Consciousness and the Existence of God

Two trends in philosophy and theology provide the rationale for this book.

First, there has been an explosion of literature in philosophy of religion,

philosophical theology, classic theology and religious studies. An important

part of this explosion is a renewed vigor and excellence in discussions of

the arguments for and against the existence of God. In the last three decades,

philosophers trained in analytic philosophy have applied their craft

to these discussions with the result that there is now a rich dialog taking

place. Second, there is an interesting dialectic occurring in philosophy of

mind. A large number, perhaps the majority, of philosophical naturalists (e.

1. David Papineau, Frank Jackson and the Churchlands) hold that naturalism

does not sit well with irreducible sui generis mental properties/

events and advocate a (cottage industry of) strong form(s) of physicalism.

However, there is a growing dissatisfaction with the various versions of

strong physicalism, and more and more are breaking ranks by venturing

into emergent property dualism (e.g., the evolution of Jaegwon Kim’s

thought in the last ten years), at least for phenomenal consciousness.