Science Cannot Explain Why You Are Aware Right Now

Right now, you are reading these words. You are aware that you are reading them. You have an inner experience — thoughts, feelings, the sensation of being you.

Why? How? Nobody knows.

Philosopher David Chalmers coined the term "the hard problem of consciousness" in 1995, and it fundamentally challenged neuroscience.

The "easy problems" of consciousness (relatively speaking) are things like:

• How does the brain process visual information?
• How do neurons fire in response to stimuli?
• How does the brain control behavior?

These are engineering problems. Complex, certainly, but we are making progress.

The hard problem is: why is there subjective experience at all? When you see the color red, there is something it is like to see red. There is an inner experience unfolding. Why does the brain not simply process information in the dark, like a computer?

Your brain is three pounds of neurons, water, fat, and protein. It runs on about 20 watts of power — less than a light bulb. It processes information through electrochemical signals between roughly 86 billion neurons.

We can map all of that. We can watch it happen on brain scans. We can identify which regions activate during different tasks.

But none of that explains why there is a "you" experiencing it. You could theoretically have a brain that does everything yours does — processes information, controls behavior, responds to stimuli — without any inner experience at all. Philosophers call this a "zombie" (not the horror film variety).

The fact that we are not zombies — that there is something it is like to be you — is the deepest mystery in science.

If everything is just matter and energy, then consciousness should be reducible to brain chemistry. But here is the problem:

• Physical processes are objective. Anyone can measure them.
• Consciousness is subjective. Only you can experience yours.
• You cannot derive subjective experience from objective processes. It is like trying to derive the taste of chocolate from a recipe.

Neuroscientist Christof Koch spent his career trying to find consciousness in the brain and eventually concluded: "I do not think consciousness can be explained purely in terms of neurons and synapses."

Philosopher Thomas Nagel (an atheist) wrote an entire book called Mind and Cosmos arguing that materialism fundamentally cannot explain consciousness and that "the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false."

If your brain is just atoms following the laws of physics, then every thought you have was determined by the prior state of those atoms. Which means you do not actually choose anything. Your sense of free will is an illusion.

But that is self-defeating. If your belief that free will is an illusion was itself determined by physics, not reason, then you have no basis for trusting that conclusion. It is a logical trap.

The experience of making real choices — of deliberating, deciding, and acting — is so fundamental to being human that denying it undermines the entire enterprise of rational thought.

The Bible does not frame humans as merely complex biological machines. Genesis says God breathed the "breath of life" into humanity — something was added beyond the physical materials. We are not just bodies; we are embodied souls.

Paul talked about the "mind of Christ" and the Spirit knowing the deep things of God. Solomon said God placed eternity in the human heart — an awareness that points beyond the material.

Perhaps consciousness is so difficult to explain from a materialist framework because it is not purely material. Perhaps the reason you are aware right now — the reason there is a "you" reading this — is because you are more than atoms. You are an image-bearer of a conscious God.