Our brains are one of the most fascinating parts of our body. According to many health professionals, the human brain is made from 100 billion of neurons and nearly 100 trillion synapses. That is incredible and amazing! In fact, there is more than 300 times more connections in the brain than there are stars in the milky way galaxy.
Can we trust our brains if it evolved from impersonal forces, not to mention irrational and random processes? Which worldview makes sense of our brains? A world view is a set of presuppositions we hold about the basic nature of reality. One cannot think without metaphysical premises about the character of the world. Whether you are conscious of it or not, you have a philosophy about life. All of us have a way of understanding the external world that ultimate dictates our thoughts and behavior.
A Materialist is a person who believes that reality ultimate consists of matter and energy, there is no supernatural (i.e., God, heaven, angels, hell, etc.,). Just imagine if, there is no Creator behind the existence of the world, no one is responsible for designing our brains for the purposes of thinking. Our very thoughts are indeed the product of chance, something impersonal and the outcome of irrational forces. If, that is the case, there is no reason to trust our thoughts. If we cannot trust our thoughts, we cannot utilize the arguments of atheism or anything else epistemologically speaking. So, unless we believe in God, we cannot use my thoughts to distrust the Creator of the universe.
Kenneth R. Samples states “Embracing the grand evolutionary view that the sensory organs and cognitive faculties of human beings are the result of random and purposeless natural process raises an issue of trust regarding that which is observed. Does one’s observation and thoughts actually correspond with reality?” (Quoted from his book WITHOUT a DOUBT, p.24).
Samples asks, “How can important rational enterprises as logic, mathematics, and science be reasonably justified when the human brain and mind are the result of a nonrational, mindless accident?” If we expunge God as the Maker, the Preserver, and the Ruler of the universe, then all we have is time and chance solely acting in matter. In a worldview that maintains that only matter is the ultimate reality, the question now is: how do we account for abstractions in a world composed of matter and energy alone? If, the universe ultimately really is a collocation of random atoms, then knowledge would be impossible. The constant steady stream of ideas and impressions entering our minds through the senses would not be ordered in a rational pattern but would be a meaningless scattered shot of sights, sounds, taste and textures. Simply put, chance cannot account for rationality.
Sacred Scripture teaches man is created in the image of God (Gen.1:26). God created men with the ability to act, think, reason, and behave and to pattern their thoughts after God’s image. Scripture reminds us concerning Christ, (Colossians 2:3) “in whom are hidden all treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” The basis for knowing anything at all is because God is wise and all knowing. Romans 16:27 “to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.” God has true exhaustive knowledge of everything. He knows all things simultaneously and instantaneously. How can we know anything is true and what is truth? We begin with the triune God. Truth properly related to God means that which is real and reliable, opposite of false and error; descriptive of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit as the One True God, and that facts conform to reality and truth identify things as they really are. Psalm 119:160 “The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.”
Charles Darwin expressed his intellectual honesty when he wrote a letter to William Graham on July 3, 1881. “The horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of men’s mind which has always been developed from the lower mind of animals are of any value, or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?” The emphasis here is that under materialistic assumptions, knowledge is baseless, is of no value and it is totally unreliable. Knowledge under this worldview is bankrupt. The Apostle Paul said in Romans 3:4 “Let God be true, and every man be a liar.”
Submitted by George L. Arroyo.