I am of course familiar with this kind of argument:
Monkey minds / How evolution undercuts reason and science
by Keaton Halley
https://creation.com/monkey-minds
Can evolution produce rational minds?
Answering some critics of the argument from reason
https://creation.com/evolution-rational-minds
So, I did not read the former a few days ago, but today's article has arguments from atheists.
1. They said that even though some of our thoughts/reasoning might be unreliable, evolution (and natural selection) would tend to produce beliefs that were accurate over time, since natural selection has been “working” on it for a long time.
2. Didn’t quite understand what they meant by this, but they also said that using the scientific method overcomes any difficulty in interpreting data (or information), therefore any false beliefs/thoughts that we had would be nullified.
3. The other one I couldn’t answer well was that they said just because we can’t prove that our thoughts are reliable doesn’t mean they aren’t, and that it’s no different than saying that we as Christians trusting God.
Let's not discourage anyone from reading Keaton Halley on this one, I've linked, but I'm fond of taking the objections and giving own, parallel, answers.
1. They said that even though some of our thoughts/reasoning might be unreliable, evolution (and natural selection) would tend to produce beliefs that were accurate over time, since natural selection has been “working” on it for a long time.
Apart from the fact that Evolution can neither explain beliefs or even notions, as it cannot explain language, the Evolution process as depicted is supposed to priorise correct (or useful) reactions, not true beliefs.
Quicker turning around and slower shooting (but not too much slower) is the kind of good reactions that evolution could promote. Beliefs as such are perfectly irrelevant to the process. Obviously, if you want to train yourself in that kind of reaction pattern, given you are some kind of thing that has beliefs, it helps if you correctly also believe this kind of reaction is useful. But if you weren't, evolution, as portrayed, would hone this kind of reaction and not do a damn thing to produce beliefs or make true beliefs standard of anything.
If Evolution did create beliefs, which is impossible, the kind of beliefs it would inculcate are things like "it pays to be curious when in need or when it's calm" and "it doesn't pay to be curious when it's very risky and one has no need for it" ... or the kind of more concrete beliefs that could be derived from that. NOT beliefs about the cosmos or the nature of reality.
2. Didn’t quite understand what they meant by this, but they also said that using the scientific method overcomes any difficulty in interpreting data (or information), therefore any false beliefs/thoughts that we had would be nullified.
It seems quite a lot of the modern day use of the term "scientific method" boils down to:
- Identifying reactions that are useful for survival in certain settings, but not logically valid ways to search out truth
- nullifying them by making an opposite reaction the intellectual knee-jerk
- and considering one has improved on Evolution as author of reason.
Obviously, such a discipline cannot be upheld by a person on his own, and therefore requires collectivist approaches.
The irony is, logically, a collective due to group pressure is less likely to be logical than an individual person, and on top of that, inculcating the kind of reaction pattern roughly equivalent to "all swans are black" (because "all swans are white" is a bias) is not doing good logic.
But apart from that, there is some futility in believing one can outgrow one's origin, acquire powers not inherent, and produce logic while having no such thing. But obviously, behind Neo-Darwinian Evolution belief, there is a real Lamarckian bias, like a giraffe ancestor producing long necks by stretching up, while itself being shortnecked.
3. The other one I couldn’t answer well was that they said just because we can’t prove that our thoughts are reliable doesn’t mean they aren’t, and that it’s no different than saying that we as Christians trusting God.
We need to treat our thoughts as reliable. And the most reliable way to do so is to skip some of the "scientific method" drill, and instead trust one's thoughts, presuming an origin that can explain (not prove) their reliability.
From an Atheist, the reference to Christians trusting God is obviously meant as an insult.
What Christians do in this connexion is more typically trust logic and work backwards from the phenomenon of logic to what kind of thing could have produced it. You know like heat and light galore could be traced to a really big and self luminous body, or a fire, that was very big ... (we tend to call it the Sun), logic can be traced to what? Well, to an eternal logic, not a logic produced by evolution (there can be no such thing), which then further can be analysed. Richard Carrier has somewhat agreed to a concept somewhat like an eternal logic, namely in presuming natural laws of absolute necessity governed something coming from (materially) nothing. But a more logical way to trace an eternal logic would be an eternal mind that's eternally perfectly logical. And, since logical minds tend to have some domination over matter, eternally has perfect dominion over matter. Does that begin to sound like something we have heard of? I think so. If St. Thomas had called this "sexta via" or "septima via" he would have rounded off with "which all men call God" ...
To the prima via ... heat and light are traceable to the nature of the Sun as a kind of fire. But we see this fire moving every day from East to West. Now, fires don't usually perform circular movements. Something else is either moving or giving the impression of moving the Sun. Now, Heliocentrics would say, it's Earth giving the impression of the Sun moving. But when debating them, and saying God moves the whole shebang (as far up as it is visible) from East to West and the Sun along with it, I usually get answers on the lines "there is no God, so that couldn't happen" ... they presume a universal negative, and opt for the illusory explanation. However, if we can already make a case for an eternal reason having perfect dominion over matter, this would obviously be counterfactual.
Sometimes the rebuttal takes the form "first prove there is a God, before you use Him as explanation" ... this bypasses that explanations that are invisible are always proven only by what they explain. Therein, they are unlike explanations that are visible. These can be proven to exist by direct observation. You know, for water, the explanation "two small atoms along a bigger atom" is kind of observable in electronic microscopy, but below the level of atom, all explanations are invisible. Like God, if they can be proven at all, it's because of what they explain.
At another twist of irony, God moving the Sun, the Moon and the Stars around us is the kind of explanation Evolution would tend to favour, if any at all. In that sense, the Bible is more "true to Evolution" (if that were the origin, but it isn't, see above), than the Scientific Method is. That's probably why a certain kind of modern mind despises that kind of explanation, much like a certain type of feminism despises normal motherhood, also a presumed result of Evolution.
If those guys are so anti-God, so anti-Nature, so anti-everything, perhaps they are on occasion anti-knowledge too?
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Lucan, martyr
30.X.2024