Posted on 05/06/2016 11:22:38 AM PDT by fishtank
Monkey minds
How evolution undercuts reason and science
by Keaton Halley
Published: 5 May 2016 (GMT+10)
If our minds were not designed, why would we trust them?
Atheists routinely style themselves as champions of reason and science, and they view evolutionary theory as a triumph of both. Indeed, they believe that evolution helps them to explain features of the world that would otherwise be inexplicable. As Richard Dawkins put it, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”1 Ironically, however, evolution cannot possibly bear this burden, because if evolution were true it would undermine our confidence in human rationality. While Christianity has the resources to account for reason, the atheistic paradigm self-destructs. The contrast can be seen by comparing what each worldview says about the origin and composition of human beings.
(Excerpt) Read more at creation.com ...
We know static isn't designed into radios because we know how radios are designed. Are you claiming to know how live was designed?
We know static isn't designed into radios because we know how radios are designed. Are you claiming to know how life was designed?
The understanding of large numbers is what leads many scientists and mathematician to believe in God.
<><><
As well as the opposite.
Untold millions (or was that billions) of galaxies. Estimates of 4-40 billion planets that might be capable of supporting life.
Precisely.
The built-in air conditioner's ability to alter the internal environment of a car is not the same thing as evolving a trailer.
Drivel to promote a bigger offering
“But evolution is not creation”
How is it not?
Evolution can not be separated from creation.
Incorrect. We know static is the result of factors outside the signal to noise ratio. Your proposition is the equivalent of the static organizing itself into a coherent broadcast.
Accurate deduction from observed facts.
“Design vs. evolution is a fallacy of false dichotomy.
The ability to evolve may well be part of the design. “
Absolutely true.
But design vs evolution refers specifically to intelligent design wherein, I think, both ID’ers and Darwinists agree there is a dichotomy.
I’m not sure what you mean. I didn’t define reason in my response. What I said was: Reason, as used in the original article, is a perfectly valid survival characteristic, in that humans who are unable to reason would not be likely to procreate. Those individuals who were capable of reason would be more likely to survive long enough to pass their reasoning ability on to their descendants. Those individuals with a greater ability to reason would be even more likely than those with a weaker ability to survive and even thrive, and the greater capacity for reason would become desirable and even consciously selected-for (as a consequence of being able to reason), and thus over successive generations greater and greater ability to reason would develop.
Going backwards in time, as the ability to reason is more primitive, the survival advantage remains, until you reach that point at which you have that first spark that some had but others didn’t. The hominid who could think, however ponderously, his way through trapping an animal, or reaching that nearly-inaccessible fruit or beehive, had the advantage over his duller associates who couldn’t. Going even further back, the boundaries of what constitutes actual reason get blurry, but the precursors would still provide a survival advantage; the proto-cetaceans that envision working together to herd a school of fish into a tight ball to make it easier to eat. And so on.
My point being that the ability to reason would pretty much *have* to be reliable going all the way back through the evolution of animal life. If animals couldn’t reliably reason their way through situations, they wouldn’t be as likely to survive. We can trust our mind, as a product of evolution, because survival is a driver of evolution. Our ability to reason is the result of all of our ancestors successfully and reliably trusting to their reasoning in solving problems that their survival depended on. Reason didn’t appear fully-formed in modern humans; it is the result of many factors developing over millions of generations of life, and the elimination of faulty results and dead-end developments along the way.
“Now think of this as a brute force attack against that number. How does random trial and error get to your DNA ...”
Well, it’s not a “brute force attack”, whatever that means. Starting out with much fewer base pairs, and only saving the ones that work is how it happened. There is little randomness in the conservation of connected base pairs that promote their own reproduction.
“Adaptation to environmental differences, and evolving from nothing are not the same thing.”
Actually they are the same thing (assuming “from nothing” you mean from non-living matter).
Reason provides greater survival advantage than stimulus response, as proven by human adaptability.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Circular argument.
“Humans adapted to their environment using reason, adaptation is why they survived, humans have the capability of reason, therefore they adapted to their environment using reason, adaptation is why they survived, humans have the capability of reason, therefore they adapted to their environment using reason, adaptation is why they survived, humans have the capability of reason, therefore...”
If all of the human behavior we see today is due to evolution, then a belief in the supernatural, particularly theism, is overwhelmingly valuable because of its ubiquitousness. If a behavior is detrimental to an organism and/or species, then it doesn’t continue in a majority of the organisms of a species.
“Drivel to promote a bigger offering”
Can tell you are nothing but objective and nonprejudiced.
So how do you know God didn’t design things using evolution that evolution is not God’s pen a tool He uses??
Yes. You get it.
Oh, and to top it all off, if the mind were designed, why are there people with mental defects or disorders? A “designed” product implies that there is a design. So why are there people with mental disorders? There are, even today, plenty of people incapable of reason (just look at the Democrat party), so there quite demonstrably are people out there whose minds aren’t trustable, which is what you’d expect if the ability to reason arose out of a long process of evolution with all kinds of mistakes and variations along the way.
The purpose of this 'flesh' age, which has a time signature placed. Only those that refused to take this flesh journey have already been judged and received the death sentence of their 'soul/spirit intellect'. God so 'loved' the world that He gave His only begotten Son... And God did not use evolution as His vehicle for Him to come in a flesh body. It is not about whether He could or could NOT it is about what He did and why.
How does reason relate to insects, in particular social insects like ants, bees, and termites?
Most of the animal biomass on the planet consists of tiny unreasoning worker and drone insects. Their survival seems strictly based on the fecundity of a relative few organisms, not any sort of brain-power.
In a universe with the correct physical laws to allow life to exist. Which this one (obviously!) has.
This is the Fine-tuned Universe argument:
The premise of the fine-tuned Universe assertion is that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the Universe radically different. As Stephen Hawking has noted, "The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron. ... The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life."
This is a much stronger argument for a Creator than anything creationist critics of evolution have come up with.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.