Consciousness as an Argument for God

My guess is that atheists would say that this is a false analogy or metaphor or whatever. The marbles or table would never gain consciousness but that a different path took place for other molecules in the universe from simple to slightly more complex in a series of steps. One of these steps or a series of these steps led to replicating molecules, then another series of steps led from these replicating molecules to life. Another series led to more complex life. An additional set led to even more complex life with very intricate neural networks. And finally one of these very complex neural networks became conscious and self aware. A rather simple explanation for an extremely complicated process. But of course when one looks at the details, this series of steps is impossible without guidance by an Intelligence. There is no known scientific or natural process that could account for the progression but the atheist will assert there must be because it happened. How do they know it happened? Because it exists and it must have happened naturally since there is no God. In other words they beg the question. They assume a state or a set of conditions without any proof because it is essential to their belief system. Now we have many Christians including many Catholics who also believe this. We recently had a discussion on this on your blog about science and proof for God: http://americamagazine.org/content/ignatian-educator/should-believers-use-science-make-case-god These Christians use the pool table analogy where God set up the balls and then hit the balls and everything else afterward was the result of one ball hitting another an incredible number of time till we appeared. God took a vacation after the initial striking of the ball for the rest of time except to have Jesus born and resurrected but other than that, He is missing in action. Prayer is a joke, the Mass is a joke, the Bible is a joke, miracles are a joke etc. Why? Because God did it all from scratch at one instant. Not the God of Catholicism but the God which a lot of so called Christians and Catholics worship. They don't realize that it makes a mockery of their religion. But it is the God they want to worship, not the God who chose to reveal things to us about Himself. In other words they tell God how He had to do it to deserve their worship.

Varghese's thought experiment reads like a specific variant of the (generally discredited) argument from design against evolution. By posing the question of how a marble table—described as "undifferentiated matter"—could become conscious he ignores how matter has gradually become differentiated. Within millions of years of evolutionary history matter has become differentiated into simple organisms; into more complex organisms with simple nervous systems; and then into organisms with sufficiently complex central nervous systems to sustain consciousness. To quote Dobzhansky's epigram, inscribed on the floor of Notre Dame's Jordan Hall of Science: "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." By posing such a simple model of undifferentiated matter without considering the processes by which matter is transformed, Varghese has provided a sadly weak defense of religious faith.

How intriguing Anthony Flew’s “Yes God!” re: the Solid Marble Table. What is a Solid Marble Table? Penetrating its solidity I see it as a conglomerate of internal fixtures, all moving in predetermined patterns, microscopic hinges in, on, and by which a process resides. It is a communal process, a community of entities, forming strategic friendships that turn interior movement, into visible solidity without a reduction in innate and hidden fluidity, its initial form, which remains intact. This is truly a marvel, imaging a Master Engineering Architect, utterly beyond natural or human Managerial Skills. The heavens proclaim the glory of God, the incalculably vast fling of the cosmos bows humbly before the God of the SOLID MARBLE TABLE!