Yesterday we examined the objection to theistic belief that belief in God is irrational. In reply to this objection I suggested that there are a number of things an atheistic materialist has to believe that many people, including atheists, would consider irrational or at least less rational than believing their contraries.
I'd like to finish up those thoughts by noting one other grave problem with what we might call the atheistic argument from irrationality. The atheist who employs this argument against the theist actually winds up shooting himself in the foot. Here's why.
Atheists, or naturalistic materialists (Nat Mats), are philosophically wedded to a Darwinian explanation of the emergence of the human species, but according to the Darwinian view organisms and all their capacities evolve to enable them to survive and reproduce.
It follows, then, that the Nat Mat must acknowledge that human beings have evolved their cognitive faculties, which include reason, to enable them to survive and reproduce. But survival is not the same thing as truth. Our cognitive faculties have not evolved to enable us to discover truth.
Most Naturalists freely admit this. Here are four examples of the dozens that could be cited:
“Sometimes you are more likely to survive and propagate if you believe a falsehood than if you believe the truth.” Physicist Eric Baum.
“According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness. Never.” Cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman.
"Our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes truth is adaptive sometimes not." Neuroscientist Steven Pinker.
Evolution selects for survival and “Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.” Philosopher Patricia Churchland.
You get the idea. If Darwinian evolution is true then we have no basis for trusting our reason to lead us to truth because reason didn't evolve to serve that function. The thoughts in our brains are just the movement of electrons along neurons which are, in turn, the result of a mindless, unguided evolutionary process.
If this is so, why should I believe anything those electro-chemical reactions in the brain tell me is true? Indeed, what grounds does a Nat Mat have for even believing that Nat Mat is true?
Naturalistic philosopher John Gray writes, "The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth," and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett agrees, “Our brains aren’t wired for accuracy. They’re wired to keep us alive.”
How then can our Nat Mat friends claim that it's rational to believe in the evolution of human reason, a faculty not designed to discover truth, but that it's irrational to believe that human reason was designed by an intelligent Mind to enable us to apprehend truth? Clearly, the atheist has put himself in a pickle here.
If the atheist is right that we are the product of mindless unguided natural processes, then he has given us strong reason to doubt the reliability of our cognitive faculties and thus also given us strong reason to doubt the truth of any belief they produce, including the belief that there is no God.
Moreover, since the atheist has no grounds for trusting the deliverances of his reason he a forteriori strips himself of any rational basis for science. If atheism is true then there's no warrant for either science or truth, since both depend upon the ability to trust the faculty of human reason. Atheism saws off the epistemic branch that it sits on.
How, after all, can it be reasonable to hold the belief that we have no basis for trusting reason?
So, which is more rational, holding a belief - atheism - that implicitly denies that our reason is trustworthy and that truth can be known, or holding a belief - theism - that tells us that our reason is trustworthy because it was instilled in us by a rational Creator?
