The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism

Moreland's monograph presents a comprehensive philosophical defense of substance dualism against naturalistic accounts of human personhood, arguing that key features of human consciousness and identity cannot be adequately explained within a naturalistic framework. The work systematically examines various naturalistic theories of mind and personhood, demonstrating their explanatory inadequacies when confronted with phenomena such as consciousness, intentionality, free will, rationality, and personal identity through time.

The author employs a multi-faceted philosophical methodology, combining phenomenological analysis of first-person experience with rigorous examination of contemporary philosophy of mind. Moreland engages extensively with leading naturalist philosophers including David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, Paul Churchland, and John Searle, while also drawing on historical figures such as Thomas Reid and contemporary dualists like Richard Swinburne. His approach integrates insights from neuroscience, cognitive science, and empirical psychology to build a cumulative case against physicalism.

Central to Moreland's argument is the claim that human persons bear the imago Dei - the image of God - which manifests in irreducible mental properties that resist naturalistic reduction. He contends that consciousness exhibits features like qualia, unity, and intentionality that cannot emerge from purely physical processes. The work examines various naturalistic strategies including eliminative materialism, property dualism, and emergentism, arguing that each fails to account for the phenomenological data of human experience or collapses into incoherence.

The monograph's significance for the God debate lies in its indirect argument for theism through anthropology. Moreland maintains that if human persons possess immaterial souls with the distinctive properties he identifies, this provides evidence for a theistic worldview in which God creates humans with a special ontological status. The failure of naturalism to explain human personhood thus becomes part of a broader case for theistic metaphysics.

The work represents a sophisticated contribution to contemporary debates in philosophy of mind while explicitly connecting these discussions to theological questions. By arguing that human mental life points beyond naturalism, Moreland challenges the prevalent physicalist consensus in philosophy of mind and neuroscience. His detailed engagement with empirical findings and naturalistic theories, combined with careful phenomenological analysis, makes this a significant work for those examining the implications of human consciousness for questions about God's existence and nature.