Introduction
Modern science has vastly increased our understanding of the natural world. For the most part it has done so by considering only natural forces acting on matter and energy according to scientific laws, themselves discovered and developed by the same scientific methods. Along with these methods has arisen the philosophical view of naturalism or materialism, which is the belief that natural forces and matter/energy are the only things that exist in the Universe and account for the entire reality of our world. None of the science methodology or results requires that philosophical view, but it was a natural (so to speak) outcome for scientists working from materialist assumptions about the natural world.
As science has progressed however, in several areas it has run up against hard limits of how far our understanding and ability to explain reality can go. In this post, I present six areas of scientific endeavour where the research and exploration has come to the end of science's ability to delve deeper for causes and effects to explain fundamental aspects of reality, sometimes despite a century or more of trying to do just that. These six I refer to as Mysteries because we feel that there must surely be be some sort of explanation beyond each limit, but we realise that the scientific tools we have, or are likely to have any time soon, cannot take us much further. There are epistemic barriers to further advances of knowledge in those areas.
1. The Big Bang - A Beginning:
Coming out of the 19th century, most scientists held that the Universe must be eternal, without a beginning. They realized that if there was a beginning, then there must have been a cause for it that was apart from it; a Universe cannot cause itself. This faith was based on the metaphysical desire to avoid the need for a Creator. After all, up until then, science, including Darwin's theory (but see below) had seemed to do a fair job of making God unnecessary to explain the world and nature around us, thereby pushing God further away or making him less essential.
Hence, when Edwin Hubble and others found that the Universe appeared to be expanding, and realized that, going back in time, it must have had a beginning -- what we now call the Big Bang -- many cosmologists and astronomers balked and refused to accept the evidence. Some came up with clever theories to get around the need for a beginning; for instance, the Steady-State Universe, but those were all scientifically debunked and the Big Bang is now accepted by almost everyone.
At about 13.8 billion years ago, by current analyses, the Universe suddenly came into existence. Physics and cosmology indicate that happened in a sudden release of extreme energy density which expanded and cooled down to become radiation, matter, elementary particles, light, the elements, stars, galaxies, planets and eventually, life. You can find articles about the Big Bang, such as this one widely on the Internet.
Now if there was a point in time when the Universe came into being: time, space, the initial conditions and laws of physics, how did that happen? The principle of sufficient reason -- that everything that happens must have a reason for it to happen (AKA a cause) -- implies that something "before", "outside of", or "apart from" the Universe (which is all of nature) was needed to bring it into existence. Those scientists did not like the idea that the cause therefore, had to be supernatural.
The latest attempt from a materialist perspective to get around the Universe as a unique, supernaturally-caused event is the Multiverse hypothesis. I will not call it a theory as it is just a collection of mathematical models of supposed possibility. In this idea, some unknown but "natural" inflationary, Universe-generating cause (force, field, or law?) continually (seemingly forever) churns out random universes, of which ours is just one. More about this below, where the same hypothesis is invoked to "explain" other mysteries.
There is zero scientific evidence for the Multiverse! Indeed, there cannot be any since any other Universes would be impossible to detect from ours, and our physics cannot look back "before" the Big Bang. All our physical theories cease to apply at the assumed singularity at that starting point. Hence the Big Bang is the end point of backward looking cosmology, and science cannot peer further back or look "outside" for any Multiverse, including whatever laws might define or control it. They can wave their hands mathematically about "possibilities", but there is nothing to base it on other than hypothesis and wishful thinking; a true Mystery right at the beginning of time.
2. Fine Tuning - the Laws of Physics
As science progressed through the past five centuries, many laws of nature were discovered, covering various aspects of events in the world. As time went on, these laws were combined into deeper laws, covering broader and more fundamental areas of reality. Eventually, this consolidation resulted in just a few fundamental physical laws which appear to govern ALL natural processes in the Universe. Thus we have general relativity, quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, Maxwell's laws of electromagnetism, and so on. The laws have been shown to precisely account for natural events that have been studied.
Each of those laws has a mathematical form, usually fairly simple to write down as an equation (albeit more difficult to understand), and each of those equations has constants that provide the quantity for the results of the equations. Some of those fundamental physical constants are: the charge on an electron, the gravitational constant, the speed of light in a vacuum, the Planck constant, the fine-structure constant, and so on, more than a dozen in all to cover all aspects of known physics.
Science spent a long time discovering the fundamental laws and then measuring the values of those constants. Some of them have been measured to ten or more decimal point accuracy, and they all seem to be true constants in that they do not change over time or from place to place when carefully measured. Indeed, looking back into the cosmos, the same physics, and hence, the same fixed constants, appear to apply through all time and space as best we can tell by observation.
Initially, science was happy to define and measure these constants more and more accurately. However, some people then started to ask why do the constants have the values we find? Later, some began to wonder what the Universe would be like if the constants had different values? This led to a sort of cottage industry of exploring via analysis or simulation, what changes to one or more constant would do to physics and hence, the behaviour of the Universe around us.
Fairly soon it was realized that almost any significant change to any one of those constants would have made the Universe very different: for instance, no elements beyond hydrogen, all stars quickly become black holes, the Universe collapses back on itself right away, and so on. Indeed, almost any such change would make a Universe that could not allow or support life of any sort. This is the so-called "fine tuning problem". The "problem" was that such extreme fine tuning of so many constants screamed for an explanation: why? and how? Materialist scientists were baffled.
Several "explanations" were sought. One was, "Well the constants just are that way, no explanation is needed", which isn't very helpful. Another was, "Perhaps we'll discover some Grand Unified Theory that ties them all together into a single Theory of Everything (TOE)", the materialist promissory note as offered for many decades now. Of course, all such thoughts are based on the materialist assumption that there cannot be any purpose or direction for the Universe, nor for its development. Any such teleological aspect would smack of the supernatural, so must be denied. As was written by one scientist, said in a different context, "We cannot allow a divine foot in the door".
The latest "explanation" for the fine tuning is the Multiverse hypothesis described above. In this expanded version, the physical laws and their constants are also randomized by the magical Multiverse generator. Once in a zillion Universes, the physics turns out "just right" to allow life to come into being and exist. Since we exist, we must be in such a Universe, and there is no need to explain the fine tuning further. Just how the laws of physics and their constants are determined remains part of the Mystery of the Multiverse hypothesis.
This Multiverse extension suffers the same lack of evidence as reported above. Indeed, the number of possible Universes required to get even one with the right set of constants by random assignment becomes more than astronomical when you tally up the various degrees of tuning and probabilities for each constant, further stretching the credibility and totally ignoring any sense of parsimony or Ockham's razor. The fine tuning "problem" is thereby another fundamental limit or Mystery recognized by science, apart from the above Mystery of a beginning.
3. Fine Tuning - Initial Conditions
Apart from the laws of physics and their constants, at the moment of the Big Bang, the Universe had some initial state or set of conditions that, along with those laws, determined how it would unfold through time. Those conditions include the amount of energy, the balance of matter, the initial expansion rate and other aspects, each in the three dimensions of space. That initial state is largely independent of the physical laws; for instance, it is conceivable that a Universe could come into being with the same laws and constants, but with zero energy or matter so that it would always be an empty vacuum.
As for the physical constants, each of those initial conditions had to be precisely set to produce the Universe we find today. Set the density a bit higher or the expansion rate a bit lower and the baby Universe would collapse back on itself quickly due to gravity. Go the other way -- less energy, or more expansion -- and the universe would expand so rapidly that elements beyond lithium would never form, much less stars and planets.
One such clue here is the "flatness problem"; the Universe we see today appears flat -- with no curvature detected. To get that 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang required precise tuning of the initial state. Similarly, the Universe looks much the same at ten billion light-year distance in every direction. Since at no time since the Big Bang has the Universe near one edge been in contact with the Universe at the opposite edge, contact being limited by the speed of light, how did the two edges turn out almost identical? The answer is that the initial conditions must have provided a very uniform density and expansion, also with very low entropy.
Once again we have a case of extreme fine tuning that was needed at the Big Bang to produce the Universe we know and love. Moreover, this fine tuning is independent of the physical constants' tuning, so it too counts as a separate Mystery that physics and cosmology are unable to delve deeper into. One can perhaps pretend that the laws that governed the Big Bang somehow brought with them their own "just so" initial conditions, but that would be wishful hand waving as there is no theory to support it.
Here again, the Multiverse trope is raised to say that the initial conditions were also randomized at the Big Bang and we are, of course, in the lucky Universe. But the improbabilities keep accumulating to the point where an almost infinite number of randomized Universes is needed to get even one "right" for us, thereby stretching credibility even further. All that effort and wishful thinking to avoid any hint of teleology or direction in the Big Bang and its cause.
4. Abiogenesis - the Origin of Life (OOL)
Science textbooks and most scientists seem to believe that life got started on planet Earth by a combination of simple chemical mechanisms, working to bring together pre-existing molecules to produce the first life form; a simple cell capable of reproducing itself. This narrative began in Darwin's "warm little pond" idea, and was bolstered by the Oparin-Haldane primordial soup idea, the famous Miller-Urey experiment, and subsequent research, to the point where many people now believe that science has created life in the lab and knows pretty much how it got started on Earth over three billion years ago. Just look at Wikipedia or almost any biology textbook.
In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Despite a century of speculation and experiment, science has not come close to creating life in the lab using conditions remotely like those on our planet back then -- or anywhere else. Indeed, as science has advanced and we learn more about the intricacies of biology, the origin of life problem has gotten much more difficult in recent decades. The barriers to creating life have become more and higher to assail.
Without going into details, the most basic life form requires four types of building blocks: four nucleotides (all left handed and attached to ribose sugar), many (up to 20) amino acids (all left-handed), various particular sugar molecules (all right handed, I'm told) and several specific lipid molecules (also single-handed). These have to combine in specific ways to make up the parts of even the most basic cell. Normally, enzymes and proteins work to put the molecules together within a pre-existing cell, but none of that would be available before the first cell came into existence.
Even if you had all the correct molecules available in the proper chirality (handedness) purity and concentrations, life would never come about because other reactions and processes would soon consume or destroy the molecules you had. When OOL researchers do their experiments, they start with purified, homo-chiral molecules (biologically produced) and closely control the reactants and conditions to get one reaction to go a little bit in the way they want, totally ignoring the fact that their experiment is quite unlike the early Earth. Then their one result is touted as a major step forward in OOL work. This, along with broad-brush assumptions are seen over and over in the literature.
The biggest barrier however, to undirected abiogenesis is the information problem. The most simple possible lifeform -- scientists have pared back real bacteria as far as possible while retaining the ability to life and reproduce -- requires some 300 or more proteins, each more than 100 amino acids long, coded into perhaps a megabit of DNA data. Precise information of that quantity and nature cannot arise randomly by any known natural means. OOL researchers largely ignore this ultimate probabilistic problem.
In short, no one has created life in the lab or come anywhere close to doing that using processes or conditions anything like what could have been on barren planet Earth. Any articles saying otherwise are essentially lying to you, and any books "explaining" abiogenesis are little more than wishful hand-waving. Dr. James Tour, a top synthetic organic chemist, has a series of videos discussing the intricate details of the OOL research problem. In this one, starting at the eight minute mark, he makes it quite clear that no one knows, or is anywhere close to knowing how life began on the Earth or anywhere else.
This then is another Mystery discovered and explored at the edge of materialistic science. With no true solution or answer in sight, and little real progress being made, notwithstanding the frequent scientific press releases and insistences otherwise, this looks very much like an end point beyond which science cannot take us much further. Negligible advances and lots of wishful speculating do not a credible OOL theory make!
5. Evolution and the Origin of Species
Well, you may say, once life gets started, by whatever means, everybody knows that Darwin and subsequent evolutionists have clearly demonstrated how life developed and diversified through the eons in a well-constructed "tree of life", to get the wide range of species and ecosystems we see around us today. Here too, textbooks and other explanatory sources are adamant that "evolution", understood as Darwinian natural selection working on random variations, has been proven beyond reasonable doubt and accounts for all of life. Various experiments and "proofs" are offered as evidence and the story of life is deemed solid. Just look at the Wikipedia page if you want to know for sure. Such is the neo-Darwinian synthesis as the current theory is known.
But not so fast and loose! The tree of life idea, the presumption of natural selection as the process for all evolution (here understood as the known history of life -- rather different from the supposed "story of life"), is based on a materialistic assumption or presupposition. If only natural processes are allowed then something like Darwinian evolution must have happened since we are here! Once again, design, purpose, direction and Mind are simply ruled out by the naturalist perspective, by metaphysical fiat, an ideological assumption, not through a scientific finding.
The reality is quite different; the modern theory of evolution is on shaky ground these days as an explanation of anything more than adaptive tweaks to pre-existing life forms; i.e. microevolution. Yes, natural selection works to adjust populations of a species to changes in their environment, but those changes are small, usually reversible, and do not involve anything truly new; no new feature like a bat's wing, or process like insect metamorphosis. Yet many truly new species (and all higher level groupings) have some novel feature or major change (macroevolution) that cannot credibly have come about by any undirected Darwinian mechanism. As some evolutionists wrote, Darwinism explains "the survival of the fittest, but not the arrival of the fittest". Natural selection needs a population of varied individuals to work on. It cannot create anything truly new.
The varied "evidences" invoked in support of Darwinian evolution are all either examples of simple microevolution (peppered moths, cichlid fishes, finch beaks, etc.) or else are "just so stories", not involving any detailed evolutionary mechanisms. The fossil record too does not support Darwin, as he himself knew. Species first appear fully formed in the fossil record, without apparent precursors, endure for so many millions of years without significant change, and then go extinct, leaving no apparent spin-offs. Yes, there are occasional "missing links" and many supposed examples of evolutionary chains, but those are usually just attempts to draw lines among similar species, based on assuming the theory itself -- i.e. circular reasoning. Indeed, the fossil record shows several times in the past when a multitude of totally new lifeforms came into being in a geological instant, without any credible precursors. The Cambrian explosion is the most famous example of this.
I could go on about orphan genes, irreducible complexity, the waiting time problems, mutational rates and probabilities, devolution, protein sequence space rarity, and so on. I have written prior posts about some of these, but the best place to look for details are the Intelligent Design web sites (see below) which present numerous papers, articles and videos showing how Darwinism (in any form) does not explain some well-known aspect of life. One favourite is the supposed evolution of whales from a dog-like animal. An incredible number of major genomic changes would have been required, as well as lengthy development times to turn a dog species into a whale species, yet evolutionists claim all this happened in a brief five million years, all the time allowed in the fossil record between their supposed starting point and the first true whale fossils.
At the molecular level, no one has found a credible Darwinian pathway for producing even one novel protein fold, as would be needed for almost any new feature or biological function. Here too, as we learn more science (biology, genetics, biochemistry, etc.) random Darwinian mechanisms look less and less likely of producing even one truly new species, let alone all of them! So once again, science has come up against an explanatory wall that seems impassible with the tools now in use, despite longstanding attempts to push or work around it; another Mystery for our collection, again one arising from the insistence to consider only natural mechanisms and undirected actions.
6. Human Consciousness, Mind and Soul
As my last mystery for now, I offer the human mind as a clearly known aspect of reality that is nevertheless a Mystery from a materialist perspective. Every normal adult knows he or she is conscious, experiences consciousness most of each day, and has inner thoughts, feelings, introspections, and so on -- a true and unique "self" with awareness, intent and free will. Moreover, we assume, based on clear evidence, that other adults also have minds, internal mental activity and their own inner self. The "I" that is writing this is as much mental as physical.
Materialism assumes that the mind is simply what the brain does, that each of us is just a "meat computer". However, such thinking runs into the "hard problem of consciousness", which is that no one knows how the neurons and synapses in our brains produce the thoughts, feelings. memories and personalities that make us who we are and that we experience all the time. Attempts around this range from deep dives into neuroscience without addressing the "qualia" of mental life, to the outright denial of consciousness as a mere "illusion", leaving one to wonder who sees the illusion if our mental life does not exist? The same materialist perspective leads to determinism, denial of free will, and balks at any sort of "dualism" that calls for an immaterial spirit or soul.
Others have written far more about this than I could, and there are books on all sides. However, there is a growing body of evidence that undermines the materialist's position. First is that "consciousness" is notoriously difficult to define; we each have it, but what exactly is it? Each writer on the subject seems to have a different understanding of the term, and many do not even bother to provide their definition. Then there are the numerous examples of seemingly non-physical phenomena that humans experience: spiritual visits, prophetic dreams, out-of-body experiences, and especially near-death experiences. There are also medical findings that do not fit with a materialist understanding, such as people with minimal brain acting fully human, or people deep in dementia "waking up" and speaking normally just before they die. Add to these the many religious experiences that continue to occur despite us being told there is no such thing as spirit.
With this accumulating evidence, albeit some of it difficult to accept as "scientific", the idea that humans have an immaterial soul or spirit remains the solid belief of most humans. Indeed, even in some scientific circles, "panpsychism, and its pantheistic offspring are gaining serious consideration. Against this, materialism has little to offer beyond denial, vain attempts to explain away consciousness, and pretensions that mere neurological extremes can (or will in future) explain all experiences..
Consciousness is perhaps not as clearly a Mystery as the first five, but it is surely mysterious enough in its own right. Notwithstanding hubris to the contrary, "consciousness" has not been scientifically explained, and most feel that there is somehow more to us than our brains and body. While neuroscience will continue to learn more about brains, the gap between brain and mind or soul seems as large as ever. The chasm between what neurons are doing and the subjective experience of the individual inner person is perhaps getting better defined, but is unlikely to be bridged by materialism any time soon.
The Alternative MYSTERY
So now we have six fundamental scientific Mysteries. There are probably more that could be added, but the above six will suffice. Don't take my word for any of this, but please do look below the surface of materialist accounts that pretend to explain these Mysteries without appeal to the supernatural. These scientific end points to knowledge are not hard and fast brick walls in that further research may pick up a few more details. But each one looks like a firm limit to where science can go, so that they remain true end points for purely materialistic discovery and explanation. They are all more than simple "gaps" in our knowledge and understanding. Indeed, science itself has discovered these epistemic barriers and delineated how they truly are the end of what we can know from a naturalistic perspective. They represent the limits of how far our materialist assumptions can take us!
Fortunately, there has always been and there remains today an alternative to the limiting materialist worldview assumed in most of science. To quote Hamlet, "There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy". This alternative is, of course, the supernatural realm. If the metaphysics of materialism constrain what can be known and understood, humanity is free to look beyond nature and scientific theories for causes and explanations.
This points to theism as an explanatory feature of reality: God truly exists, and an omnipotent mind (AKA creator) can provide a cause and explanation for each of the above Mysteries. Instead of six end points or Mysteries arising in science, we can invoke one MYSTERY, the supernatural realm of divine action, causation beyond nature, the "first cause", the Mind behind the Universe, or any other description for the creator and sustainer of the world we live in.
This leap from natural to supernatural is not as extreme, unpalatable and shocking as many scientists, especially atheists, would have us believe. After all, most of humanity believes in some sort of supernatural phenomenon, force or Being, usually a powerful Agent of some sort able to guide reality, hear prayers, make changes, and so on for its own purposes. Religions of all sort take it for granted that divine revelation, care, support and judgement are very real. Then there are the miracles, near-death experiences, visitations, and other spiritual events that many people report. While materialists like to dismiss all this, they cannot say that supernaturalism is impossible or has been disproved, nor that accepting it is unusual or unscientific somehow.
Just for the record then, I will now briefly describe how the existence of God (AKA the MYSTERY) can explain each of the six Mysteries presented above. God is traditionally understood to be eternally existent and outside of space and time. He is also all powerful and all knowing. Thus he is the perfect Agent to create a Universe and direct it where he wants it to go. I refer here to the God of typical theism, but any cosmic Mind, universal Spirit, or wise pantheon would suffice in his place, at least for this discussion.
Mysteries 1, 2 and 3
I will combine the first three Mysteries in this initial explanation, since they all apply to the Big Bang. If God chose a Big Bang approach to the initial creation event, that was his prerogative since he is eternal all powerful, and all knowing. As a mere finite mortal, of course, I do not know "how" this was done. It is enough to posit such a Being to explain how supernatural causation can bring about the Universe. That does not "prove" God's existence, but it opens up options beyond the narrow confines of materialist metaphysics.
One model to make the idea of being outside the Universe and able to create it more accessible to us mere humans, is the idea of a computer simulation like an engineering analysis, or more familiarly, a video game. In creating a video game like The Legend of Zelda, the programmer first decides what sort of game world (Universe) he wants, with guiding rules (laws of physics) and content (initial conditions). To the "people" in the game, the simulation is their "real" world. I wrote much more about this in a separate post some time ago, so I won't repeat it here.
The game programmer is free to create the game world any way he feels like, although it is usually better to make it intelligible, coherent and consistent, with rules that do not change arbitrarily or without reason. Similarly, he can populate the world with whatever he wants, although usually it does not start with a Big Bang, followed by eons of waiting for things to come into being. Moreover, the programmer is usually not part of his creation, yet can observe all of it, and he has his own independent space, time and life outside the simulation that the characters in the game are unaware of, unless told as part of the game (divine revelation?).
This model perhaps makes it easier for us to envisage how God could create the Universe from "outside", according to his own purposes and methods unknown to us. Note especially that the game world (Universe) does not exist "before" its creation except in the programmer's mind and plans. The programmer sets it in motion at t = 0 and then lets it run. There is no t < 0 in that world, just as there is no "before the Big Bang " in our Universe.
As part of his creation work, God would have had his own purposes for the Universe, presumably including complex life forms that could (in principle) recognize and interact with him. His wisdom would suffice to plan ahead, knowing (or analysing) how to set up the laws of physics and adjust their constants to allow for that end. Similarly, he could set the initial conditions to his liking, to allow the Universe to unfold with minimal interference.
That is how an engineer sets up a physical simulation: specifying the starting point (arrangement of material items and their properties, ambient conditions, velocities, etc.) trusting the simplified laws of physics built into the software program, and then letting the simulation run in its own time frame, to see how the forces and interactions unfold as time goes on. This is a common task in science and engineering to "test" designs or physical scenarios before or without actually building them in the "real world".
Allowing the possibility of supernatural planning and causation, it is easy to see how God could create the Universe (a beginning) and set it up (all the fine tunings) to develop according to his wishes. Accept the one divine MYSTERY and the first three Mysteries fade.
Mysteries 4 and 5
The next two Mysteries, abiogenesis and the evolution of life, can also be explained together. Once he had a Universe with elements, stars and planets, along with precise rules governing them all, perhaps God's next step is to create life -- something quite different from rocks, gases, stars, radiation and other materials, yet made from them. As we saw above, creating life from non-life is a very difficult and complex task for human scientists operating in laboratories. However, God understands all and can plan things in meticulous detail. He could envisage which combinations of atoms and molecules might be made to develop chemical complexity with desired properties, and then arrange for that to happen under his own controlled conditions. I don't pretend to know how God did that. Perhaps he has some angelic biotechnicians to carry out his will?
Once he had enough building blocks, God could put them together in ever more complicated ways until some form of stable and self-replicating, survivable thing had been assembled. He could then add information (genome extensions) and biomechanisms (enzymes, nano-bio-machines) , and tweak and adjust them until a true robust lifeform was achieved, which could be released on the new planet Earth at the appropriate time.
If that sounds like what humans in OOL research might be doing, so much the better. They are attempting to use intelligent design to "create" life in laboratory conditions. In perhaps a few decades, they may succeed! However, that is a far cry from undirect abiogenesis on the early planet Earth. If humans can foresee doing this, then surely God with more knowledge, ability, time and purpose can do the same? Of course those humans will merely be recreating life, or perhaps tweaking existing life, while God was starting from scratch.
God, of course could set up the biomolecular machines and cellular processes to do what he wanted. He would also set up the information transfer and processing mechanisms (DNA, RNA, proteins, etc.) to work. At later times, he could insert additional information into existing genomes to add new features, differentiating various life forms, and making life more complex, varied and interesting. In this way over the eons, God, perhaps with angelic helpers would produce the entire tree of life. Some creatures would go extinct along the way, making room for new ones. Occasionally, God could even arrange for a mass extinction event if he wanted life to shift in a different direction; from reptilian to mammalian perhaps.
This is just a quick thumbnail to say that, with foresight, free will, eternity and ability, God (the supernatural MYSTERY) could plan and create life, then develop it in all its abundance just as he pleased. An active mind can do so much more than a passive materialist world. I have a mental image of angels tinkering with genetics through time to create some wondrous and bizarre animals and plants, widening the tree of life along the way. This could perhaps extend to fallen angels fiddling to produce malaria, cancer, poisonous plants, or what have you. I'm just speculating now!
Mystery #6
For the final Mystery of human consciousness, pointing to an immaterial source (God) for the explanation of an immaterial soul or mind is the obvious answer. Just as God can create space, time, energy and matter, so he can create souls or spirits, himself being primarily spiritual in nature. After all, in most religions, there are other spirit beings: angels, demons or whatever, with different names and attributes. Thus the ultimate MYSTERY of the creator God could readily generate human souls or spirits from the ultimate spiritual source, and then associate each one with a human body (as in dualism), thereby creating complete human persons.
While this seems like the obvious answer for religious people, it will not convince dyed-in-the-wool materialist atheists. As with any of the other five Mysteries, they will raise objections. In this case some of those are good questions to study and ponder. The principal "problem" for dualism is, "How does an immaterial substance (spirit) interact with material substances (brain) for perception and action?" This has always been a soft spot in dualism, but there are several possible answers people have raised. Perhaps I will write about that in a future post, but for now, invoking God as the creator of human souls and minds is the clearest answer to this last Mystery.
Conclusion
So what now? In the end, it is up to each of us to choose our world view, be it marrow materialism, rational Theism, some sort of panpsychism, random whatever-ism, or any other metaphysical base for our understanding of the world. However, if it is materialism vs. Theism, there are good arguments in favour of the latter, and the former is becoming less tenable as evidence piles up.
One final consideration is parsimony: which is better one big divine MYSTERY or six confounding materialist Mysteries? Should we prefer infinities of Multiverses over one Universe, carefully designed to be suitable for life? Do we invoke the impossible random accumulation of molecules generating a life form over the capability of a powerful Mind carefully assembling building blocks created along the way? Do we believe in new lifeforms, novel features and complex creatures popping into existence fully formed through the magic of natural selection, or the careful introduction of new body plans, characteristics and abilities through time by a wise Intelligent Designer? And should we accept the rise of human intellect and consciousness through the magic of "emergence" via Darwinian processes over the integration of immaterial conscious spirits into human progenitors by a caring God, looking forward to other minds to interact with? Your choice.
You can perhaps argue any one of these and convince yourself that there will yet be a credible materialist explanation that does away with the divine option. That is what Darwin and his followers believed, and what most of science assumed throughout the 2oth century, but that position seems to be getting less and less tenable as science learns more about its true limits. And then there would still be the other five Mysteries. What is the probability that all six will ever be explained away by assuming only natural processes? That improbability would, of course, be on top of the miniscule probabilities for each of the six as outlined above under materialist assumptions.
My own perspective on all this is clear. I accept the existence of God as revealed in the Bible, believed in Christianity, and as the ultimate Creator of the reality we live in. You are free to adopt your own view of these mysteries, but a solid worldview should be based on solid evidence, reason and logic, not just on some ideological assumptions you are unwilling to question. Christianity has stood up to aggressive -- even hostile -- questioning from numerous perspectives for almost 2000 years, and has stood firm. My argument here amounts to saying that the findings of modern science in the past century have only strengthened the Theistic view of reality, and the current trends in fundamental science seem to be providing more evidence pointing in that direction every decade.
General References
Mike Kent's video series deals with several of these Mysteries:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsT9yzG1E3JxvXGbKPCyD7EWKk8dFFW79
Steven Meyer's book, Return of the God Hypothesis covers some of these mysteries in great detail:
https://www.amazon.ca/Return-God-Hypothesis-Scientific-Discoveries/dp/0062071513/
Some good starting points for Intelligent Design articles and background info: https://scienceandculture.com/
https://intelligentdesign.org/
Mind Matters is a site for articles on consciousness and dualism:
https://mindmatters.ai/
There are also podcasts on much of these subjects:
https://idthefuture.com/
