While the battle over ID and evolution rages on in a more public manner, the concept of consciousness is possibly the biggest threat to the theory of Darwinism according to JP Moreland.
The theologian and philosopher argues:
If we limit our options to theism and naturalism, it is hard to see how finite consciousness could result from the rearrangement of brute matter; it is easier to see how a Conscious Being could produce finite consciousness since, according to theism, the Basic Being is Himself conscious. Thus, the theist has no need to explain how consciousness can come from materials bereft of it. Consciousness is there from the beginning. To put the point differently, in the beginning there were either particles or the Logos. If you start with particles and just rearrange them according to physical law, you won’t get mind. If you start with Logos, you already have mind.
You can put all the right chemicals in all the right proportions in a controlled environment, but that does not equal “life.” There is a required otherness known as consciousness that moves chemicals into life. Where does that come from if not from a previous Consciousness?
Moreland continues by pointing out that while evolution can explain the development of new and increasingly complex organism, it has no such explanation for the development of consciousness. It was never “needed” and thus would never have evolved.
As long as an organism, when receiving certain inputs, generates the correct behavioral outputs under the demands of fighting, fleeing, reproducing and feeding, the organism will survive. What goes on inside the organism is irrelevant and only becomes significant for the processes of evolution when an output is produced. Strictly speaking, it is the output, not what caused it, that bears on the struggle for reproductive advantage. Moreover, the functions organisms carry out consciously could just as well have been done unconsciously. Thus, both the sheer existence of conscious states and the precise mental content that constitutes them is outside the pale of evolutionary explanation.
The true irreducible complexity is the consciousness of the human mind. It, along with the exact origin of life, is a mystery that pure naturalism cannot answer.
