I thought people might be interested to consider these thoughts of Professor Graham Clark, designer of the Bionic Ear, in his first Boyer Lecture on theme "Exploring the World around us".
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/boyerlectures/stories/2007/2084228.htm#transcript
"When one considers the complexity of the brain, and its relation to consciousness, we must surely stand in awe. Indeed, Sir John Eccles, a distinguished Australian neuroscientist, who received the Nobel prize in 1963 for his research in that field, said in his 1965 Boyer lecture series: 'I wish to do all I can to restore to mankind the sense of wonder and mystery that arises from the attempt to face up to the reality of our very existence as conscious beings'. So what is it that brings unity to all the sensory experiences? Eccles saw it as a mystery how so many diverse events in the brain are united in the conscious experience of the individual. Eccles came to the conclusion that we have a soul, which is specially created by God, and thus there is the possibility of an afterlife.
On the other hand, Donald MacKay, a Christian as well as a physicist and brain scientist, differed not only from John Eccles but also from Karl Popper, a leading philosopher of science. MacKay considered that brain and soul together form a unity, that our conscious thinking is complementary, and linked to our cerebral processes. Therefore, we have a realistic basis for studying the brain as a machine, but without rejecting the moral and spiritual significance of human nature. Furthermore, Sir John Polkinghorne, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and former professor of mathematical physics at Cambridge University, suggests that, as this world 'is special and finely tuned for life', then we should consider it 'the creation of a Creator, that wills that it should be so'.
So could the physical universe, which physicists now show had only the remotest chance of producing carbon-based life, have evolved into human consciousness by mindless chance? I think not. The human brain is so sophisticated a mechanism that scientists have still not been able to design engineering systems that can match its crucial functions. For me that means a supernatural entity, namely God, was responsible, rather than saying it assembled itself by mindless chance. In any case, a human being would have to know everything to actually know there is no God!"
