thesis

to posit a personal one, in terms of an all-powerful deity able to sustain the complex correla-
tions between our bodies and our minds. I don’t see how one could refute such a move, ex-
cept by saying that an argument for God based on the inadequacy of today’s science seems a
highly risky theological proposition.
Kitty Ferguson compares the problem of consciousness with the cosmological argument
for first cause (1994, 183):
Saving belief in God by talking about what science hasn’t been able to explain, or looks un-
likely to explain, is skating on thin ice… On the other hand it is no more intellectually viable to
save unbelief solely on the assumption and hope that science will inevitably be able eventually
to explain everything. We’ve allowed ourselves a stand-off on the grounds of ‘It remains a
mystery’ in the First Cause contest between God, mathematical and logical consistency, and
the universe… At present we also have no other choice but to allow a stand-off regarding an
explanation for the human mind.
And if science were ever to explain consciousness, an argument from consciousness to
theism would be no stronger than one from physics, chemistry or biology. And the force of
the latter lies in the cosmological argument and the argument from design, not in any spe-
cific natural theology of the mind.
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