CAN IRRATIONALITY PRODUCE RATIONALITY?

This is precisely what atheistic, naturalistic evolution maintains – that mindless natural selection produced a thinking mind with billions of neurons and trillions of neuronal connections. 

Atheist turned Christian, C.S. Lewis, doubted that this was possible. He compared mindless evolution to someone with a damaged brain:

·       "Whenever you know what the other man is saying is wholly due to his complexes or to a bit of bone pressing on his brain, you cease to attach importance to it. But if naturalism were true then all thoughts whatever would be wholly the result of irrational causes. Therefore, all thoughts would be completely worthless. Therefore, naturalism is completely worthless. If this is true, then we can know no truths. It cuts its own throat."

Although I sympathize with his reasoning, I think that it will leave the naturalist undaunted. Why? Because he already believes, based on a mindless process, that our eyes are able to perfectly mirror the physical world! If our eyes can picture or embrace this world, why not also our thinking? If strictly bio-chemical processes can produce vision, why not also thinking?

However, our thinking seems to transcend even what our eyes can do. While our eyes can see, possibly because of deterministic and invariable laws of biochemistry, which do not require freewill, it is much harder to conceive of our thinking in this way.

Thinking can only be of a very rudimentary nature if it is entirely determined by unvarying biochemical forces. This would mean that our thinking is determined by laws locked into predictable and formulaic patterns.

However, this is precisely what human thought is not! Rather, for thought to discover truth, it needs freedom and flexibility that deterministic laws do not allow. These deterministic forces simply repeat the same patterns. That’s what makes them predictable. Instead, thought has to be able to take wings and fly above its social, biological, and psychological bonds.

I had this experience as I began to grow into Christ. As a new Christian, I had the strange realization that there were thoughts that I wanted to think, but could not, places I wanted to take my mind, where it refused to go.

Over the years I have experienced a greater mental freedom to explore and to discover. I think that this is the same freedom an artist experiences.

However, if all thinking is predetermined, then it would have been impossible for me to experience, in such a tangible way, the liberation from my mental prison.

A Logical Restatement

Since a logical restatement provides clarity, let me try to restate what I have been saying above in a logical form:

·       Premise #1 -  Thinking and creativity require freedom of thought

·       Premise #2 -  Materialism –- biochemical laws and causation – provides no basis for freedom of thought but just the same predictable patterns

·       Conclusion -  Freedom of thought must transcend mere materialistic causation.

Premise #1 - Thinking and creativity require freedom of thought.

We experience freedom of thought and choice. To doubt this is like doubting our most basic perceptions, like doubting our personhood, experience, and perceptions. We’d think it absurd that someone might tell us that we are not sitting by our computer. Likewise, it’s equally absurd to deny our experience of freedom of thought and choice.

Similarly, Leo Tolstoy had written in War and Peace:

·       “You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom.”

Premise #2 -  Materialism –- biochemical laws and causation – provides no basis for freedom of thought.

Atheists tend to agree that materialism provides no basis for freewill or our freedom of thought. In “Consciousness Explained,” atheist and materialist, Daniel C. Dennett, acknowledged that materialists deny freewill:

·       “But recently I have learned from discussions with a variety of scientists and other non-philosophers (e.g., the scientists participating with me in the Sean Carroll workshop on the future of naturalism) that they lean the other way: free will, in their view, is obviously incompatible with naturalism, with determinism, and very likely incoherent against any background, so they cheerfully insist that of course they don't have free will, couldn’t have free will, but so what? It has nothing to do with morality or the meaning of life. Their advice to me at the symposium was simple: recast my pressing question as whether naturalism (materialism, determinism, science...) has any implications for what we may call moral competence. For instance, does neuroscience show that we cannot be responsible for our choices, cannot justifiably be praised or blamed, rewarded or punished? Abandon the term 'free will' to the libertarians and other incompatibilists, who can pursue their fantasies untroubled. Note that this is not a dismissal of the important issues; it’s a proposal about which camp gets to use, and define, the term. I am beginning to appreciate the benefits of discarding the term 'free will' altogether, but that course too involves a lot of heavy lifting, if one is to avoid being misunderstood.”

Another atheist and freewill denier is Sam Harris. In “Free Will,” Harris wrote:

·       “You can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.”

In other words, we humans are not free to decide or even to direct our thoughts and creative expressions.

Conclusion - Freedom of thought must transcend mere materialistic causation.

Mind activity seems to transcend deterministic laws of science.

The cause must always be greater than the effect. If the effect is greater, it would mean that some aspect of the effect is uncaused. A rational and free mind is greater than natural mindless causes. Therefore, what is irrational cannot produce what is far greater – a rational and free mind.

In claiming that we are created in the image of God, the Bible claims that we are more than just material objects or “wet machines,” as some call us. We are endowed with a transcendent dignity and freedom.

One final point: When we deny our God-given dignity, we demean ourselves and the rest of humanity. We relegate ourselves to the status of an animal, albeit sophisticated. However, this comes with great cost. Psychologist James Hillman understandably insists that we have to recover a glimpse of our true identity from the deadening materialistic ways in which we usually interpret our lives:

·       We dull our lives by the way we conceive then…By accepting the idea that I am the effect of…hereditary and social forces, I reduce myself to a result. The more my life is accounted for by what already occurred in my chromosomes, by what my parents did or didn’t do, and by my early years now long past, the more my biography is the story of a victim. I am living a plot written by my genetic code, ancestral heredity, traumatic occasions, parental unconsciousness, societal accidents. (“The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling,” Random House, 6)

When we reject God, we also reject ourselves and the dignity He has given us. In the process, we also reject others and their inherent value. However, after the flood, God had cautioned Noah:

·       And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” (Genesis 9:5-6, invoking Genesis 1:26-27)

Therefore, when we reject our divine origin, we also reject it in other people and give ourselves unauthorized license to treat them as animals. This might not be apparent to us now, but as clouds must precede rain, a diminished view of humanity will result in a debased treatment of humanity.

Instead, we are wonderfully made. When we see this in our fellow humans, we will be inclined to treat them as wonderful beings.