My friend and colleague Bill Dembski, a leading advocate of intelligent design of the universe and life forms, has done a superb short interview with Robert Lawrence Kuhn on Closer to Truth. Bill takes a position that will surprise many fellow Christians — he doesn’t believe that consciousness represents an insurmountable challenge to materialism:
Bill makes the point that much of the popular argument hinges on shifting meanings of “materialism” and “consciousness.” By contrast, he argues, the design inference in biology is a much more effective challenge to materialism.
I agree that design in nature is an effective challenge to materialism. But I also believe that the mind refutes materialism in a rather straightforward way — and in much the same way that evidence of intelligent design in biology refutes materialism.
Defining Materialism
But first, we need to define materialism. There are several varieties but all share the belief that the matter of which reality is composed is stuff extended in space, that immaterial substances don’t exist, and that a comprehensive explanation of reality can be given by the methods of the physical sciences.