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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 ...
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This link will be provided to my grandchildren, who are now exposed to academia's challenges of all things spiritual and eternal.
Sometimes, a single statement, such as, "If our minds were not designed, why would we trust them?" is the antidote for the "foolishness" of much of what passes for "education" today.
Reason and rationality are survival characteristics. If we couldn’t rely on them, we’d be unable to do things like store food for the winter, navigate successfully, or take advantage of physics or natural phenomena. This doesn’t even apply solely to humans. All animals, consciously or not, rely on at least rationality for survival, and several of the more “intelligent” animals appear to be capable of applying at least basic reasoning as well.
Criticizing evolution is criticizing God’s work.
Exactly. Evolution is God's chosen method of adaptation. But evolution is not creation, climate change is not caused by human-generated carbon, and brains do not create consciousness.
Nope. Adaptation to environmental differences, and evolving from nothing are not the same thing.
Yes.
But, I do not see how this constitutes reason. Instinctual stimuli-response. Reason is a meaningless term with respect to survival advantage.
How does your comment counter the argument in this article?
This is not inconsistent with my observations of man.
If our minds were not designed, why would we trust them?
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The above is a cute aphorism, but is not in any way part of the construction of an argument that proves creationism, nor does it disprove evolution.
It is a statement of faith (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
The ability to evolve may well be part of the design.
Reason provides greater survival advantage than stimulus response, as proven by human adaptability. How reason came about is a different question. Human intelligence is one of the least well understood aspects of life, with no scientific or philosophical consensus on major issues like consciousness, free will and epistemology.
But none of it is relevant to theology. Consider this, if you were provided with a coherent and convincing theory of human reason based in the matter of the brain would you stop believing in God?
The human genome is estimated to consist over over three billion DNA base pairs. Lets look at how large of a number that represents. If we assume that the base pairs are acutally pairs (not true, the number is acutally larger) that number can be expressed as
2 raised to the power of 3,000,000,000000
Now consider the following:
2^8 = 256
2^10 = 1024
2^64 = 18446744073709551616
The number of atom in the known universe is estimated at 4.0e^81 or 2 ^ 271
Now think about that. Compare the size of every known atom 2 ^ 271 vs 2 ^ 3,000,000,000,000 Now think of this as a brute force attack against that number. How does random trial and error get to your DNA which is only ONE of the 2 ^ 3,000,000,000,000
The understanding of large numbers is what leads many scientists and mathematician to believe in God.
Kudos. That’s a creative way to redefine modern science’s current definition of biological evolution.
Except that the flesh body was by design to house the soul/spirit intellect, that was created long before this flesh age. All souls/spirit intellect were created at the same time. Each that will, gets their opportunity to take this flesh journey. First requirement to 'see' the kingdom of God. Conservatism is individual personal responsibility and so it shall be how judgment occurs.
Nonsense, God didn’t construct the theory, Darwin did.
Define reason.
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“But none of it is relevant to theology. Consider this, if you were provided with a coherent and convincing theory of human reason based in the matter of the brain would you stop believing in God?”
No. But that is not the issue here.
That's like saying static is designed into radios.
What precludes it from being able to evolve, and still do that?
You can't, as David Hume argued 250 years ago.
“Criticizing evolution is criticizing God’s work.”
That’s silly. It’s actually meaningless.
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