Definitely sounds like a religious person trying to argue against logic and reason... using logic and reason. He is not the first, he won't be the last.
My interpretation was more-or-less diametrically opposite; I took it that he was a committed mechanist, arguing that the mind is a machine (he's a neurologist); and trying to deal with the (personal and unverifiable) experience of being conscious and having what seems to be will.
