“Consciousness is what you’d expect in a universe made by a mind” explains nothing. Why does consciousness depend so intimately on brain states, appear late in evolution, and vanish under anesthesia, if mind is fundamental?

This is the strongest empirical objection to mind-first views. The theistic reply is that God creating minds that are realized through brains is consistent with dependence on brain states, and that the timing and vulnerability of consciousness are facts about embodied minds rather than about mind as such. Critics find that reply ad hoc. The honest framing is that the correlation data favor physicalism on the surface, the hard problem favors non-physicalism at depth, and each side has to explain the other’s data. That is a comparison of fit, not a proof.