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 the 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(s) 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. If,
instead, we choose to value our fellow humans, there is no way to sustain this
value and to reject materialism if we also reject God.
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