Consider a bridge, useful for two things, number one get people across the water, and number two give birds a place to perch. We can, of course, feel safe crossing a bridge because it was designed for that very purpose, crossing it, the Brooklyn bridge, for example, supports thousands of people walking and driving across it each day. Suppose however it wasn’t designed with human beings and traffic in mind, and rather it was designed as a big perch or rest stop for birds so they would stop resting on our traffic lights in the city. In that case wouldn’t it be utterly foolish to drive your car across it? Does it make sense to trust something with a task vast beyond it’s original purpose? This is the basic premise behind the argument for reason, or mainly an argument against naturalism. For a review, naturalism is the claim that the naturalistic world is all that there is, no God, angels, or demons, just matter, energy, and natural forces. The vast majority of atheists consider themselves naturalists, the vast majority of atheists as well view themselves as the champions of reason. But it turns out that reason is one of the most inescapable problems for the atheist.
Human beings have the ability to reason. We’re using it right now, we wouldn’t have discussions like this if we thought that our cognitive faculties- the processes that produce our beliefs- were unreliable. The very problem with naturalism lies here, naturalists can only explain things by appealing to natural objects, natural events, and natural causes. Ponder this for more that but a second, you have beliefs? Am I correct? Ultimately according to naturalism your beliefs are a result of physical processes that occur in your brain. The question then becomes what is going on in your brain? Well, particles in motion, chemical reactions, neurons firing, all things physical governed by laws of nature, not by commitment to truth. So what would be considered “careful reasoning” to you, is in reality just straight forward, mechanical, mindless, cause and effect. If you will, a fancy array of falling dominions. Illusions aside, you arrive to your beliefs via a process that has absolutely nothing to do with whether those beliefs are true or false, because, chemicals couldn’t conceivably care less, because they are just that chemicals, with no reason. So if naturalism is true, what sense does it make to trust our reasoning ability or our beliefs or… you guessed it, our belief in naturalism itself? Well none, no sense at all. If you’ve known me for a little while you may have heard me speak on how naturalism is a walking contradiction, or an oxymoron: A, for all intensive purposes, self contradicting statement or belief. This is precisely what I am talking about, the very thing you claim to be truth, undermines the very thing that is truth, wait a minute, lest I forget in the beginning of this passage I said “assume naturalism is true” therefore I cant even say “truth” with out contradicting my own naturalism, because there is no such thing.. But it gets worse for naturalists,(could you imagine that?) how did we acquire our reasoning ability according to the naturalist?: Human beings obtained the ability to reason through the power of evolution. Natural selection acting on random mutation. Clearly, random mutation isn’t going to fill us with a tremendous degree of confidence in weather or not what we come to believe can be deemed as true, wait a minute, lest I forget in the beginning of this passage I said “assume naturalism is….” yeah, I think you get the point. Regardless the question as to whether or not we can trust “reason” from the naturalistic side is whether or not we can trust natural selection to sift through all the intellectually deficient mutant traits leaving us with a reliable, belief-forming mutant trait. So allow us to begin first period biology, pull out your textbooks! According to naturalists, the most famous of thee: Charles Darwin, natural selection favours traits that help organisms survive and reproduce, so if human reasoning ever evolved, it was to help humans survive and reproduce.. Or it was a complete biological accident. Would this give us any basis for trusting our reasoning ability when were dealing with questions such of theology, philosophy or cosmology? Not at all. At best, we could have some confidence in our cognitive faculties when it comes to finding berries or using a sphere against an enemy or doing somthing to find a mate. Reason, if evolution and naturalism were true, would of been selected by natural selection because it helped preform these tasks, not because it helped produce true beliefs, don’t let that sentence fly over your head.
One obvious objection at this point is that reliable cognitive faculties- or reason– does help organisms survive and reproduce. An example of that: if you believe jumping off a bridge will kill you but I’m convinced I’m a pigeon that can fly, I’m probably going to die and you’re probably going to live and have children and pass on the, for lack of a better term and simplicity, smart gene you possess. But there are two problems with this, number one there is a massive difference between the types of beliefs that help you find food or a mate and beliefs about ultimate reality, or the origin of the universe, or correct scientific methodology. The kinds of beliefs that help us survive and reproduce are usually grounded in basic observation and experience. For instance when you see that your caveman friend ate berries from the bush on the mountain and died, so subsequently you avoid eating the berries from the bush on the mountain, that area. But even animals can do this, if a rabbit sees that every time a fellow rabbit goes to a certain area (for our clarity, for example: a humans backyard) they disappear, the rabbit learns to avoid that area. Does this suggest in any way that rabbits are capable of epistemology or ethics? No. The two are completely different things and the latter cannot evolve from the former because there still would be no such thing as truth. Even from the naturalistic side, if you had a perfectly reliable belief-forming system in one area say: avoiding an area that everyone dies in, that wouldn’t be any reason to trust the system in a far more complicated area, say: avoiding logical fallacies. An example of this: your cave friend died of committing the logical fallacy of denying the antecedent, so I won’t commit it. See how foolish it sounds? (Proverbs 26:4-5.) These two belief-forming systems are two completely different things. The second thing wrong with this objection, when it comes to survival and reproduction, and I ask that you do not let the following fly over your head, false beliefs can often be just as effective as true beliefs. Using the same example from problem one, if you believe that jumping off a bridge will kill you and I’m convinced that I am a pigeon who can’t fly because my wings have been cursed by the flying spaghetti monster, we both avoid jumping and we both survive. False beliefs can even be helpful in all sorts of situations, if a you like a girl, however, you are too shy to make a move but then get a call from the astrology dude who tells you that the position of Venus is precisely right for love, your false belief in astrology gave you the confidence to ask her and allows you the possibility of a mate, notice you could have gotten word from your crushes friend that she liked you back or followed your false belief in astrology and still gotten a mate. Do you understand the lines of reasoning my friend? You cannot under any circumstance argue that reason evolved from the same belief system that gives us the ability to avoid an area that everyone dies in or avoid a fruit that kills everyone because of these two problems. Here lies the inherent walking contradiction of atheism and those who hold so dearly to it.
Here’s the thing, when theists or atheists argue about the world or morality or the existence of God, we enter the argument as if we are on some sort of intellectual neutral ground, we all presuppose that our cognitive faculties are functioning properly and proceeded to see what we can try to prove. But naturalists cannot and do not have the ability to argue anything apt, or comparable to the nature that of philosophy or ethics because according to their own world view we shouldn’t be able to. I find it quite frankly astonishing that atheists coin the fraise “question everything” yet conveniently fail to question their own self-refuting beliefs and the rapid fallacies contained therein. If I could do my best to sum it up in any way: According to the naturalist(if he actually follows his worldview), the causes of our reasoning ability are particles in motion, random mutation, and a selection process that favours passing on genetic information, not truth (lack thereof according to the naturalistic worldview) According to the naturalist, the process of our human reasoning ability is the exact same process that gave the claws of a tiger and the colourful buttocks of a baboon. We wouldn’t rely on a bridge built for birds to perch on to get us across the lake, why in the name of common sense would we rely on a mutant physical ability selected by a process that at least occasionally favours multi-coloured buttocks to get us to a correct view of ultimate reality? If naturalism is true why would we rely on reason at all? It wasn’t made for that like the bridge made solely for birds getting a rest stop wasn’t made for you to drive across it. Why in the name of common sense would you trust it? The existence or “truth” of naturalism that so many scream and proclaim doesn’t just rule out the existence of truth but it rules out the knowledge of pretty much anything. It’s not only a threat to belief what is morally right or wrong but it is a threat to a belief in science.
Allow me to give you a simple illustration to close, suppose you are given a calculator by your grandfather, but all of a sudden it starts speaking to you…
“Greetings human, I am sick of computing arithmetic, bow down to me or be destroyed.”
Of course when you see that your first thought would be, “I thought this calculator was designed to do math” and then you will come to the clear conclusion that it was designed to do much more than that, you will look at cardboard boxes and at door handles which don’t talk, which don’t ask you to bow down to them and come to the clear conclusion they were not designed to do those things. Wouldn’t the same thing be true of human beings and animals? Naturalism tells us that we are designed by a mindless, incredibly sloppy, process to survive and reproduce. Richard Dawkins, the afamed evolutionist, humanist, and atheist says “humans are machines for propagating DNA” so according to his own world view, Dawkins is a machine for propagating DNA, whose made it his life’s quest to convince other machines for propagating DNA, that they are only machines for propagating DNA. Like Bacteria. But are we bacteria? Is the obviously designed calculator in the previous example the same thing as the not fully designed cardboard box? Notice that Dawkins finds his work incredibly important, incredibly meaning full, it’s good for machines that propagate DNA to have true beliefs rather than false beliefs. Dawkins, probably the most famous atheist of all, argues from this position while also simultaneously destroying it at the same time. As do the rest of thee. The fundamental difference is that Dawkins has but no ground to argue anything, he looks at all of this and cheers “Oh happy accident, chance has put forth such a beauty” But we’ve already seen that this sort of blind faith in naturalism undermines any confidence in our human reasoning ability and therefore undermines any confidence in what reason produces, namely our beliefs in naturalism. So, if we take naturalism seriously, we can’t take naturalism seriously.
There is an alternative however, Christians believe we are created in the image of God and He has given us the ability to learn everything up to, and including, our creator. Does this give us a basis for trusting our reasoning ability? Absolutely! Our cognitive faculties aren’t the result of natural selection acting on random mutation, they serve a greater purpose than finding food. In other words, our ability to reason about ourselves, about the world, and God makes perfect sense in my world view, but makes no sense in the naturalistic worldview. We could continue all day long arguing about the existence of God but just a little reflection shows that in arguing on anything, we’ve already come down to the side of theism because you as a naturalist are already assuming your wrong and continuing to argue.
*** Notice: this article is heavily adapted from David Wood’s December 2012 video “The Argument from reason” All credit goes to him. You can find his video here.
For more resources on check out
- Scott Youngren, “Why Atheism Is Self-
- William Lane Craig: Atheism Cannot Justify Reason and Truth (VIDEO)
- Alvin Plantinga, “What Is the Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism?” (VIDEO)
- Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
Oct 2020
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