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THE ONLY ABSOLUTE BEING
Who Is It
That Experiences All These Perceptions?
So far we have
established that everything we perceive takes place in our brains,
and that we have no need for the outside world or material beings
to experience these perceptions. At this point we face a question
which would be asked by anyone who thinks on this subject a little
bit.
As we know, the electric signals
coming from the cells in our eyes are transformed into an image
in our brains. For example, the brain interprets some electrical
signals coming to the visual center in the brain as a field filled
with sunflowers. In reality, it is not the eye that is seeing.
Therefore, if it is not our eyes
which are seeing, what is it that sees the electrical signals
as a sunflower field, at the back of our brain, in a pitch dark
place, without feeling any necessity for any eyes, retina, lens,
visual nerves or pupil and enjoys the view in the sight?
Or who
is it that hears (without needing an ear) the voice of a very
close friend, becomes happy on hearing it, and misses it when
he cannot hear it, when the brain is totally sound proof?
Or who is it in the brain that feels
the fur of the cat when stroking it, without having any need for
a hand, fingers or muscles?
Who is it that feels sensations
such as heat, cold, and a sense of consistency, depth, and distance,
as they originate in the brain?
Who is it that smells the lemon,
lavender flower, rose, melon, watermelon, orange, and barbecued
meat inside the brain (even though the brain is smellproof), and
feels hungry because of the smell coming from the grill?
We have thus far discussed how everything
we perceive continuously is actually formed inside our brains.
Who is it then that sees the sights in a brain as if watching
television, and becomes excited, happy, sad, nervous, or feels
pleasure, anxiety or curiosity while watching them? Who is responsible
for the consciousness which is capable of interpreting everything
seen and everything felt?
What is the entity in the brain that
has consciousness and throughout life is capable of seeing all
the sights shown to him in a dark, quiet head, that is capable
of thinking, and reaches conclusions and makes decisions in the
end?
It is obvious that it is not the brain,
made up of water, lipid and protein, and unconscious atoms, that
perceives all this and is responsible for consciousness. There
must be a being beyond the brain. Despite being a materialist,
Daniel Dennett ponders the above question in one of his books:
My
conscious thinking, and especially the enjoyment I felt in the
combination of sunny light, sunny Vivaldi violins, rippling branches
- plus the pleasure I took in just thinking about it all - how
could all that be just something physical happening in my brain?
How could any combination of electrochemical happenings in my
brain somehow add up to the delightful way those hundreds of twigs
genuflected in time with the music? How could some information-processing
event in my brain be the delicate warmth of the sunlight I felt
falling on me? For that matter, how could an event in my brain
be my sketchily visualized mental image of … some other information-processing
event in my brain? It does seem impossible. It does seem as if
the happenings that are my conscious thoughts and experiences
cannot be brain happenings, but must be something else, something
caused or produced by brain happenings, no doubt, but something
in addition, made of different stuff, located in a different space.
Well, why not?24
On the
other hand, R. L. Gregory questions the existence of the entity
in the back of the brain, which sees all sights:
There
is a temptation, which must be avoided, to say that the eyes produce
pictures in the brain. A picture in the brain suggests the need
of some kind of internal eye to see it - but this would need a
further eye to see its picture… and so on, in an endless regress
of eyes and pictures. This is absurd.25
Materialists
who believe that nothing exists except matter cannot understand
this particular question. Who does this "internal eye",
which sees and perceives things seen and reacts to such things,
belong to?
In the following passage, Karl Pribram
describes this important search by science and philosophy for
the identity of the perceiver:
Philosophers
since the Greeks have speculated about the "ghost" in
the machine, the "little man inside the little man" and
so on. Where is the I-the entity that uses the brain? Who does the
actual knowing? Or, as Saint Francis of Assisi once put it, "What
we are looking for is what is looking".26
Although
many people venture close to this reality in answering the question
"who is the entity that sees", they hesitate to accept
all of its implications. As demonstrated in the examples above,
in discussing the entity in our brains, some refer to the "little
man", while others say "the ghost in the machine",
some refer to "the being using the brain" while some
say "the internal eye". All these terms have been used
to describe the entity beyond the brain which possesses consciousness,
and the means of reaching this entity. However, materialist assumptions
keep many people from understanding the true nature of this being
which actually sees and hears.
The only source that answers this
question is religion. In the Koran, God states that He created
man in a physical way initially and then "breathed His Spirit"
to the man He created:
When your Lord said to the angels,
"I am creating a human being out of dried clay formed from
fetid black mud when I have formed him and breathed My Spirit
into him, fall down in prostration in front of him!" (The
Koran, 15: 28-29)
(He) then formed him and
breathed His Spirit into him and gave you hearing, sight and hearts.
What little thanks you show! (The Koran, 32: 9)
In other words, the human being
has another existence besides its physical body. That entity inside
the brain which says "I am seeing" the sight inside
the brain, and "I am hearing" the sound inside the brain
and aware of its own existence, and which says "I am me",
is the soul given to human beings by God.
Any human being with a mind and
a conscience can understand this: the being that watches every
incident inside the brain-watches as if looking at a screen throughout
his life-is his soul. Every human being has a soul that sees without
the need for an eye, hears without the need for an ear and thinks
without the need for a brain.
The materialistic view-which maintains
that matter is the only thing that exists, and that human consciousness
is only a result of some chemical reactions in the brain-is in
a quandary about this issue. To see this it might be instructive
to ask the following questions to a materialist:
o Sight is formed in our brains
but what is it that watches this sight in our brains?
o Try to see in your mind's eye
your neighbor living downstairs in your apartment building when
he is not with you. Who is it that vivifies this person so clearly
in your imagination down to the details of his costume, the lines
in his face, the whites in his hairs; the tone of his voice, the
way he speaks, the way he walks?
A materialist will be unable to
give a satisfactory answer to such questions. The only explanation
to these questions is the soul given to man by God. However, materialists
do not accept the existence of any being other than matter. For
this reason the truth explained in this book deals a massive blow
to atheist materialist thought, and constitutes a subject that
materialists refuse to discuss most.
Who Lets Our
Souls Watch All Of These Views?
At this level
there is another question that should be asked: Our soul watches
the sights in our brains. But who is it that creates these sights?
Could the brain itself form a bright, colorful, clear, shadowy
sight and form a whole world through electrical signals in a tiny
space? The brain is no more than a wet, soft, curvy piece of meat.
Could a simple piece of meat like this create a sight clearer
than any that could be provided by a television set with the latest
technology, without any snow or horizontal jitter? Could a vision
of such high quality be formed inside a piece of meat? Could this
wet piece of meat form a stereo sound of higher quality than a
stereo hi-fi system with the highest technology, without any sizzling
noises? Of course, it is impossible for a brain, which is made
of one and a half kilograms (four pounds) of meat to form such
perfect perceptions.
Here
we arrive at another truth. Since together with everything surrounding
us, the body we have, our hands, arms and faces are the shadow
beings, then our brains are also shadow beings. Thus we cannot
say that this brain which is itself actually only a visual sensation,
forms these visual sensations.
Bertrand Russell
points out this truth in his work The ABC of Relativity, Of
course, if matter in general is to be interpreted as a group of
occurrences, this must apply also to the eye, the optic nerve
and the brain.27
Realizing
this fact, French philosopher Bergson said in his book, Matter
and Memory, that "the world is made up of images, these
images only exist in our consciousness; and the brain is one of
these images."28
Who, then, is the being that shows
these sights to our souls, with all their reality and clarity,
and lets us live a life with all of these perceptions and without
any interruptions?
The being that shows all the sights
to our souls, lets us hear all the sounds, and creates all the
tastes and smells for our pleasure, is the Lord of all the worlds,
the creator of everything, God.
One
Of The Most Important Dilemmas Of Materialism: Human Consciousness
Materialist
philosophy can never explain the source of human consciousness,
i.e. the qualitative experiences that belong to the human soul.
For the materialist philosophy, matter is the only thing that
exists. Qualities belonging to the soul of a human being, such
as consciousness, thought, decision-making processes, happiness,
excitement, longing, enjoyment and judgment can never be explained
in the materialistic concept. Materialists pass quickly over this
subject saying "human consciousness is only the result of
the functions of the brain". A materialist scientist, Francis
Crick summarizes this materialistic claim as follows:
Your
joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your
sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more
than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their
associated molecules.29
However,
such a claim cannot be defended by either science or logic. The
materialist prejudices lead materialists to make such explanations
regarding the qualities of a soul that belongs to human beings.
In order not to accept the fact that there is a being beyond the
material world, they attempt to reduce human intelligence to matter
and make such claims that have no relation with intelligence or
logic.
The science writer John Horgan,
although sympathetic to the materialist position called "reductionism",
points out the following problems with Francis Crick's claims:
In a sense, Crick is right. We are nothing but
a pack of neurons. At the same time, neuroscience has so far proved
to be oddly unsatisfactory. Explaining the mind in terms of neurons
has not yielded much more insight or benefit than explaining the
mind in terms of quarks and electrons. There are many alternative
reductionisms. We are nothing but a pack of idiosyncratic genes.
We are nothing but a pack of adaptations sculpted by natural selection.
We are nothing but a pack of computational devices dedicated to
different tasks. We are nothing but a pack of sexual neuroses.
These proclamations, like Crick's, are all defensible, and they
are all inadequate.30
Of course, these explanations are all inadequate
and they are definitely not logical. Any fanatic materialist is
in fact aware of this truth. Not surprisingly, Thomas Huxley,
the foremost advocate of Darwin also stated that consciousness
cannot be explained by the interaction of neurons: "How it
is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes
about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable
as the appearance of the Djin, when Aladdin rubbed his lamp."31
It is very clear that mere cells cannot
give a person consciousness, intelligence, the ability to
think and talk, and feelings such as love, compassion, mercy,
longing. |
From
Huxley's time until the present, the failure to explain human
consciousness through neurons hasn't changed. However, this is
not because of the inadequacy of science regarding this issue.
In contrast, especially towards the end of the 20th century, there
have been many developments in the field of neurology with many
mysteries being solved. However, these findings have showed that
human consciousness can never be reduced to matter and the reality
lies beyond the material. One of the leading Darwinist-materialist
writers in Germany, Hoimar Von Ditfurth, also confesses the fact
that the currently adopted methods cannot describe human consciousness:
With our
present research in natural history and genetic development,
it is obvious that we will not be able to give an answer to
what consciousness, spirit, intelligence and feelings are.That
is because psychic-consciousness level is the highest level
that evolution has arrived, at least in this world. Therefore,
although we are able to look at the other stages and phases
of evolution from the outside, by rising above them, again by
the help of our consciousness, we are unable to approach consciousness
(or spirit) itself in a similar way. That is because no level
higher than consciousness is available to us.32
American philosopher
and doctor of mathematics, William A. Dembski, states in his article,
"Converting Matter into Mind", that the bio-chemical
functioning of neurons in the human brain and which mental functions
it involves have been understood, although qualities such as decision
making, wishing, or reasoning cannot be "reduced to matter".
Dembski also points out that specialists on consciousness have
realized the error of reductionism;
…Cognitive scientists abandon hope of understanding this higher
level through the lower neurological level. …Thus while the
commitment to materialism persists, the hope of explaining human
intelligence at the neural level, which for the materialist is
the logical level, is not a serious consideration 33
It is
impossible to describe consciousness with a materialist worldview,
regardless of the extent of scientific development. As details
of the brain surface, it becomes clearer that the mind is irreducible
to matter. Materialists must put aside their prejudices and think
deeper and research further if they are to understand the concept
of human consciousness, as it is impossible to define the real
meaning of consciousness through matter. Consciousness is a function
of the soul that is given to man by God.
Questions
For Materialists
It is totally illogical to state
that thoughts, judgments, decision mechanisms, or feelings (such
as happiness, excitement, and disappointment) are merely the results
of the interaction of neurons in the brain of a human being. Materialists
who consider this issue more deeply are aware of this truth. The
famous materialist, Karl Lashley, made the following comment towards
the end of his career, even though he had defended the idea for
years that human consciousness could be reduced to matter:
Whether
the mind-body relation is regarded as a genuine metaphysical issue
or a systematized delusion, it remains a problem for the psychologist
(and for the neurologist when he deals with human problems) as
it is not for the physicist. . . . How can the brain, as a physico-chemical
system, perceive or know anything; or develop the delusion that
it does so? 34
Lashley
drew attention to this conflict in one single question. However,
there are many other details that materialists must consider.
The explanations listed below illustrate some of the issues that
reveal the impasse of the materialist approach, and which must
therefore be considered in depth :
o Stating that thoughts, excitements
and feelings are products of neurons is to claim that such things
are the products of the unconscious atoms, or products of the
sub elements of atoms, such as quarks or electrons.
o Unconscious atoms cannot know the feeling
of happiness or sadness and neither can they enjoy music, taste,
good friendship or a chat with a friend.
o Unconscious atoms cannot be Darwinist
or materialist and come together to write a book.
o Unconscious atoms cannot view themselves
or the nerve cells that form themselves under an electron microscope
and reach scientific solutions from their research.
o What is meant by the statement "consciousness
is in the neurons of our brains"? Neurons, just like other
cells, are made of cell membrane, mitochondria, DNA and ribosomes.
Therefore, according to the materialists, where does consciousness
lie in these things? If they suppose that consciousness is a result
of chemical reactions between the neurons and electrical signals,
they are mistaken, because they cannot explain a single "chemical
reaction with consciousness". Nor can they show us an "electric
wave" that starts to "think" at a certain voltage
level.
If materialists think
sincerely about these issues, they will realize that all people
including themselves are different from groups of neurons or bunches
of atoms. Despite being a materialist, the brain specialist Wolf
Singer, admits this fact by saying "In this confusing material
of the universe there is 'something' that perceives itself as
'I am'." 35
This "something" that
the scientist refers to is actually the soul that is given to
the human being by God. Due to this soul possessed by the human
being, a person can think, be happy, get excited, produce new
ideas, or oppose the ideas of others, or know the concepts such
as honour, respect, love, friendship, loyalty, sincerity and honesty.
The neurons and atoms that form human beings cannot think, make
decisions, produce philosophical ideas or know the feeling of
love, compassion or affection.
Materialists, when they are alone, know
this truth and accept it. However, due to their regarding their
materialist prejudices as the requirement of science and reason,
they cannot come to accept this absolute reality. On the other
hand, the predicament they put themselves into just to defend
materialism, and the illogical ideas they accept, actually cause
much greater damage to them. A person who says "Our thoughts
are the product of our atoms and neurons" is no different
than a person who thinks his or her dreams are real, or a person
who invents incredible stories like fairytales and then believes
in them.
The truth is actually this: a human being
is a being that possesses a soul given by God, and with this soul,
he can think, talk, be pleased, make decisions, establish civilizations
and manage countries.
24- Daniel C. Dennett,
Consciousness Explained, Little, Brown and Company, NY 1991, p.
26-27
25- R. L. Gregory, Eye and Brain: The Psychology
of Seeing, p. 9
26- Ken Wilber, Holographic Paradigm and Other
Paradoxes, p.20
27- Bertrand Russell, ABC of Relativity, George
Allen and Unwin, London, 1964, pp. 161-162
28- Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, Zone Books,
New York, 1991
29- John Horgan, The Undiscovered Mind: How the
Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation, New
York:Free Press, 1999, p. 258-259
30- John Horgan, The Undiscovered Mind: How the
Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation, p.258-259
31- John Horgan, The Undiscovered Mind: How the
Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation, p.229
32- Hoimar von Ditfurth, Der Geist Fiel Nicht
Vom Himmel (The Spirit Did Not Fall From The Sky), p.13
33- William A. Dembski, Converting Matter into
Mind, 1998, www.arn.org
34- William A. Dembski, Converting Matter into
Mind, 1998, www.arn.org
35- Cumhuriyet Bilim Teknik Dergisi (Cumhuriyet
Science and Technology Journal), 7 July 2001, no. 746, p. 18;
Der Spiegel, 1/2001.
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