There are many Christians who consider the Resurrection to be a myth. The story does not need to gain its power from being literally true. Some religious thinkers who held views along these lines include - Paul Tillich, Don Cupitt, Rudolf Bultmann, John Shelby Spong, David Friedrich Strauss. I grew up within the Baptist tradition and was sent to a religious school. We were taught to read the Bible as allegorical. — Tom Storm

That is very interesting. I have two questions around this belief structure. Do these thinkers have a different conception of what God the Father is like? And how do they imagine Christian salvation working? Does it still work through faith in Jesus?

Christianity historically requires the belief that Jesus conquered sin and death, and that we therefore are (or will be) saved from sin and death (by Jesus). But maybe by "belief in Christianity" one means something entirely different, like, "Trying to be a nice person." Certainly you can try to be a nice person even if you do not believe that Jesus was raised; you just can't hold that Jesus conquered sin and death. — Leontiskos

This seems to be the best answer; you do not resort to a redefinition of Christianity in any sense.

That's the only way philosophical and scientific materialism can frame the problem - mind as a product of material causation, as is everything else — Wayfarer

Even if we assume a non-materialist metaphysical position, perhaps one of cartesian dualism or property dualism, I cannot see any possible theoretical framework where qualia or consciousness can arise without something it interacts through like a brain--something to provide sensory and computational abilities. Consciousness may be irreducible to the physical but that does not imply that it could exist without or prior to the physical.

That is definitely how I think of it. Curious to hear arguments against this theory.

To touch on philosophy of religion, if qualia are ontologically dependent on matter/body/brain, then I would imagine this can be proposed as a sort of argument against a classical theistic god (since if god precedes the physical universe, then the "mind of god" would make no sense as qualia are ontologically dependent on matter/body/brain).

5. Minds have no perceivable structure of their own.
6. Thus, minds cannot be perceived or perceive themselves (from (4) and (5)).
— Brenner T

I am not equated with Berkeley's theory, but within this theory couldn't a mind be equated to the perceptions it holds? If all that exists is qualia, then the mind must *be* the totality of such qualia, right? It side-steps the issue with assuming they are seperate and that both must precede the other. (I think your argument works well against the seperated position though). — Ourora Aureis

Great point- I definitely agree.

I feel intuitively that the argument could be extended to the equated position of mind and perceptions. I commented on it a little bit in a reply I just made to someone else's response, but it would require some sort of argument that states that the idea of "qualia" in a subjective idealist cosmology is akin to saying "nothing comes from something." What would be the cause of perception (qualia) if there's nothing that is perceptible and no pre-existing ideas with which the perception can build off of.

Perhaps all of metaphysics all boils down to irreducible guesses that something comes from nothing, and for that reason it can be a pursuit of theoretical simplicity instead of correctness.

7. Thus, a mind alone cannot perceive itself.
— Brenner T

My mind is here perceiving itself right now. There... and again... Maybe you should clarify what you mean by "perceive. — T Clark

I don't quite know how to word this it's such a weird thought experiment. But I think what I meant to say was something like this:

So, I imagine you are, in some way, a conscious entity. There is something it is like to be you. That's roughly how I will define consciousness. Now, imagine you could conceptually remove your brain from the universe, as well as all matter and space. If you were a physicalist then I imagine you would believe the bits of consciousness you had would also disappear along with matter and space, if you were an epiphenomenalist I imagine you would see the possibility of consciousness collapsing as there is no more integrated biological system for it to "see through" or be logically supervenient to, and if you were a Cartesian dualist I imagine you would now imagine a vacuum devoid of time and space but with your "distinct conscious substance" still in existence. We'll call this "a mind alone." For clarification, I'll call the "conscious substance" your mind (in opposition to your brain, which is a purely physical system). Now, with no brain for your mind to "interact through," no brain to produce thoughts and ideas, and no external perceptible world, I can't see a way your "mind alone can perceive (be conscious of) itself." Or worded a different way, I don't see how there could be somehting-it-is-like-to-be a "mind alone."

Don't know if that cleared up anything...

But in short my line of reasoning then is that if there is nothing it is like to be a "mind alone," then the idea of a primordial God that preceded his creation would infer that he was once a "mind alone," and if there was nothing it is like to be that God, then it seems equivalent to nothing existing at all.

If consciousness is the "what-it-is-like-to-be"ness of something, then if there is nothing-it-is-like-to-be, then it is functionally not conscious. And if all that exists is consciousness in that scenario, then it is equivalent to nothing existing at all. And thus saying "a conscious entity (God) existed before all of creation, matter, space, and time, seems equivalent to saying "nothing existed before all of creation, matter, space, and time."

Consciousness is something that knows of its own being even in the absence of stimuli. As René Descartes said, even if all belief in an external world is suspended, one will still retain a sense of one's own being, 'cogito ergo sum'. — Wayfarer

What theory of consciousness allows the statement "you could be conscious even without an external world" to be true? Doesn't epiphenomenalism hold that consciousness is reliant on the physical brain (or some structure of integrated matter at least), and thus if the physical does not exist then there could, by definition, be no consciousness? Or, put another way, there would be "nothing it is like to be something without a brain." Physicalist theories of consciousness seem to inevitably make the same deduction. And I cannot see how Cartesion-like dualistic theories of consciousness would posit anything different. Yes, I can infer that "I am" based on the realization that "I think," but that doesn't imply that "thinking" is a process that can exist independently of an external world. Aren't I just conscious of the thinking processes that are wholly produced by the brain? In other words, how would I "think" if I have no brain, or no physical system full of sensory and computational processes that my consciousness can be aware of?