Nuggets from Cosmos, Creator, and Human Destiny

When asked to offer his “gut feeling,” Carl Sagan replied, “I try not to think with my gut.” Dawkins gives his approval to this rejoinder. However, the physical brain (like the gut and the entire body) is merely a complex arrangement of protein molecules. Protein is not conscious and does not think, no matter what part of the body it is located. Doesn’t the brain think? Of course, it doesn’t. Does protein think? Certainly not, but physically, that’s all the brain is. Whether it’s in the muscles of the arms or in the brain, protein in any form does not think. Dawkins, of course, disagrees. He must, because according to most atheists, matter is all that exists. “The evolution of complex life, indeed its very existence in a universe obeying physical laws, is wonderfully surprising…. Surprise is an emotion that can exists only in the brain, which is the product of that very surprising process.”