Scientists refer to the immaterial human characteristics of consciousness, intentionality, and human agency as emergent properties. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that emergent entities (properties or substances) ‘arise’ out of more fundamental entities and yet are ‘novel’ or ‘irreducible’ with respect to them. (For example, it is sometimes said that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain.) In other words, emergent properties are those properties that arise by combining parts into a whole but yet are not found in the parts themselves. A complex ant colony is considered an emergent property of ants. The interesting thing is that the only creatures that recognize emergence are humans. So, as much as we may enjoy A Bug’s Life, we need to remember that it isn’t a story about an ant but rather a story about a human in bug’s clothing.

Interestingly, emergence can only be recognized if one is able to mentally step outside one’s biology. However, once you survey a landscape you cease to be a garden gnome and actually become a landscaper. If this is true then it raises two important questions. First, how is it possible for the immaterial to emerge from the material? And second, why are humans the only creatures capable of recognizing it?

As one involved in the medical sciences, I don’t see how it is possible for a chemical to step outside itself because once it does it ceases to be a chemical and ends up becoming a chemist. I don’t see ants studying their own societal structure, yet I see humans offer degrees in sociology. We may see a lizard bask in the sun but it is only the human that builds it a temple and then goes inside and worships it. You can argue about the evolutionary advantage of belief in an illusory God as a way to unite the tribe but that doesn’t explain how a plethora of proteins becomes a pantheon. Just because you bring together a stadium full of chemicals doesn’t mean that they will have a religious revival. Atheist scientists, fearing the clanging of a ghost in the biological machine, create “emergent property” amulets to ward off thoughts of the one true God.  Sadly, emergence has become a safe space to protect these atheist scientists from trigger words such as mind and spirit. I would argue that in reality “emergence” is really just science-speak for image-bearing. Humans don’t emerge from dust but they do if that dust breathes divine air.

In fairness, Christians must also explain the opposite phenomenon of a spirit God creating a physical reality, or the immaterial becoming material. If the universe arose from a singularity then what caused that singularity? Something cannot cause itself. You cannot continue to appeal to material causation because you eventually run into the logically impossible infinite regress of causes. Something came from nothing. How did matter come from no-matter? It is a difficult problem if you deny the existence of anything non-material but becomes more plausible if you accept that a self-existent supernatural entity exists. Since the world appears designed it is much more plausible to believe that physical reality came from an immaterial thought rather than mindless matter. The world looks much more like a grand idea than a throw of the dice.

Today, there is a wide measure of agreement, which on the side of physics approaches almost to unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.  (Sir James Jeans)

I find that the creation account in Genesis helps shed some light on this problem. First, it implies that God existed before the universe appeared. Second, the universe was created out of nothing (ex nihilo). Third, it describes how God’s immaterial thought became a physical reality through divine speech (ex cogitatio). A self-existent spirit God had an idea that He spoke into existence. Speech is fascinating because it involves an immaterial thought becoming a physical sound wave. Unlike the other ancient creation stories where the world is created through divine promiscuity or dismemberment, Genesis portrays a thinking God who speaks His mind. The world was not conceived in a one-night stand or pieced together with the severed body parts of a butchered god but was given a voice by a thinking God. Even more stunning is the fact that the only creatures that recognize this divine complex thought are those created in His image. Emergence, as it turns out, is the image-bearing divine voice recognition software that allows us to understand what God has said.

While Intelligent Design is often accused of promoting a God of the gaps argument, I would suggest that materialism is guilty of the same crime by using “emergence” as an immaterial entity of the gaps. In a purely materialistic world, there is no spirit, dust is dirt. However, in God’s world, the physical world lives and moves and has its being in God’s spirit, dust is divinely inspired. The Good News is that most of us have already set off on our spiritual road trips, we just need to be careful that our faith doesn’t get sideswiped by emerging materialistic traffic.

Photo by Denys Nevozhai on Unsplash