Brain, mind, Darwin and the Almighty

With the recent Darwin anniversaries fresh in awareness, the debates go on over intelligent design versus simple natural selection.

Indeed, they're heating up. Deservedly so. There is no more pressing intellectual, emotional and moral gateway to raising consciousness than this. We solve THIS conundrum, and we unlock important secrets to knowledge.

Disclaimer: I'm a Christian. It could be argued that I am trying to fit the template by siding with intelligent design. Fair enough. Hear me out, then drag me over the coals, if you feel I still deserve it. (As cold as it is here in Pennsylvania just now, I'll probably appreciate it.)

The best champions of both sides, as I see it, are Steven Novella, a neurologist at Yale University, and Michael Egnor, a neurosurgeon from the State University of New York, Stony Brook. (Many thanks to npr.org)

Novella sez, Brain causes the mind. That is, the evolving functions of the physical matter that make up brain tissue create the conditions under which consciousness is able to develop. Consciousness is a natural by-product.

Egnor sez, "There is nothing about neurons that scientifically would lead you to infer consciousness from them. They're masses of gelatinous carbon and hydrogen and nitrogen and oxygen, just like other kinds of flesh. And why would flesh have first-person experience? So, even logically, it doesn't hang together."

Could it be that there IS an answer here?

~To DREAMMMMMM .... the impossible dream ....~