Colin McGinn and the location problem of consciousness in a metaphysical naturalistic worldview

In the Mysterious Flame, atheist philosopher of mind Colin McGinn presses this question:

How can mere matter originate consciousness? How did evolution convert the water of biological tissue into the wine of consciouness? Consciousness seems like a radical novelty in the universe, not prefigured by the after-effects of the Big Bang, so how did it contrieve to spring into being from what preceded it? (pp.13-14)

This is a hard problem for naturalism, because in that worldview the universe is essentially material, and matter is not conscious. Consciousness is not a property of matter, as current physics has shown. As physicist Marco Biagini comments:

Quantum physics tells us nothing about consciousness, and this fact tells us much about the nature of consciousness: it tells us that consciousness is not a physical process.

But in theism, the fundamental reality, namely God, is pure consciousness (i.e. God is, among other things, a personal conscious being), a reason why in theism, consciousness is a necessary, not a contingent, feature of reality. The existence of consciousness it not a "radical novelty" in theism, but the essence, the basic principle and the underlying cause of the whole of reality.

This is why the existence of consciousness offers a very good argument for God's existence and against naturalism.

Note, by the way, that McGinn's questions include reference to the Big Bang as the event in which the physical reality begun, an event which cannot explain the eventual emergence of consciousness. But the Big Bang itself, understood as the beginning of nature, is inexplicable too in naturalism, and this is why a leading atheist philosophers like Quentin Smith has conceded that, on atheism, the most rational position is to think that universe "came from nothing, by nothing and for nothing... We should instead acknowledge our foundation in nothingness and feel awe at the marvellous fact that we have a chance to participate briefly in this incredible sunburst that interrupts without reason the reign of non-being ." (Theism, Atheism and the Big Bang Comsology. P.135. emphasis in blue added)

Agnostic philosopher Anthony Kenny comments:

A proponent of the Big Bang theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the universe came from nothing and by nothing  (The Five Ways: St. Thomas Aquinas' Proofs of God's Existence, p. 66)

Given that for naturalism the existence of nature is the ultimate reality, the coming into being of such reality is itself inexplicable. Such explanation only can come from a cause which trascends the physical reality.

So, naturalism is incapable of explaining both the Big Bang as consciousness; both facts which are in home in theism. This is why both of these facts are strong evidence for theism and against naturalism. 

Natrualist Alex Rosenberg has suggested that consciousness is not a source of information about itself:

if the mind is the brain (and scientism can’t allow that it is anything else), we have to stop taking consciousness seriously as a source of knowledge or understanding about the mind, or the behavior the brain produces... Since physics has excluded the existence of anything concrete but nonspatial, and since physics fixes all the facts, we have to give up this last illusion consciousness foists on us.

Therefore, if consciousness provides us with a reliable source of information about ourselves, it follows that naturalism is false (as theism predicts).

Atheism is (in many cases at least) a commitment of the will, a deep existential decision or choice made by a person, not a position rooted on the evidence. This position is then rationalized, in order to make the atheist believer to think that his own position is rational or based on hard scientific evidence. Sheer self-delusion.

As consequence, we shouldn't expect that atheists will be sensible to consciousness as a fact which is at variance with naturalism and in home with theism.

For many atheists, everything (including "Nothingness" or "not reason at all") is better than God.

There is not point in making such people to change their minds.