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

Introduction

J.P. Moreland is a prominent contemporary philosopher who works at the intersection of the philosophy of mind and philosophy of religion. In particular, Moreland has developed an argument for God’s existence from consciousness – often called the argument from consciousness – which contends that the reality of mind, or consciousness, cannot be adequately explained within a purely materialistic or naturalistic framework​. Moreland’s work builds on a long tradition of dualist thought in philosophy of mind, as well as the project of natural theology which seeks evidence of divine existence in features of the world. In the context of philosophy of mind, Moreland is known for defending substance dualism – the view that human persons have immaterial souls or minds distinct from their bodies – and for critiquing physicalist accounts of consciousness. In the context of philosophy of religion, he argues that the existence of finite, conscious minds is best explained by the existence of a fundamental divine Mind (God) as their creator​. This article will examine Moreland’s reasoning in detail, covering his critique of materialism, his argument that human persons are essentially souls, and specific aspects of mind (intentionality, qualia, free will) that he believes point toward a theistic explanation. Throughout, we will reference Moreland’s own writings and key passages to illuminate his argument for God from consciousness.

Moreland’s Critique of Materialism

Moreland’s case begins with a critique of strict materialism (physicalism) in explaining consciousness. He maintains that mental phenomena possess distinctive qualities that purely physical processes do not and cannot have. In his view, consciousness involves properties that “are in no sense physical.”​

Moreland often highlights five salient features of mental states to show their fundamental difference from physical states​:

• Qualitative feel (Qualia): Every conscious mental state has a raw qualitative feel or a subjective “what it is like” aspect (for example, the throbbing pain of a headache or the taste of sweetness)​. This first-person quality of experience cannot be captured in the purely third-person descriptions of physical science.
• Intentionality (Aboutness): Many mental states exhibit intentionality – they are of or about something (e.g. a thought about the Eiffel Tower or a desire for happiness)​. Physical entities, by contrast, are never intrinsically “about” other things in the way thoughts are.
• First-Person Privacy: Mental states are inner, private, and immediately accessible only to the subject having them​. By contrast, physical states of the brain are publicly observable (in principle) and lack this private, subjective accessibility.
• Subjective Ownership: Mental states have a subjective ontology – they are necessarily owned by some first-person subject or self​. There is an “I” that has the thought or sensation. A neuron or a brain state, however complex, does not inherently come tagged with an owner in the same way.
• Non-spatiality: Mental states do not have physical properties like spatial extension, location, mass, or shape. Our thoughts and feelings aren’t literally located at coordinates in space, whereas every physical process in the brain is spatially situated.

These five characteristics, according to Moreland, indicate that consciousness is irreducible to brain activity. No purely material description, no matter how detailed, can fully account for the subjective, intentional, first-person nature of conscious experience​. This line of reasoning recapitulates classic anti-physicalist arguments in philosophy of mind (such as Thomas Nagel’s and Frank Jackson’s arguments on qualia), and Moreland uses it to set the stage for a theistic explanation of consciousness.

Beyond enumerating the ways in which mind transcends matter, Moreland argues that materialism faces insuperable explanatory hurdles when it comes to consciousness. One such hurdle is the problem of emergence: how could conscious mind “pop out” of wholly unconscious matter? Moreland emphasizes that under a strict naturalist narrative of the cosmos – one that starts with nothing but fundamental particles and blind forces – the appearance of consciousness is utterly unexpected and inexplicable. As he vividly puts it, “the emergence of consciousness seems to be a case of getting something from nothing”, an uncanny discontinuity in nature. Physical processes (like biochemical reactions) generally produce further physical effects, not subjective awareness, so for matter to suddenly give rise to mind is, on naturalism, an astonishing anomaly. Moreland likens it to an “inhomogeneous rupture in the natural world” – a radical break in the uniform causal fabric of physical reality​. In short, if the universe began as purely physical, one would not predict the emergence of qualia, intentionality, and ego-centric awareness; their existence is a glaring explanatory gap for materialism.

Another point in Moreland’s critique concerns the contingency and arbitrariness of mind–brain correlations under naturalism. Conscious experiences are regularly correlated with physical brain states (for instance, a certain neural firing pattern might always accompany the feeling of pain). But why do specific brain states correspond to those particular experiences (pain versus an itch, or a thought versus a visual image) and not others? Moreland notes that nothing in physical brain science can deduce or predict why a given brain state produces one sort of mental state rather than another. From a materialist standpoint, one must simply accept as a brute fact that certain neural configurations “just happen” to give rise to certain experiences – an inexplicable psychophysical pairing. He writes, “For the naturalist, the regularity of mind/body correlations must be taken as contingent brute facts. But these facts are inexplicable from a naturalistic standpoint.”​ In other words, naturalism must treat it as a sheer unexplained coincidence that physical processes align with subjective experiences in the precise ways that they do. By contrast, if a purposive God established the mind-body connection, one could say there is an intentional design behind specific correlations (God could have chosen to create conscious beings and align mental states with brain states in a certain way)​. The arbitrariness of conscious correlations under naturalism thus points to a deficiency in explanatory power when compared to a theistic outlook that allows for a designer.

Moreland also presses the issue of mental causation and free will in critiquing materialism. Philosophical naturalism typically holds the principle of causal closure of the physical, meaning every physical event has only physical causes in a closed chain. If minds are something over and above brain matter, naturalists worry that would violate causal closure – hence many conclude that any mental phenomena must either be identical to physical processes or else be causally inert byproducts (epiphenomena). Moreland counters that if one truly considers mental states to be non-physical, one is forced into epiphenomenalism (the view that mental events are mere side-effects with no causal impact) to save physical causal closure. But epiphenomenalism is widely seen as false: our mental states do affect our behavior (my decision causes my hand to move, my feeling of pain causes me to cry out)​. Moreland finds it undeniable that mental causation is real, noting that even the act of debating the mind’s nature involves mental intentions bringing about physical speech or writing. Therefore, if genuine non-physical mental causation exists, strict naturalism cannot accommodate it without contradiction. As Moreland observes, “if mental phenomena are genuinely non-physical, then they must be epiphenomena… But epiphenomenalism is false. Mental causation seems undeniable”, and admitting the reality of mental causation “may be taken as a refutation of naturalism.”​

In short, materialism fails if minds have real causal powers, since under materialism only physical forces should cause physical effects. By contrast, a theistic framework that includes substances like souls or minds can straightforwardly allow mental-to-physical causation (for example, an immaterial soul or agent can act on the body). Moreland thus argues that our lived experience of conscious agency (choosing, acting, thinking for reasons) is incompatible with a worldview that reduces us to biochemical machines.

Finally, Moreland addresses evolutionary explanations and finds them insufficient to account for consciousness. Evolution by natural selection explains the proliferation of physical structures and behaviors by their survival value. However, as Moreland points out, strictly speaking what matters for survival is the organism’s behavior and functional output, not whether those functions are accompanied by conscious experience​. An organism could theoretically perform all the same survival-enhancing actions without conscious awareness (as simple robots or unconscious automata might), as long as the outputs are the same. Therefore, the existence of consciousness itself is not obviously necessary for evolutionary success, and its presence in humans is not directly explained by natural selection pressures​. Moreland notes that “the functions organisms carry out consciously could just as well have been done unconsciously”, so the sheer existence of conscious states (and the specific rich content they have) lies outside the reach of evolutionary explanation. Evolution might account for why we behave in certain ways that aid survival, but it does not answer why we have inner experiential lives accompanying those behaviors. For a naturalist who holds that evolution is the total story of how complex life arose, this is a puzzling surplus. Moreland implies that a theistic view can better explain consciousness: God endowed creatures with consciousness for reasons beyond mere survival efficiency (e.g., for morally significant freedom, for relational experience, etc.). In sum, Moreland’s multi-faceted critique of materialism – from the unique properties of qualia and intentionality, to the unexplained correlations and causal role of mind, to the inadequacy of evolutionary accounts – is aimed at establishing that consciousness cannot be plausibly reduced to or emergent from matter. This negative case against naturalism sets the stage for the positive inference that the existence of mind points to the existence of God.

The Argument from the Existence of the Soul

Having argued that consciousness cannot be explained on a purely physical basis, Moreland further contends that human beings are not just animated meat but are essentially embodied souls. This is often referred to as substance dualism: the view that the ultimate ontology of a human person includes a non-material substance (a soul or mind) that is integrally united with the body. Moreland’s argument from the existence of the soul posits that recognizing persons as fundamentally immaterial selves provides strong support for theism. If each human mind is an immaterial soul, this fact fits comfortably in a theistic worldview but is anomalous on naturalism.

Moreland defines the soul as an immaterial locus of personal identity, rationality, and consciousness. “We are, in fact, souls that have bodies,” he says, rather than bodies that produce minds​. In Body and Soul, Moreland and co-author Scott Rae put it succinctly: “Since human persons are essentially souls – which are embodied in a body formed through the complex set of interactions in the human genome – it is impossible to speak of a person without a soul: to speak of a ‘soulless person’ is clearly an oxymoron.”​

In other words, the core identity of a person (the “I” who thinks, feels, and chooses) just is an immaterial soul, and the body is an instrument or housing for the soul in this life. Moreland draws on various philosophical arguments to defend this view of human persons: for example, the unity of consciousness (the way our thoughts and experiences are bound together in a single self), the persistence of personal identity through change, and the simple (indivisible) nature of the ego all suggest that the self is not a material aggregate but an immaterial substance. While the full defense of substance dualism is complex, the crucial point for Moreland’s theistic argument is that if humans have souls, this reality is far more consonant with theism than with atheistic naturalism.

Why would the existence of souls support theism? Moreland’s reasoning is that a soul is a radically non-physical entity, and its origin and properties call for an explanation beyond the resources of matter. Nature, as conceived by materialism, has no souls – no conscious “I” substances – in its basic inventory. Thus, if souls are real, it suggests that the naturalistic picture of the world is incomplete or false. Moreland argues that the best explanation for the presence of soul-ish minds in a fundamentally material world is the action of a divine Mind. In an interview, he states that if there is good reason to believe consciousness and the soul are not physical, this “provides reasons for thinking there are limits to Darwinian explanation and that there is the need for a God to create the soul and to create consciousness”, which “lends support to a theistic view of the world.”​

The idea is that only something like God – an immaterial, conscious, powerful being – could produce other immaterial conscious beings (human souls) and unite them with physical bodies. Just as minds in our experience come from other minds (e.g. human minds are procreated by other ensouled humans, not by inanimate objects), ultimately the chain of consciousness finds a fully adequate source in a supreme Mind who designed the natural order to include embodied persons​.

Moreover, the theistic religions (Christianity in particular for Moreland) have always affirmed the reality of the soul, so the existence of the soul is prima facie in line with their ontology. In classical Christian thought, God is a spirit and created humans as ensouled creatures; this provides a clear metaphysical grounding for why humans have an inner, non-material aspect. By contrast, an atheistic naturalist must either deny the soul (reducing persons to biology) or struggle to explain how a self could “emerge” from mindless matter. Moreland underscores the difficulty for an atheist: “the problem for the atheist is to explain how you could get mind from matter if you start with a Big Bang… matter simply rearranges to form increasingly complex chunks of matter… There will be no account for how you could get mind coming into existence.”​

The theist, however, “doesn’t have that problem, because for the Christian believer…the fundamental reality is not particles or matter, it’s a conscious soul, God himself.”​ On theism, mind is there from the beginning (in the beginning was the Logos or divine Mind​), so imparting consciousness to human souls is a coherent act of a pre-existing Mind. On naturalism, mind arrives late and uncaused from non-mind, which appears almost miraculous (a point even Darwin found problematic regarding the origin of mind​). Thus, Moreland’s argument from the soul concludes that the existence of irreducible souls in the world strongly implies the existence of a theistic God who is the creator of souls and the sustainer of the conscious life we experience​. In Moreland’s perspective, our status as ensouled beings is not a random quirk of nature but a sign that nature itself is the product of a higher Intelligence.

Intentionality and the Need for a Theistic Explanation

One specific feature of consciousness that Moreland often highlights is intentionality, the mind’s capacity to be about or of things. Intentionality is sometimes described as the “aboutness” of mental states: for example, one can have a thought about the city of Paris, or a hope for future success. This directedness is a hallmark of thought and experience. Moreland argues that intentionality poses a serious challenge to naturalistic accounts and points toward a theistic explanation​.

The essence of Moreland’s argument here is that physical matter, by itself, does not exhibit intrinsic intentionality. A rock, a molecule, or even a neuron has no built-in meaning or aboutness; it simply exists or operates according to physical laws. While a pattern of neurons firing in the brain can be correlated with a thought about Paris, the physical state as such is not “about Paris” in any literal sense – it’s just electrochemical activity​. The aboutness comes from the perspective of a conscious subject interpreting that state. As one commentator explaining Moreland’s view put it, “material objects don’t have this intentionality. The keyboard I’m typing on has no sensation ‘of’ pain and doesn’t think ‘about’ anything… So if we are merely physical entities (our brain), then we really don’t think ‘about’ anything!”​

In other words, if humans were purely physical systems, our so-called thoughts would be nothing more than neuron oscillations with no genuine meaning or reference – but that contradicts our actual experience of thoughts as having content (we truly do think about Paris, not just undergo arbitrary brain blips). Therefore, Moreland concludes that intentionality is a real, irreducible feature of our mental life, one that cannot be reduced to or explained by physical processes.

Given that naturalistic science has trouble accounting for original intentionality (as opposed to derived intentionality in things like written words or computer code, which only have meaning because minds interpret them), Moreland posits that theism provides a more plausible context for intentionality. If ultimate reality is mental or includes a supreme Mind, then it is not surprising that finite minds have intentionality. Our minds bearing meaningful content can be seen as a reflection of a fundamental intentionality grounded in God’s mind or purposes. Moreland often contrasts two starting points: beginning with matter versus beginning with mind. He writes, “If you start with particles and just rearrange them according to physical law, you won’t get mind. If you start with Logos (Mind), you already have mind.”​

It is, as Moreland says, “easier to see how finite mind could come from a universe created by a Mind than it is to see how mind could come from non-rational particles.”​

A materialist beginning (“in the beginning were the particles”) leaves mysterious the origin of aboutness, whereas a theistic beginning (“in the beginning was the Logos”) naturally accounts for minds capable of intentional reference because a rational God made them that way​.

In formal terms, Moreland’s reasoning can be expressed as a kind of inference to the best explanation: if God did not exist, intentional states of consciousness (genuine thoughts “of” things) would not exist; but intentional states do exist; therefore, the existence of a divine Mind is the best explanation for this fact. This is essentially the structure of the argument from reason or intentionality. Apologist William Lane Craig has summarized Moreland’s argument in a simple syllogism: “(1) If God did not exist, intentional states of consciousness would not exist. (2) But intentional states of consciousness do exist. (3) Therefore, God exists.”​

The critical premise here is that non-theistic metaphysics cannot produce intentional minds. Moreland defends that premise by noting the failures of attempts to naturalize intentionality (such as reductive materialism or eliminative materialism, which often end up denying the reality of intentional content). By contrast, on theism, God is an intentional being (God’s thoughts are about things, and God’s knowledge is intentional), and God creates human minds in His image (a theme sometimes called the “argument from the image of God”). Thus, our intentionality is a reflection of the divine intellect, and its existence is evidence of that intellect. In summary, Moreland sees the aboutness of our thoughts as a signpost of the Aboutness in the foundation of reality – a signpost that points to God rather than to impersonal matter.

Qualia, Free Will, and Conscious Agency

In addition to intentionality, Moreland often discusses other facets of mind – such as qualia, free will, and agent causation – as features that a purely naturalistic worldview struggles to accommodate, whereas a theistic worldview readily embraces them. These elements strengthen his overall argument that consciousness in its full richness implies a personal, theistic source.

Qualia refers to the subjective qualities of experience (the redness of red, the pang of jealousy, the bitter taste of coffee). Moreland emphasizes that qualia are private, first-person phenomena that resist description in the objective language of physical science​. No amount of physical information about brain states can tell a blind scientist what it feels like to see red. This is the classic “explanatory gap” or the hard problem of consciousness. Moreland counts the reality of qualia as one of the fundamental features (Feature (a) in his list) distinguishing mental from physical​. If qualia are real, irreducible aspects of our world, then physicalism is incomplete – there are truths about consciousness (what it is like to have an experience) that escape the physicalist story. Moreland argues that a theistic framework can straightforwardly accept qualia as basic mental properties that God has endowed us with. There is no strain or surprise in saying God created us with the capacity for genuine subjective experience. In contrast, for a strict naturalist, qualia can seem almost like magic – how and why should certain brain functions be accompanied by a conscious feel? Moreland often underscores that naturalistic science can describe brain processes but falls silent about the emergence of experience itself. The existence of qualia thus bolsters Moreland’s claim that the naturalist’s ontology is missing a crucial element, one that theism incorporates from the start (namely, irreducible mind).

Turning to free will: Moreland is a defender of libertarian free will, the idea that humans (at least at times) have the genuine ability to choose among alternatives in a way not wholly determined by prior physical causes. He argues that our intuitive sense of freely deliberating – for instance, choosing to accept a philosophical argument based on reasons – is deeply incompatible with strict naturalism​. If we are merely physical systems, then every action we take (and every “choice” we make) is ultimately the result of prior physical events (genes, neural firings, etc.) combined with randomness. In such a scenario, real freedom is illusory, and with it rationality and moral responsibility are undermined (since if our thoughts are predetermined, we are not genuinely reasoning, and if our actions are predetermined, praise or blame lose their usual meaning). Moreland notes, “If one is to be rational, one must be free to choose his beliefs based on reasons.”​

He contends that naturalism cannot secure this freedom to decide what to believe or do – it puts us in the grip of material causation. By contrast, theism posits that God is a free agent and has created humans with a measure of genuine freedom (often seen as part of the imago Dei, the image of God, in Christian thought). Moreland’s argument from consciousness incorporates free agency by pointing out that libertarian free will involves irreducible mental causation, which naturalism cannot allow​. On a naturalistic worldview, if one admits non-physical mental causation (an agent or soul initiating an action), it violates the closed causal chain of physics and thus “falsifies” naturalism​. Therefore, the naturalist is pressured to deny libertarian free will. But since Moreland (along with many philosophers) finds the denial of free will to be counter-intuitive and self-defeating, he takes the reality of free agency as further evidence that a personalistic metaphysics (with agents like souls and God) is true. In short, our conscious power to originate action (agency) is, in Moreland’s view, a sign that the universe is not a sealed deterministic system – it contains beings (like us and ultimately God) who can initiate new causal chains. This fits a theistic picture but not a physicalist one.

Additionally, Moreland sometimes ties in the notion of moral and rational agency as part of the argument. If we are free, rational agents, this suggests our minds participate in realms of reasoning and morality that are not purely material. The existence of objective rational laws or moral norms, and our ability to follow them, again resonates with a theistic origin (a rational, moral God) more than with a chance byproduct of evolution. While this strays slightly beyond the core “consciousness” argument, it complements the overall claim that persons are not adequately explained by physics and chemistry alone.

In summary, Moreland uses qualia, free will, and conscious agency to further undermine the naturalist worldview and bolster the case for theism. Qualia highlight the irreducible first-person aspect of mind; free will highlights the irreducible causal efficacy of mind. Both features would be absent or inexplicable if reality were nothing but a vast impersonal mechanism. Yet both features are expected and intelligible if reality ultimately originates from a personal God who is conscious and free. Moreland’s case is that our own mindedness – in all its vivid colors and active powers – cries out for a transcendent Mind to make sense of it.

Direct Quotations and Analysis

To illustrate Moreland’s argument in his own words, it is helpful to examine a few key passages from his works. These quotations encapsulate the core points of his reasoning, and we will briefly analyze each.

One central passage comes from Moreland’s discussion of the nature of mental states. Moreland clearly delineates why mental states cannot be reduced to physical states:

“Mental states are in no sense physical since they possess five features not owned by physical states: (a) there is a raw qualitative feel or a ‘what it is like’ to have a mental state such as a pain; (b) at least many mental states have intentionality — of-ness or about-ness directed towards an object; (c) mental states are inner, private and immediate to the subject having them; (d) they require a subjective ontology — namely, mental states are necessarily owned by the first person sentient subjects who have them; (e) mental states fail to have crucial features (e.g., spatial extension, location) that characterize physical states and, in general, cannot be described using physical language.”​

In this detailed enumeration, Moreland is laying the groundwork for his argument by showing the categorical differences between mind and matter. Each point (a) through (e) highlights an aspect of consciousness that eludes physical explanation. The analysis here is that if mental states have features that physical states do not (by Leibniz’s law of indiscernibles, as Moreland would note​), then mental states cannot be identical to physical states. Moreland’s list effectively summarizes decades of philosophical reflection on the mind-body problem into a concise indictment of materialism. His appeal to qualia (“what it is like”), intentionality (“of-ness/aboutness”), privacy, first-person perspective, and lack of spatial dimensions covers the main arguments used by dualists. By asserting these five features, Moreland sets up the conclusion that consciousness is a fundamentally non-physical reality. This directly supports the larger claim that a non-physical explanation (ultimately God) is needed for consciousness. The quote also demonstrates Moreland’s academic style: precise, itemized, and rooted in established philosophical concepts (each of the five features is widely recognized in the philosophy of mind literature). The analysis is that if one accepts this characterization of mental states, one is already pushed in the direction of dualism, and if dualism is true, then naturalistic atheism which denies any non-physical substances is in trouble. Thus, this quote is foundational – it justifies why an explanation beyond physics is required, paving the way for God as that explanation.

Another key quotation illustrates Moreland’s inference from the existence of finite minds to the existence of a Divine Mind:

“As mentioned in the introduction, many believe that finite minds provide evidence of a Divine Mind as their creator. If we limit our options to theism and naturalism, it is hard to see how finite consciousness could result from the rearrangement of brute matter; it is easier to see how a Conscious Being could produce finite consciousness since, according to theism, the Basic Being is Himself conscious. Thus, the theist has no need to explain how consciousness can come from materials bereft of it. Consciousness is there from the beginning. To put the point differently, in the beginning there were either particles or the Logos. If you start with particles and just rearrange them according to physical law, you won’t get mind. If you start with Logos, you already have mind.”​

This passage, drawn from Moreland’s argument from consciousness, encapsulates the core comparative claim: theism has explanatory resources that naturalism lacks when it comes to consciousness. Moreland sets up a direct contrast – either ultimate reality is mind-less (particles only) or ultimate reality is mind-full (a Logos, i.e., a divine Mind). In the former case, explaining the emergence of mind is “hard to see” (indeed, he implies it’s impossible). In the latter case, explaining finite minds is natural (mind comes from pre-existing mind). He then deploys a memorable analogy: starting with particles alone won’t magically yield mind, but starting with a Logos (divine intelligence) means mind is “there from the beginning,” so the existence of other minds is not mysterious. The phrase “Consciousness is there from the beginning” and the dichotomy between “particles or the Logos” hearkens back to a theological/philosophical imagery – clearly referencing the opening of the Gospel of John (“In the beginning was the Logos (Word)…”) to make a philosophical point. The analysis of this quote shows Moreland’s argument as an inference to the best explanation: theism makes consciousness explicable (since God is conscious and can create conscious creatures), whereas naturalism leaves it as an implausible fluke. This is effectively the positive phase of Moreland’s case, following the negative phase where he critiques materialism. By quoting this passage, we see how Moreland moves from problem (consciousness is unexplained on matter-alone views) to solution (a God who is mind explains consciousness). The analysis also reveals Moreland’s method of framing the debate: he asks the reader to choose between two worldviews and consider which can better account for the known data (in this case, the data of consciousness). It’s a classic strategy in philosophy of religion, presenting theism as the superior explanatory hypothesis. The clarity of Moreland’s contrast in this quote makes it one of the highlights of his argumentation.

Finally, we can consider Moreland’s own concluding assessment of what the reality of consciousness implies for metaphysics:

“For these reasons, consciousness provides evidence for God’s existence and against evolutionary naturalism.”​

Though brief, this statement comes after Moreland has enumerated the various reasons throughout his work (some of which we discussed: the uniformity of nature problem, the contingency of psychophysical links, the failure of evolutionary accounts, etc.). Here he succinctly states his conclusion: the existence of consciousness counts as evidence favoring theism over naturalistic atheism​. The phrase “for these reasons” refers to the detailed arguments preceding it – it signals that Moreland is drawing an inference based on a cumulative case. The mention of “evolutionary naturalism” indicates that his target is a worldview which combines atheism with a Darwinian account of life (and by extension, of mind). By saying consciousness is evidence against that view, Moreland aligns himself with those who argue that certain features of reality (mind, morality, etc.) are “recalcitrant” facts for naturalism – they don’t fit comfortably into a purely secular picture. The analysis of this quote is straightforward: Moreland is confident that his case establishes a theistic inference. It shows the structure of an argument in natural theology: identify phenomenon X (here, consciousness), show X is unlikely on not-God but expected on God, conclude X supports the existence of God. Moreland’s body of work, including Consciousness and the Existence of God (2008), is essentially devoted to fleshing out and defending the premises of that argument. In this short quote, we see the final step – the weighing of worldviews and the affirmative verdict for theism. It serves as a concise epilogue to the quotations above, reinforcing that Moreland’s entire discussion of qualia, intentionality, the soul, free will, etc., is marshaled toward confirming that the mind of man points to the mind of God.

Conclusion

J.P. Moreland’s argument from consciousness is a rigorous philosophical case that the mind cannot be fully naturalized, and that the best explanation for the existence of conscious, thinking persons is the existence of a divine Mind who created us. Throughout his work, Moreland systematically critiques materialism: he shows that features like qualia and intentionality defy reduction to neural processes and that naturalistic theories (even sophisticated ones invoking emergence or evolution) leave gaping explanatory holes​. In place of the naturalist story, Moreland offers a theistic framework wherein consciousness “fits” because the foundation of reality is itself consciousness (God is spirit). He argues that humans are essentially souls – immaterial selves that carry our personal identity – and that this fact dovetails with a theistic worldview while sitting uneasily with atheism. Furthermore, the aboutness of our thoughts, the freedom of our will, and the efficacy of our mental choices all point toward a universe that is more than a closed mechanical system; they indicate a universe created by and containing mindful agents rather than being a mindless accident​. In Moreland’s concluding estimation, the very existence of finite consciousness is evidence that God, the infinite consciousness, exists.

The implications of Moreland’s reasoning are significant for both philosophy of mind and theology. If his argument holds, it means that physicalist approaches in the philosophy of mind are fundamentally incomplete – consciousness is a basic feature of reality, not derivable from physics alone, which may encourage a paradigm shift toward dualist or idealist philosophies of mind. It also means that one of the most intimate aspects of human existence (our inner life) is seen as a pointer to something beyond the human: a divine source or ground of consciousness. For theology, Moreland’s argument from consciousness provides an apologetic bridge from mind to God, complementing other arguments for God’s existence (such as those from cosmology or morality). It suggests that every conscious experience is implicitly a reminder of the dependency of mind on a greater Mind. In Christian theology specifically, this resonates with the idea that humans are made in the image of God (Imago Dei) – our rational, conscious nature is a reflection of God’s own nature, and therefore it is unsurprising that it directs us back to Him. Moreland’s work reinforces a worldview in which matter is not all there is – spirit and mind are fundamental constituents of reality. Even critics of Moreland acknowledge that he raises substantive issues for naturalism; debates sparked by his argument often lead to deeper inquiries into the nature of consciousness, the viability of reductionism, and the philosophical presuppositions of science​. In the end, whether one agrees or disagrees with Moreland, his argument for God from consciousness stands as a robust contribution to contemporary philosophy of religion, challenging us to consider that the answer to the old mind-body problem might ultimately lie in the existence of God – the ultimate Mind that grounds all others.

Sources:

• J.P. Moreland, Consciousness and the Existence of God: A Theistic Argument (Routledge, 2008).
• J.P. Moreland & Scott B. Rae, Body & Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics (InterVarsity Press, 2000).
• J.P. Moreland, “The Argument from Consciousness,” in Debating Christian Theism, ed. J.P. Moreland, K. Sweis, C. Meister (Oxford University Press, 2013).
• J.P. Moreland, The Soul: How We Know It’s Real and Why It Matters (Moody Publishers, 2014).
• J.P. Moreland, Interview transcript, “Neuroscience and the Soul,” Biola University Center for Christian Thought ​​cct.biola.edu.
• Argument from Consciousness (Afterall.net article) ​afterall.net.
• Literary Nachos blog summary of The Soul ​literarynachos.wordpress.com​literarynachos.wordpress.com.