The Starting Point
Since life
cannot have arisen from chance, it cannot be explained by blind material processes.
Matter describes structures, chemistry reactions, physics movements, yet all of them already presuppose stable laws and explain neither meaning, finality, nor consciousness.
If life transcends matter, it cannot be entirely bound to it.
Materialism and Its Limits
One often hears the claim that consciousness is produced by the brain. Yet upon closer examination, we know nothing about this with certainty. We believe we observe correlations and functional dependencies, but there is no solid evidence for them, just as there is no explanation for the transition from lifeless matter to lived experience.
The concept of “emergence” serves here less as an explanation than as a way of concealing our ignorance. Nevertheless, such assumptions are frequently repeated as self-evident truths, even though logic calls for restraint, since even phenomena that depend on a substrate do not allow the conclusion that they are reducible to it.
Correlation is not identity, and presumption is neither knowledge nor truth.
Consciousness as a non-material reality
Since it cannot be proven that consciousness is produced by the brain, that it can be reduced to it, or that during material existence it is merely mediated by it, this lack of knowledge should invite us to reflection as much as to restraint. In this context, the analogy of a radio transmitting music offers an illuminating comparison in several respects. If a radio is destroyed, the music is no longer audible, yet nothing allows us to assume that it thereby ceases to exist as such, any more than it would be reasonable to claim that the radio is its source.
On the basis of the elements available to us, it therefore appears more coherent to consider matter as a support or an interface rather than as the origin of consciousness, especially since consciousness has neither weight, nor form, nor any measurable localization, whereas everything that is measured is measured by it.
A purely material process cannot destroy what lies outside its sphere of action.
Continuity rather than interruption
Nothing in rational experience points to an absolute interruption of being. Everything we observe in the order of reality follows principles of continuity and transformation, never total dissolution. Energy is not destroyed; it passes from one form to another. Matter itself does not cease to exist; it reorganizes. The stable and regular order we perceive in all domains bears witness to a logic of permanence within change, not to a chaos marked by absolute ruptures.
If, therefore, the measurable dimensions of reality are subject to this law of conservation, it is incoherent to assume that the immaterial dimension of life – consciousness – would be the only one to suddenly vanish into nothingness. Such an assumption does not constitute a rational conclusion, but rather an unreflective and arbitrary claim.
Logic argues in favor of continuity.
Meaning, a rational argument
Since life is not purely material, it necessarily possesses meaning. Meaning, however, always presupposes continuity, and a meaning that comes to an abrupt end contradicts itself, since it abolishes the very condition of its own validity.
It is moreover striking that even those who explicitly deny any finality in fact act as though meaning exists. They seek truth, argue, justify, and distinguish between the true and the false. All of these activities presuppose temporal continuity, which is possible only where actions carry significance beyond the instant.
Meaning does not arise in the moment and does not vanish with it; it is inseparable from continuity.
Logical conclusion
Since the beginning of Creation necessarily presupposes the existence of an information that precedes it, since life proceeds from this source of information, and since consciousness transcends the purely material order, it is incoherent to subject it to the fate of matter. The true question, therefore, is not to speculate about its nature, but to inquire into that Information which exists from all eternity; and if it has been able to order all things with perfection and permanence, it follows logically that it possesses absolute power over what it has brought into being.
Will you then persist in rejecting the fundamental reality?
This is nothing but a reminder to the worlds, and surely you will soon come to know of it.
(Qur’an 38:87–88)