I'm not a naturalist, and a great admirer of C S Lewis, but alas I find this argument a crock.
Let's take a simple truth: fire burns.
Even for a naturalist, that was true long before there were thinkers. Unreasoning animals have been fleeing forest fires since the first animals inhabited the first forests. And today, reasoning men try to avoid starting forest fires.
No designer is needed to explain this. The animals that ran, survived; the animals that stayed, ended up crispy critters. Good old Darwinian selection explains that quite well enough.
And it can also explain reason. We have evolved ways to find out truths about the natural world because knowing those truths gives us a better chance of survival. And hence reason tells us not to drop lighted matches in forests, because lighted matches start fires, and fire burns. A "reason" that could not find such truths could not evolve, because it would confer no survival value. Therefore, no designer is needed to explain why reason works, any more than one is needed to explain why birds' wings work. Impersonal Nature simply says, try it: if it works, you live; if it doesn't work, you die.
What naturalism cannot explain, of course, is how we can reason our way to truths that have no survival value, such as the truth that there is no largest prime number. Over to you, Plato.
Why do you think the argument is a crock? The article agrees with you: "Human beings could have learned to respond to their environment, but this does not necessarily mean the same thing as learning to think rationally."
What naturalism cannot explain, of course, is how we can reason our way to truths that have no survival value, such as the truth that there is no largest prime number.
Agreed, and that is the subject of the article, not whether animals fleeing forest fires are exhibiting truth or falsehood in the rational sense of the terms.
And today, reasoning men try to avoid starting forest fires.
Then what is the explanation for the the fact that some reasoning human beings start forest fires deliberately?
Cordially,
If there is nothing but Nature . . . reason must have come into existence by an historical process. And of course, for a Naturalist, this process was not designed to produce a mental behavior that can find truth. There was no Designer; and indeed, until there were thinkers, there was no truth or falsehood.I'm not a naturalist, and a great admirer of C S Lewis, but alas I find this argument a crock.
You are not the first, nor the last to find Lewis' argument 'a crock.' And it's always for the same reason you cite: reason has no need of thinkers.
However, that's not the point of Lewis' argument. What he's saying is that universe, from a naturalistic point of view, is perfectly capable of existing WITHOUT any creatures who have the ability to think rationally. As a matter of fact, the universe, again from a purely naturalistic point-of-view, does not require there to be any life forms, of any kind, what-so-ever.
And yet we do see here on planet Earth an array of life forms that is truly overwhelming, and one life form that is capable of understanding reason and is self-aware --man. There is nothing in the naturalisitc frame-work, Darwinism included, that can explain it. At best, all naturalism can do is take what it finds and explain a possible way of how it came into existance using what ever visible evidence it can find. That's all it can do. The 'survial advantage' mantra, no matter how loudly or incessantly chanted, has no real explanitory power what-so-ever. It is, at very best, a cop-out. For you can't have something that is able to 'survive' unless you first have a creature that, in fact, does survive. Does non-living matter have a need for survival? Of course not. The question is stupid before it's even spoken. And yet that is exactly the basis of naturalism.
Rather than excusing the need for a 'designer' or 'creator,' naturalism proves there must be one. For there is nothing in the laws of science or reason that tells us life must come into existance anywhere in the universe. And there certianly isn't anything in science that tells us that a rational thinking creature is a scientific necessity.
We can easily concieve of a universe where's there is no life at all. We can also eaisly concieve of a universe where there's no need of any life-form that is capable of rational thought.
But, in fact, we live in a universe where there are many life-forms (at least on our planet) and at least one life form that has the ability to think rationally. Naturalism is completely powerless to explain why this is so, even with all of the powers of science at it's disposal. That's is the point Lewis is trying to make.
When one takes a good hard look at naturalistic science, all ones see it explanations for how things have occured, or, where evidence is lacking, a theory of how they occured. But to make the huge leap from "how" to "why" is not possible in the scientific domain. That's where religion comes in.
Naturalism can tell us there was an event we commonly call "The Big Bang," and it can tell us a little about how it came to be. But there is nothing in the naturalistic framework that can even begin to explain why there was a Big Bang. When scientists try to make that leap, we start hearing language that is religious in terminolgy and usage, not scientific or naturalistic.
Far from proving there's no need of a God, naturalism rather shows us how very limited our power of reason really is.
As final proof of Lewis' point: explain, using nothing but purely naturalistic language and terminolgy, why their exists a creature, man, who can ask the very rational question "why am I here?"
[Naturalism] also explain reason. We have evolved ways to find out truths about the natural world because knowing those truths gives us a better chance of survival. And hence reason tells us not to drop lighted matches in forests, because lighted matches start fires, and fire burns. A "reason" that could not find such truths could not evolve, because it would confer no survival value. Therefore, no designer is needed to explain why reason works, any more than one is needed to explain why birds' wings work. Impersonal Nature simply says, try it: if it works, you live; if it doesn't work, you die.
There is a major problem with your argument. The world as it currently exists has billions, if not trillions of examples of life forms that survive without even the faintest hint of displaying any rational thought process what-so-ever.
Therefore, there is absolutely no need for a creature that has the ability to think rationally in order to survive, nature itself is proof of this. (Of course nature itself is proof there's no need for even life to exist...)
Therefore, naturalism can't even explain the "how" of rational thought, let alone the "why."
If we take a closer look at the common explanation, that rational thought is due to evolution, we see this is no help what-so-ever. Such an explanation is pure speculation, with no scientific basis. It cannot be tested in a labratory, it cannot be deduced from math. It's a fine example of a "just-so" story, nothing more.
If rational thought were so very necessary for survival, then why do we live in a world filled with creatures that survive and thrive without any recourse to rational thought? And there are, of course, many creatures that even survive and thrive without anything resembling what we would call a "brain."
And why is it necessary for nature to even go to all that trouble to create life anyway, no matter what kind it is? Mercury has not fallen out of it's orbit and crashed into the Sun for lack of life forms. The Big Bang did not need life in order to happen...
What naturalism tries to pass off as 'explanations' are nothing more than creation stories without a God, and even without logic. Life is not necessary to fulfill any observed scientific law or any mathematical equation.