My reflections on the subject.
Gravity is a physical reality even though it is not extractable—cannot exist apart from that physical system we call the (physical) Universe, but nonetheless is a physical reality that emerged after the Big Bang. We know that gravity not only is an emergent reality—emerging within nanoseconds after the Big Bang—, but that it should manifest in a foreordained way for the existence of galaxies. This is so because gravity, as a physical constant, has a certain quantitative value given it by God for what should result from its power for “downward causation.” This is its power to participate in the organization of a constrained (finely tuned) system in matter as it moved away from “ground zero” of the Big Bang, the results of which include the existence of galaxies. Yes, this is materialism, but not atheistic materialism inasmuch as God is not only the Creator of matter, but He is the One who, by his power, imposed the critical values that the physical constants should need for the constitution of a physical universe able to support existence of human beings.
The human mind cannot exist apart from its being grounded in matter. It is an emergent reality, too; it necessarily, essentially emerges from the much more complex organization found in human brain tissues than is so for animals’; animals’ mentations also essentially emerge from their relatively less complexly structured brain tissues. Grounded in our brain tissues is the existence of certain experientials we know to be our own self-consciousness, conscience, at-will memory storage and recall, and “qualia,” etc.); these reside in a configuration of neuronal connections. A “snapshot” of an individual’s own brain (neuronal configuration) is the result of its “plasticity” for “recording” modifications in neuronal configurations that are layered for a circular (i.e., “downward and upward”) causation network. Thus no minds are identical.
Neither science nor the Scriptures give solace to proponents of dualism in human nature. True, the only alternative to anthropological dualism is materialism (physicalistic mind); however, the concept of atheistic materialism as sufficient explanation for human nature is as unscientific and anti-Scriptural as the notion that the Universe we live in came about by chance. Still, there is nothing that can logically contravene anthropological physicalism, nor is there anything scientifically known that requires us to scrap the concept of Big Bang cosmogony as it unfolded through power of holy spirit.
