How Atheists Use Evolution to Undermine Rational Thought
"Atheists start by claiming evolution as the source of rationality. They end by blaming evolution as the source of irrationality. They cannot have it both ways."
“Suppose there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true?”1
- C.S. Lewis
I have made significant progress writing a new book, exposing the embarrassing errors and logical inconsistencies of the so-called “New Atheists”. The introduction and first chapter were recently published. Another sample chapter is included below. Very soon, we may be starting a crowdfunding project to bring this book to publication. If you would be interested in bringing this new book to completion, please provide your input and encouragement in the comment section below…
Atheists Undermining Rational Thought
One of the most fundamental atheistic illusions involves the question of truth, and our ability to recognize it. Where did atheists get their ability to think rationally? Why do they believe their own thoughts are trustworthy? If God did not provide them with the power of reason, then who did?
Daniel Dennett claims that his powers of rational thought were "designed by evolution over billions of years to do a very good job of telling truth from falsehood".2
Richard Dawkins likewise invokes the powers of evolution and natural selection. He says,
"Truth is what happens. An animal that was attempting to survive, and that didn't recognize truth or falsehood in some sense (at whatever level is appropriate for the kind of survival that it has), it wouldn't survive. I mean, truth just means that you're living in the real world, and you behave in the real world in such a way as things make sense... When you see a rock in your way, you don't go charging into it. You would die if you did that. If you jumped over a cliff, you would die. That's truth. It's perfectly obvious that natural selection would favor, in any animal, a brain that behaves in a way that recognizes truth and acts upon it."3
Yet when pressed to account for humanity’s widespread belief in God, he invokes those same evolutionary powers to explain the widespread problem of sensory problems, dreams, hallucinations, and various irrational thought processes. For example, he says,
"Our eyes don’t present to our brains a faithful photograph of what is out there, or an accurate movie of what is going on through time."4
"Constructing models is something the human brain is very good at. When we are asleep it is called dreaming; when we are awake we call it imagination or, when it is exceptionally vivid, hallucination. . . . children who have ‘imaginary friends’ sometimes see them clearly, exactly as if they were real. If we are gullible, we don’t recognize hallucination or lucid dreaming for what it is"5
"Shouldn’t there be a Darwinian explanation of belief in gods? Did religious belief, belief in some kind of god or gods, help our ancestors to survive and pass on genes for religious belief? I suspect that the answer is probably yes. Well, a kind of yes. Of course that doesn’t mean that the gods people believe in – whichever gods those might be – are really there. That’s a completely separate question. Believing in something that isn’t really there could even save your life."6
But if the operation of the human brain is nothing more than the result of a blind, unguided process, riddled with clouded reasoning and various defects in perception, then how could we trust it? If Dawkins’ brain is the result of the same process that created hallucinations, imaginary friends, and false gods, then how can we know that his powers of reasoning aren’t similarly clouded?
Even if Daniel Dennett’s brain was "designed by evolution over billions of years", how would that distinguish him from Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, and witch doctors? Weren’t their brains designed in the same way as his?
The Mentally Ill Psychiatrist
Suppose your daughter was suffering from a severe mental illness, and you needed a psychiatrist who could help her. You find someone with all the proper credientials, including a doctorate from a prestigious university. This psychiatrist has years of experience and multiple patients. Everything seems to be in order.
Then you make an unsettling discovery. The psychiatrist herself has been diagnosed with a serious mental illness, and she frequently has to consult a professional for psychological therapy. Would you still take your daughter to see this particular psychiatrist? Or would you look for a different doctor?7
A medical doctor might have a physical illness, and still be able to exercise sound judgment. A doctor who has back problems or indigestion is not likely to make significant errors when giving patients prescriptions for their heart medication. It is possible to have a healthy mind, even if your physical body isn’t at its best.
Mental problems, however, are an entirely different matter. There are probably not many of us who would be comfortable consulting with a psychiatrist who has mental problems. If your goal is sound mental health, you shouldn’t seek advice from those who are mentally ill.
Indeed, it is highly questionable whether a mentally troubled psychiatrist could even properly self-diagnose. If her mind is unstable, how could she trust that she was using her mind in a correct way, in order to achieve a trustworthy diagnosis?
So, if we ever hope to exercise sound judgment, a healthy body may not be required, but a healthy mind is absolutely necessary.
Yet when Dawkins invokes natural selection as the sole origin of the human mind, he destroys any confidence that we might have in the health of the human mind, including the mind of Dawkins himself. He says,"I believe, but I cannot prove, that all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all ‘design’ anywhere in the universe, is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection."8 Furthermore, he presumes that
"Human thoughts and emotions emerge from exceedingly complex interconnections of physical entities within the brain."9 Thus, Dawkins assumes that his brain and its workings are the product of a mindless, unguided process, reducible to questions of physics and chemistry.
But if his brain is the mere product of a blind, unguided process, then why does he trust it?
Dawkins presumes that flawed reasoning is the origin of man’s belief in God. He claims that this flawed reasoning conferred reproductive benefits on the human race, and thus Darwinian natural selection selected for it. He provides us with the following attempted explanation. He says,
"Now imagine you are an early human, long ago in our ancestral past on the African plains. . . . You hear a noise and look up from digging up a yam. You see a movement in the grass which just might be a lion. It could instead be the wind. You are making good progress in digging out a really big tuber and don’t want to stop. But that noise just could be a lion. If you believe it’s a lion and it really is a lion, that valid belief might save your life. . . . Even if it is not a lion on this particular occasion, a general policy of believing that mysterious movements or sounds spell danger could save your life. Because sometimes it really will be a lion. . . . That’s one way in which believing in things that don’t exist could save your life. Here’s a slightly more technical way of putting the point. Humans have a tendency to believe in agency. What is agency? Well, an agent is a thing that deliberately does something for a purpose. When the wind rustles the long grass, there is no agency. Wind is not an agent. A lion is an agent. A lion is an agent whose purpose is to eat you. . . . The more dangerous your life tends to be on average, the more the balance should shift towards seeing agents everywhere and therefore sometimes believing falsehoods. We have a bias towards seeing agents, even when there aren’t any. And religion is all about seeing agency all around us. Our ancestors’ religions were ‘animistic’: they saw agents everywhere they looked, and often they called them gods. . . . Yahweh evolved in people’s minds to become the one God of the Jews, and eventually of Christians and Muslims too. Before that he was a ‘storm god’, one of many gods of the Canaanite peoples from whom the Jews sprang."10
Daniel Dennett chimes in with full agreement, assuming that humans have evolved a proclivity for inventing gods. He says,
"At the root of human belief in gods lies an instinct on a hair trigger: the disposition to attribute agency—beliefs and desires and other mental states—to anything complicated that moves."11
This is how Dawkins and Dennett think that evolution tricked us into believing in God. Yet, if Darwinian natural selection has endowed us with flawed reasoning in this case, then how many other cases are there? How many hundreds (or thousands) of ways has it turned out that believing the truth reduces our reproductive success, and that believing a lie increases it?12
If their first claim is correct, that evolution endows us with a clear understanding of truth and rationality, then they should be the first to believe in the existence of God, for that is the conclusion that has been reached by the vast majority of human beings who have walked the face of the earth. As Dawkins himself admits, "Until pretty recently just about everybody believed in some sort of god. . . . most people around the world, including the United States, still do believe in a god".13
But if that second (contradictory) claim is correct, that evolution cares nothing for truth, and that it only takes care to endow us with whatever traits are likely to increase our reproductive success, then Dawkins and Dennett are undermining rationality itself, taking their arguments down the tubes with it. If natural selection failed to overcome irrationality in one instance, then it may have failed to overcome it in any of a thousand other instances. And even if they want to think through this question in a dependable manner, they can’t, because there is no way for them to know which portions of their rationality are biologically primed for truth, and which portions are primed for self-deception.
How Christians Escape the Dilemma
Thankfully, people who believe in God are not caught in this trap. It is not necessary to assume that the power of rational thought is dependent upon some unguided evolutionary process. God himself is the source of rational thought, and when God created man, He endowed man with the ability to reason. Some early Greek philosophers referred to God as the Logos — The Word — a reference to the very essence of wisdom and rationality itself. Early Christians adopted this terminology, recognizing it as being particularly suitable for describing their understanding of God. One of Jesus’ closest associates penned the following words to describe the Logos:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made. . . . And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.14
The Word became flesh. God became man. The Logos revealed Himself to us as Jesus. According to Christian teaching, Jesus himself is the very foundation for rationality and reason. Without his involvement, it is not possible for anyone (even an atheist) to have a rational thought. And to the extent that a person turns his back on Jesus, that person necessarily turns his back on the ability to think rationally. So, if the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, then the rejection of God is the end of it.15
Of course, we are not suggesting that Christians are always perfectly rational. According to traditional Christian teaching, rationality is directly connected to morality.16 The more a person falls into sin, the more seriously his reasoning abilities become impaired. Meanwhile, genuine sanctity promotes clear thinking.
Darwin’s Doubt
Charles Darwin, in a letter to a friend, acknowledged his concern that atheistic evolution ultimately undermines rationality. He said,
“With me the horrid doubt always arises, whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”
Darwin’s doubt is well worth taking seriously. If our brains are the mere product of a mindless, unguided process, then what reason is there to believe that our minds are at all rational or trustworthy? And if our minds cannot be trusted, then how can we trust any of the arguments which arise from the mind of an atheist? By postulating such a lowly origin of his own brain, the atheist cuts off the philosophical branch he is sitting on, leading us to question the rationality of any arguments at all, including his own.
An Undesigned Computer
Dr. John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, has taken Darwin’s doubt to its logical conclusion, setting forth a challenge to leading scientists around the globe. He asks,
"What do you do science with?"
Most of them say, "Well, I do it with my brain."
"Tell me about your brain, with which you do science. What do you really believe about it? Give me a short history of the brain."
They say, "Oh, that's relatively easy, because the brain is the end product of a mindless, unguided process."
"And you trust it? . . . Be honest with me. If you knew that the computer you use every day in your lab was the end product of a mindless, unguided process, would you trust it?"
And I always force an answer. And I have asked dozens of world-famous scientists, and every single one of them has said, "No!"17
Atheists want to believe that a mindless, unguided form of evolution has endowed them with powers of reason which are reliable. Yet they say, "believing in things that don’t exist could save your life", and they appeal to natural selection as an explanation for why belief in God is almost universal. Atheists start by claiming evolution as the source of rationality. They end by blaming evolution as the source of irrationality. They cannot have it both ways.
Here are more of the atheist illusions we will be exploring in the next several chapters:
Intellectually Dishonest Atheists - Pascal’s Wager
Self Indulgent Atheists - The Problem of Suffering
Immoral Atheists Lecturing Christians on Morality
Atheists Promoting Pseudoscience
Atheists who are Bad at Math
Atheists Tripping on the Origin of Life
Atheists Swooning at Cosmic Fine Tuning
Atheists Ignoring History & Archaeology
And much more! . . .
I have made significant progress writing a new book, exposing the embarrassing errors and logical inconsistencies of the so-called “New Atheists”. The above chapter is a sample. The introduction and first chapter were also published recently. Very soon, we may be starting a crowdfunding project to bring this new book to publication. If you would be interested in bringing this new book to completion, please provide your input and encouragement in the comment section below…
1 Lewis. C.S. The Case for Christianity (p.32). B & H Pub Group.
2 Are We More Than Matter? Daniel Dennett vs. Keith Ward, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mongL_2KMGg [1:10:11], accessed July 26, 2023.
3 Has Science Buried God? Richard Dawkins vs. John Lennox, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVEuQg_Mglw [15:01], accessed June 20, 2023
4 Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
5 ibid.
6 Dawkins, Richard. Outgrowing God (p. 227). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
7 Unfortunately, a significant number of people actually do consult psychologists who have mental illnesses. In an eye-opening publication, Dr. Robert Epstein revealed that a large percentage of mental health professionals are themselves mentally ill: Psychology Today. Why Shrinks Have Problems. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/199707/why-shrinks-have-problems, accessed on June 21, 2023.
8 Dawkins, Broadcasting House, BBC Radio 4, Sunday January, 2005.
9 Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
10 Dawkins, Richard. Outgrowing God (pp. 227-229). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
11 Dennett, Daniel. Breaking the Spell (pp. 114-115). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
12 The distinctions which Dawkins and Dennett make between "genes" and "memes" is not relevant at this point in the discussion. Having proposed an ancient deep-seated irrationality in the fundamental processes of human thought, they have opened Pandora’s box, and it doesn’t matter whether memes or genes are the ultimate culprit. If natural selection was unable to overcome these particular bits of irrationality (whatever their source), then it may have failed to overcome a thousand others as well — quite likely affecting the bits of rationality we use when thinking through these very sorts of issues.
13 ibid.
14 The Gospel of John, 1:1-14
15 Cf. Proverbs 9:10
16 See the following article: Only Virtuous People Can Think Rationally - https://gorthodox.com/en/comment/virtuous-living-is-a-necessary-prerequisite-for-rational-thinking
17 Professor John Lennox, "Do you trust your brain?", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Givb0ZrQeGE, accessed June 20, 2023