How can we trust our thoughts about how we got here?

Question

If our faculties for reasoning are a product of natural selection, then they exist because they facilitate survival, which is not necessarily the same as them existing because they impart objective truth. Many animals can be conditioned towards a specific behavior through a stimulus/response mechanism utilizing their biological senses, which is how natural selection would work. We would be "trained" to keep certain mental processes because they produce a response to environmental stimuli better suited for survival. C.S. Lewis wrote "But it is not conceivable that any improvement of responses could ever turn them into acts of insight. The relation between response and stimulus is utterly different from that between knowledge and the truth known." Evolution of more acute eyesight could not bring a species to a knowledge of how light and sight function. How, then, can we trust the ability of our mental capacities if they originated in this manner?

If the value of our reasoning is in doubt, one cannot try to establish it by reasoning. The creationist avoids this dilemma; reason originates from a source which defines and provides the capacity.

Answer 1

I enjoy the interesting question. The logic implying random processes ultimately arriving at self-awareness (or, alternately, revelation and appreciation of truth) stumbles at every step. As a nominal programmer I've been trying to figure what that last addition equation finally results in self-actualization - I haven't found it yet. One must be firm that ANY "goal", as appropriated through recurring physiological stresses implies forethought (say, "self-awareness) and is an insurmountable first hurdle. Endless repetition of a physical/chemical process never implies a tendency towards self-preservation. Hurdle 2: self-preservation (or the appearance of this) still doesn't imply self-awareness.
Its apparent a self-existant, non-created God is a more reasonable conclusion than to choose the above illogical derivations. Its obvious this is the proper time to apply faith.
God's Word says He has "put eternity in our hearts" and we live by our personal knowledge of "heavenly things".

Answer 2

you are mixing natural selection with conditioning. They are two different things. If intelligence had survival value, which it seems to in Chimps; Parrots and Dolphins, then more intelligent proto-humans would survive to have off-spring and each generation would be more and more intelligent. The conditioning comes in when environmental changes force adaptation. Those who get conditioned to behave a certain way, adapt and survive and reproduce, and therefore pass on these tendencies. Can intelligence become mal-adaptive after a certain point? Perhaps. It seems to be the seed of our eventual destruction today. We are too "smart" for our own good. Or perhpas not smart in the right ways or not smart enough. However our intelligence came about, is not the issue of it's validity. That is an issue of it's own. Our senses are limited. Our brains tend to work in customary ways and lose plasticity and novelty. There are many things we can't seem to explain. All our senses have to be transduced or interpreted by the brain. Two people cannot agree on the same interpretation. The brain is dependent on ever-changing chemistry and microvolts and pathways which differ in each person. Therefore how reliable is our intellect and knowledge? Hindus say that it is all illusion. We do not know real reality, which is the spiritual. I still am not sure what you mean by "how we got here".

Answer 3

"How, then, can we trust the ability of our mental capacities if they originated in this manner?"

Simple ..... we can't.

The problem is one of fundamental paradigm, we have been raised and conditioned to believe that we are 'subjects' in an 'objective' realm. Consider how it would be if we were 'objects' in a subjective world ?

Quantum mechanics is heading of into wild new 'territory' in which the interactions of function of observer and observed are producing some rather remarkable results. It may be that all the 'stuff' that we interpret all around us is just a bunch of energy, randomly and homogeneously 'available' on a grid-like basis, is actually taking shape as all sorts of different 'things', at the same 'time', depending on who is observing what.

Maybe the 'training' we would benefit from most is the ability to overturn millenia of false 'science', and start to really understand the nature of physics, and most importantly our our own role in the nature of the Universe.

Answer 4

I think you're absolutely right.

If you believe in Darwinism/Atheism/Naturalism/Secularism, then according to what you believe your brains are nothing more than a couple of pounds of biological meat that has somehow "evolved" from slime, chemicals, or whatever by various random mutations over time with no intelligent guidance whatsoever -- and your thoughts are no more than electrical energy that is being randomly generated by your brains. (Note: "electricity" and "intelligence" are two totally different things -- you have many electrical appliances in your home, but none of them can "think".) If this is the case, then why should anyone accept anything you say as being reasonable, logical, truthful, or sensible, when you are, according to atheism, simply responding automatically to whatever your meat-based brain (and its random, unguided, "evolved" electrical impulses) tells you to do? We're just molecules in motion if atheism is true. We might be just as predetermined by our brain chemistry to believe falsehoods then we are predetermined to believe truths.

But how do we know who is predetermined to believe what is true and who is predetermined to believe what is false? Logic? Reason? Evidence? But then we're right back to the question of how we can reason properly when our brains are ruled by the laws of chemistry, firing neurons in addition to perhaps environmental factors? On the atheistic worldview, we're just molecules in motion. We no more help what we think than a can of coke can prevent fizzing. If I'm irrational for believing in God, don't blame me. It's not my fault. I can't help what kind of brain chemistry I have.

One guy on this thread said "C.S.Lewis is an author of fiction. His opinions on biology and evolution are irrelevant." Pay no attention to that. He just committed the ad-hominem fallacy. He can't refute an argument or a statement by attacking or pointing out something about the character of the person who said it. So what if C.S Lewis wrote some fictional novels? So what? Does that mean whatever he says is false? Of course not. An argument or statement stands or falls on its own merits.

Answer 5

We can only trust our own thoughts about how we got here through assumptions and ignorance. But since assumptions and ignorance are not valid, we therefore cannot trust our own thoughts about how we got here to be truth.
If our mental capcities orginated from evolution then their main function would be for survivial. And they would override truth and reasoning for natural selection. Therefore we could not trust our thoughts to be truthful. (Lol, kinda just repeated you...)

"If the value of our reasoning is in doubt, one cannot try to establish by reasoning. The creationist avoids this dilemma; reason originates from a source which defines and provides the capacity."
What are you referring to when you say ? Pleaes email me on this, it is interesting.

Answer 6

We can't. Even though we are created, we live in a fallen world. That's why intelligent beings believe in a Creator. Even many so-called "primative" cultures have been found to believe in a Creator God. This fits with what God's Word tells us in Romans 1:20.

That's also why an objectively existing gracious God who is outside of us, gave us His objective truth (i.e. The Word made flesh) with which to interpret the happenings surrounding our creation.

To God alone be all the glory!

Answer 7

The fact that you and Mr. Lewis can't conceive of how or when evolved responses were transmuted into intelligence, does NOT mean that our mental processes are incomprehensible or untrustworthy.

You sound like a person who routinely second-guesses himself. Don't get me wrong: I'm all for prudence and caution and never making unsupportable claims. However, there comes a time when you have to go with the evidence, no matter where it takes you.

What are you afraid of? -- Being wrong? Oh, honey, grow up. We've all been wrong. We've survived. You will, too.

Good luck.

Answer 8

Could be but not all of them survive to enjoy a happy and long life.

Answer 9

We have used solid reasoning in places that have very little to do with survival, and we have made predictions based on that reasoning. They turn out to be right pretty often.

Answer 10

Our technology proves we aren't bumbling morons, and that what we perceive is actually occurring the way our brain interprets it.

C.S.Lewis is an author of fiction. His opinions on biology and evolution are irrelevant.