Perhaps the most amazing observable fact in the universe is that we experience being and know that we do. We feel, perceive, think, desire, decide, and can think about the fact that we are doing it. How can the lumpy gray matter in our skulls give rise to this conscious-experience and self-awareness?  This question is commonly called by naturalistic philosophers and scientists, “The Hard Problem of Consciousness” or, “The Mind-Body Problem,” because no one has been able to provide a viable scientific explanation. If atheism is true, then we are living in a merely material universe and all that exists is matter. But how could matter, which has no consciousness, be put together to produce consciousness?

As physicist Dr. Nick Herbert put it,

"Science’s biggest mystery is the nature of consciousness. It is not that we possess bad or imperfect theories of human awareness; we simply have no such theories at all. About all we know about consciousness is that it has something to do with the head, rather than the foot."1

A 2011 “New Scientist” article begins this way:

"In a 1992 issue of The Times Literary Supplement, the philosopher Jerry Fodor famously complained that: 'Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious.' In 2011, despite two decades of explosive advances in brain research and cognitive science, Fodor’s assessment still rings true."2

Well, no one has a naturalistic explanation. But some have given a reasonable explanation, like the Australian neurophysiologist and winner of the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Sir John Eccles. A 1982 “Science Digest” article describes Eccles’ view this way:

"Eccles strongly defends the ancient religious belief that human beings consist of a mysterious compound of physical and intangible spirit. Each of us embodies a nonmaterial thinking and perceiving self that 'entered' our physical brain sometime during embryological development or very early childhood, says the man who helped lay the cornerstones of modern neurophysiology. This 'ghost in the machine' is responsible for everything that makes us distinctly human: conscious self-awareness, free will, personal identity, creativity and even emotions such as love, fear, and hate. Our nonmaterial self controls its 'liaison brain' the way a driver steers a car or a programmer directs a computer. Man’s ghostly spiritual presence, says Eccles, exerts just the whisper of a physical influence on the computer like brain, enough to encourage some neurons to fire and others to remain silent. Boldly advancing what for most scientists is the greatest heresy of all, Eccles also asserts that our nonmaterial self survives the death of the physical brain."

The article goes on to say,

"Eccles is not the only world-famous scientist taking a controversial new look at the ancient mind-body conundrum. From Berkeley to Paris and from London to Princeton, prominent scientists from fields as diverse as neurophysiology and quantum physics are coming out of the closet and admitting they believe in the possibility, at least, of such unscientific entities as the human spirit and divine creation."3