Epigraph:

And they ask you concerning the soul. Say, ‘The soul is by the command of my Lord; and of the knowledge thereof you have been given but a little.’ (Al Quran 17:85)

Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times

The humans have a great desire to make the artificial intelligence conscious, despite that they have no ability to succeed in this regard. The fact of the matter is that we have very limited understanding of consciousness and the humble and honest philosophers and scientists have no qualms recognizing this reality.  When we do not understand something, we cannot create it. 

In short, humans are unable to put consciousness in AI. Not only that we are even unable to create even simpler life. The Quranic challenge still holds: Make a fly, if you can: The Quranic Challenge to the Atheists: Make a Fly, if You Can?

I am not a creationist. I do believe in the common ancestry of all the nine million extant life forms on our planet Earth. However, I find guided evolution more coherent than the blind evolution suggested by atheists.

When humans know what is consciousness, at least from personal experience and yet cannot create it, how can lifeless or inanimate elements, randomly reacting with each other lead to conscious life, without an iota of consciousness or understanding, create life, in the absence of a conscious and All Knowing Creator?

It seems atheism is a way of thinking that requires a very high degree of faith.

This consciousness argument is another form of Kalam’s cosmological argument. In some sense, it is a God of the gaps, but we are confident from the Word of God that it is a gap that will never be filled, based on the Quranic verse about the human soul quoted as an epigraph and its challenge to the atheists to make a fly, if they can.

The Quran does opine that the cosmological argument is of greater significance than the argument from consciousness:

Certainly, the creation of the heavens and the earth is greater than the creation of mankind; but most men know not. (Al Quran 40:57)

So, if you want to stick with the strongest arguments for theism, I would suggest to stick with the cosmological argument and teleological argument or argument from design.

There are very few philosophers or scientists in the field of consciousness who emphasize theism. The two that have publicly argued for God from consciousness are JP Moreland and Richard Swinburne. Most philosophers are either like David Chalmer, who appreciates the mystery of consciousness and calls it a “hard problem of consciousness,” yet have little mention of the God hypothesis in their philosophy or ontology. Others are like Daniel Dennett, who is completely committed to atheism and calls consciousness an illusion. Dennett passed away in April 2024 at the age of 82.  Liad Mudrik wrote in Nature magazine, Daniel Dennett obituary: ‘New atheism’ philosopher who sparked debate on consciousness:

One of his main endeavours was to describe the human mind — specifically, consciousness — in a way that is strongly rooted in the third-person perspective, which he called heterophenomenology. He wanted to rely on both scientific evidence and ‘folk psychology’; the typical ways that people understand, interpret and predict the behaviours of others. Applied to consciousness, the third-person perspective implies that people don’t have privileged knowledge about their own conscious experiences.

Dennett wanted to demystify consciousness, and called for data-driven research to study it. This demystification, importantly, involved parting with the concept of ‘qualia’ — the ineffable, first-person aspects of conscious experience, such as the greenness of grass or the sweetness of chocolate.

‘The sort of difference that people imagine to be between any machine and any human experiencer … is one I am firmly denying: There is no such difference. There just seems to be,’ he wrote in his 1991 book Consciousness Explained. This naturally provoked great criticism and debate.

Some of Dennett’s debates with fellow philosophers and scientists became famous, such as that with Sam Harris about free will. Dennett argued that people have free will because of their ability to deliberate, reason and even reason about reasoning; abilities that Dennett argued developed through evolution. Harris believes that free will is an illusion.[1]

It seems to me that the absolute and complete denial of free will and consciousness as a complete illusion by many atheist philosophers is a strong clue for theism, in as much as their denial of God has brought them to the extreme conclusion of denying the obvious daily human experience of our consciousness and free will.

Nevertheless, debates between theist and atheist philosophers and even among atheists with different leanings can be unending, and at some point, the human psyche demands closure.

The Quranic verses that follow the above quoted verse, want to shake the reader in the direction of Pascal wager as well to think clearly the consequences of their leaning:

And the blind and the seeing are not equal; neither are those who believe and do good deeds equal to those who do evil. Little do you reflect. The Hour will surely come; there is no doubt about it; yet most men believe not. And your Lord says: ‘Pray unto Me; I will answer your prayer.’ (Al Quran 40:78-60)

Additional suggested reading

From the Mystery of Our Brain to Mind to Soul to Afterlife

If Scientists Duplicate Human Consciousness, Would the Quran be Proven Wrong?

References

1. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01478-7