Materialism's Consciousness Problem

I mentioned yesterday that I'm currently reading John Lennox's book on AI titled 2084 and the AI Revolution. In Chapter 11 Lennox mentions the belief among some materialists that the brain is a computer made of meat and that computers will someday be able to do all the things human beings are able to do and do them better.

Of course there are some things that computers can do better than humans can do them right now, but there's a long list of capacities and abilities that humans have that computers don't have and, what's more, it's hard to imagine how they ever could have them. Here's a partial list:

• Human beings have beliefs, doubts, hopes, regrets, resentments, frustrations, worries, intentions, desires, values, a sense of being a self, and a sense of past, present, and future.
• Human beings experience awareness, understanding, grief, curiosity, boredom, interest, pride, color, warmth, embarrassment, expectation, trust, gratitude, pain, pleasure, guilt, and affection.
• Human beings appreciate beauty and humor, can apprehend abstract concepts, and are creative.
• Human beings can know and can feel.

Machines can do none of this and, indeed, it's hard to grasp how any material object, no matter how complex, could have any of the capabilities that we associate with human consciousness. That's one reason why many philosophers are of the opinion that our material bodies and brains are not all there is to us.

It's why many believe that we're also comprised of an immaterial mind or soul. In fact, some philosophers would say that we are souls and that we have bodies.

If that's true then, contrary to what materialists believe, physical death might not mark the end of our existence. The death of the body might be like the birth of a child, a transition to a brand new existence.