The Case for a Creator - Lee Strobel [133]
——. “DNA and the origin of Life: Information, Specification, and Explanation” and “The Cambrian Explosion: Biology’s Big Bang.” In Darwinism, Design, and Public Education, eds. John Angus Campbell and Stephen C. Meyer. Lansing, Mich.: Michigan State University Press, 2003.
——. “Evidence for Design in Physics and Biology.” In Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe, eds. Michael J. Behe, William A. Dembski, and Stephen C. Meyer. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999.
——. “The Explanatory Power of Design: DNA and the Origin of Information.” In Mere Creation, ed. William A. Dembski. Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1998, 113–47.
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THE EVIDENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS: THE ENIGMA OF THE MIND
Cogito ergo sum—“I think, therefore I am.”
René Descartes
Why should a bunch of atoms have thinking ability? Why should I, even as I write now, be able to reflect on what I am doing and why should you, even as you read now, be able to ponder my points, agreeing or disagreeing, with pleasure or pain, deciding to refute me or deciding that I am just not worth the effort? No one, certainly not the Darwinian as such, seems to have any answer to this. . . . The point is that there is no scientific answer.
Darwinist philosopher Michael Ruse 1
The intelligence of machines will exceed human intelligence early in this century,” predicted techno-prophet Ray Kurzweil, recipient of the prestigious National Medal of Technology and called “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes. “By intelligence, I include all of the diverse and subtle ways in which humans are intelligent—including musical and artistic aptitude, creativity, physically moving, and even responding to emotion.
“By 2019, a thousand-dollar computer will match the processing power of the human brain. . . . By 2050, a thousand dollars of computing will equal the processing power of all human brains on Earth. . . . Will these future machines be capable of having spiritual experiences? They certainly will claim to. They will claim to be people, and to have the full range of emotional and spiritual experiences that people claim to have.” 2
In envisioning the future, Kurzweil’s book The Age of Spiritual Machines raises the controversial question of whether computers will not only become smarter than people but might also achieve consciousness—and thus become virtually indistinguishable from their biologically based counterparts.
In a sense, Kurzweil’s theories are a logical extension of Darwinian evolution. According to Darwinists, the physical world is all that there is. At some point, the human brain evolved, with its raw processing power increasing over the eons. When the brain reached a certain level of structure and complexity, people became “conscious”—that is, they suddenly developed subjectivity, feelings, hopes, a point of view, self-awareness, introspection, that “hidden voice of our private selves.”
As far back as 1871, Darwin advocate Thomas Huxley said: “Mind [or consciousness] is a function of matter, when that matter has attained a certain degree of organization.” 3 Darwinists today agree that “conscious experience is a physical and not a supernatural phenomenon,” as sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson said. 4
If consciousness really is the automatic byproduct of increasingly sophisticated brain power, then why couldn’t super-smart robots become conscious when they achieve a bigger brain capacity than people? Once the basic Darwinian premise is accepted, then Kurzweil’s futuristic scenario suddenly seems possible.
“If you can get a computer to take on any structure you like, and if consciousness is generated by structure, then by definition that kind of structure is going to eventually give you consciousness,” said David Chalmers, codirector of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona. 5
Kurzweil’s predictions, however, have been assailed by critics who say computer consciousness is absurd. “I cannot recall