The Non-Evolution of Consciousness

Back in 1976, the late Bernie Kliban, famous for odd drawings including the "Cat" series, had a comic called People Humiliating a Salami. It is funny because inanimate objects do not have self-awareness. A computer does not get angry about what programs a user opens, and an MP3 player has no objection to repeating the same song a dozen times. Humans have self-awareness, and some animals have a bit. Scientists, like regular people, have wondered about the location and origin of consciousness and the soul.

Credit: Pixabay / Pete Linforth

While it is a reasonable assumption, the mind is not the brain. The mind uses the brain, and obviously, the mind cannot exactly work well if the brain is seriously injured or removed. Let's accept the idea of "the brain is the mind" for the sake of discussion. Materialists deny the spiritual nature of man as well as the Creator, so they attempt to explain things using evolution. An article in the July 2021 New Scientist attempted to do this. It did not go well.

The secular science industry has many disagreements about consciousness, but cannot explain its existence, not can they explain how it supposedly evolved. Speculations and circular reasoning (assuming evolution to demonstrate evolution) are not science, old son. The logical conclusion is what they try their best to avoid: God is real, and is the Creator. Further, the implications are something they suppress: God makes the rules, and we need to find out what he says in his written Word.

Last month [July 2021], New Scientist magazine called consciousness “the greatest mystery in the universe.” The writers in this special issue on consciousness affirm that consciousness resides in the brain, “the most complex thing in the universe.” Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku added that

“The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.” As long as humans have existed, people have sought to comprehend the brain. Although scholars have tried to decipher its codes for centuries, we’ve only scratched the surface.

The more we learn about the brain, the more complex we realize it is, no matter how complexity is measured. Likewise, the more we learn about consciousness, the more complex we realize it is by any estimation. How a three-pound physical jelly-like brain creates the feeling of consciousness “is one of life’s greatest mysteries.” Humans experience consciousness by a sense of self observing and to some extent controlling circumstances. Consciousness includes the ability to form mental pictures of past visual events and mental reconstructions of past sounds, such as a musical performances.

You can read the entire article at "On the Origin of Consciousness by Naturalistic Speculation", if you've a mind to.