, Sir Roger Penrose, a Nobel Prize recipient, believes that consciousness is not computational. Further he states “our awareness is not simply a mechanistic byproduct, like something you can make a machine do.” Penrose believes the answer to consciousness may lie in a deeper knowledge of quantum mechanics.  Quantum physics describes matter as existing in waves or energy. They can also be in two places at once. While neuroscientists look directly to the physical brain to create consciousness, quantum mechanics says it may exist without the brain. Could the origin of consciousness exist before the formation of the brain? It could also then live after the death of the brain. Concerning the Double-Slit experiment, experiments have since proven quantum mechanics is connected to consciousness.⁶

Here is where “spooky at a distance,” a phrase coined by Albert Einstein, comes into play.  If you separate object A from object B by any length, even the length of the entire universe, you get the same behavior. That is, object A’s observed behavior is always instantaneously reciprocal of object B’s observed behavior. Einstein, a fully committed materialist, refused to accept this as real and went to his deathbed denying this “spooky” behavior. He postulated that there must be hidden variables when the two objects were together, so that when separated the variables would provide the information needed to tell the object how to behave. In the early 1960s physicist John Bell came up with a way to test for these hidden variables, and his test showed that these hidden variables didn’t exist. However, there were potential loopholes to this test. This led to the work of the three recent Nobel prize winners, who separately and independently through experiments spanning the next decades up through 2015, closed the potential loopholes once and for all. Einstein was overwhelmingly and indisputably proven wrong regarding ENTANGLEMENT. The 2022 physics laureate John Clauser commented, “I was very sad to see that my own experiment had proven Einstein wrong.” Quantum entanglement plays right into the hands of the creationist worldview. As quoted in Quanta magazine, “Their experiments collectively established the existence of a bizarre quantum phenomenon known as entanglement, where two widely separated particles appear to share information despite having no conceivable way of communicating.” Physicist Terence Rudolph at Imperial College London admitted to Nature magazine that entanglement “shows that in quantum mechanics at least, some things transcend space-time. In 2017, the website Big Think advanced that “the basis of the universe may not be energy or matter but information.” Information has become an enormous elephant in the room of the materialist worldview. The key takeaway in all of this is the problem of information. You cannot have information without intelligence, which is as fundamental a truth in science as there is. Information is something that does not consume space, it does not have mass, and it does not have energy. As Dr. Norbert Wiener, professor mathematics at MIT and the founder of cybernetics once said, “Information is information, not matter or energy. Information has become an enormous elephant in the room of the materialistic worldview.”⁷

The concept of quantum entanglement can be a very strong argument to use when defending a Biblical worldview, since it shouts in a loud voice the existence of God, the ultimate Information Giver who transcends matter and energy. It is abundantly clear that materialists have no answer for quantum entanglement. The headline for the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics could just have easily read “Physicists prove that the Materialist Emperor has No Clothes.”⁷

Christians are among those who believe that we are more than the stuff of our bodies, though Christians, unlike others, would be quick to add, but not less. “There is something to us and the world that goes beyond the physical because there is a non-material, eternal God behind it all.” Christians also hold that there are qualitative differences between people and algorithms, between life and non-living things like rocks and stars, between image bearers and other living creatures. Though much about sentience (with the ability to feel, think, and experience life like a human) and consciousness remains a mystery, personhood rests on the solid metaphysical ground of a personal and powerful Creator. Materialists have a much larger problem declaring such distinctions. By denying the existence of anything other than the physical stuff of the universe, they don’t merely erase the substance of certain aspects of the human experience such as good, evil, purpose, and free will: There’s no real grounding for thinking of a person as unique, different, or valuable. In the same way, as stunning as advances in artificial intelligence are, a consciousness that is truly human requires a spark of the Divine!⁸

I believe the difference between a rote-like computer program and a conscious person, when realizing a problem and thus correcting it—lies in how the computer becomes programmed to perform human-like functions. A living person had to develop a computer program for a computer to correct a problem. Certainly if there is no computer programming, no fix can occur to a particular problem that may arise! (The human factor.) This, I believe, could be labeled a sort of a human-created. Artificially-manufactured and programmed awareness-like situation—not a living person awareness like it takes to develop a computer program. Can a computer instantly relate to a situation or problem in life unless it is pre-programmed by a human being to be able to do so???

Dr. Michael Egnor, a neurosurgeon, with the Discovery Institute, stated “the existence of consciousness and the human capacity for reason, points to God, who designed nature and our souls.”⁹

Three prominent non-Christian experts in physics and the philosophy of mind state explicitly that materialism is missing something critical. Two of them say “that consciousness is permanently beyond the reach of materialism. Readers do not have to take our word for it that the materialist show is stopped. We would just heighten the hurdle infinitely further that the very use of language by these thinkers requires supernaturalism. The materialist show, therefore, is stopped; go to another show. There is a good one across town about a CREATOR. It is called the greatest story ever told!”¹⁰

Personally, I do believe quantum entanglement is involved in consciousness, along with a physical connection such as our posterior cortex or our brain stem or even possibly another physical aspect unknown. A great number of physical problems can cause unconsciousness and two obvious examples are a blow to the head and a severe loss of blood to the brain, etc.  Perhaps unconsciousness is God’s sympathetic manner given to us to ease the difficult period of a dying situation for all mankind. How could it be explained to lose consciousness and possibly even when a fainting spell occurs, if no physical explanation seems to have occurred? (Or even if there is a hyperventilation situation, for example.) Could quantum entanglement be more involved than normal even in the loss of consciousness than thought possible, or even in consciousness itself? Apparently quantum entanglement is the overriding factor in consciousness, but both physical (possibly either the posterior cortex or the brain stem) and the spirit of man appear to work in concert with each other. I believe each one has specific purposes in God’s will for the life and death of each man or woman. Consciousness, I believe, is actually God’s way for His creation of mankind to relate to the world around us, but especially it is the vehicle that is utilized by us to relate to Him!

Additionally, it is important to understand the origin of our consciousness as our mental faculties are so vital to our inner communication with God the Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Even so, without consciousness, we God-created human beings would not be able to relate to Him as He would desire that we do! After all, consciousness and our mental faculties go hand-in-hand in relating to other human beings, in all ways, especially proclaiming Jesus Christ to all unsaved persons for Him be their Lord and Savior. We are certainly made in God’s image and Jesus Christ is truly God and truly Man at the same time. This is a mystery to mankind and certainly is way above our human ability to comprehend all of God’s holiness and mentality!

A staff member of Creation Ministries Int’l (US) in an email to me stated, “However, I would say that the body is the vehicle of the soul and that the brain is essentially the steering wheel/control center. When the steering wheel is damaged the ability of our immaterial element (the mind) to control the body, and interact with it becomes limited, this also limits the information our body can give to us. If one thinks of this immaterial component as the driver, and the body as the vehicle, then it makes sense that damage to the controls systems (serious brain injury) would create these complications.”¹¹

REFERENCES

1. TED lecture: How do you explain Consciousness? by David Chalmers ( Pressenza Int’l Press Agency).
2. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy—June 18, 2004 and revised Jan. 14, 2014.
3. Mind Matters News of the Discovery Institute, (Dec. 7, 2021), Michael Egnor, Senior Fellow of Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.
4. The New King James Bible, The Evidence Bible and Commentary by Ray Comfort (2011). Also the Holy Bible in the King James Version.
5. The Revell Bible Dictionary, The Deluxe Color Edition—Copyright 1973, 1978 and 1984.
6. Do our Minds have Quantum Structures that give to Consciousness? BY Paul Ratner, 1-15-2018. The Scientific Medical Network, (Is Belief in God Compatible with Quantum Physics? ANSWER: Quantum Physics, like any other Scientific Discipline, is perfectly Compatible with the Bible’s Teaching of God and as stated by the “Got Questions Ministries”.)  Also The Human Origin Project: Does the Quantum Mind explain the Origin of Consciousness.
7. “Quantum Entanglement” by Fred Williams, Host, Real Science radio program and Rocky Mountain Creation Fellowship Board member, and in their “Foundations” publication: Vol. 23 No. 1 Winter 2023.
8. BreakPoint—Artificial Intelligence is not the same as Artificial Consciousness. (colsoncenter.libsyn.com/artificial-intelligence-is-not-the-same-as-artificial-consciousness)
9. Mind Matters of the Discovery Institute (June 28, 2022), Michael Egnor, Senior Fellow of the Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.
10. Consciousness Is Not Computable (October 20, 2019), David F. Coppedge (crev.info/2019/10/consciousness-is-not-computable/).
11. Bruce Lawrence, Staff info officer of Creation Ministries International (US), June of 2022.

DARRYL SLETTEN’s educational background involves medical laboratory technology with special interest in biochemistry, a part of his technology curriculum. He worked in the clinical and hospital laboratory field for many years.