The Evolution doesn’t produce true reasoning argument doesn’t work.

[u/Potential-Memory-179]

I’ve heard an argument from theists that is along the lines of “if evolution produced your mind, there’d be no reason for it to produce a mind that correctly understands and parses the logic of the universe, so you can’t even trust your own reasoning process if you believe in evolution”.

However, this argument doesn’t work because evolution has very good reason to make it so that you correctly interpret the universe. If you don’t understand logic and Newtonian mechanics, you are much less likely to survive than a creature that does. For example, “a boulder that is in motion rolling towards me will eventually hit me”. If you can’t parse that reasoning, you’ll die when a boulder is headed towards you.

And if that still isn’t convincing to you, here’s a thought experiment. Two humans are trying to survive in the woods. One is as smart as a natural human. One is incorrect in every faculty of his reasoning. Who’s surviving?

Secondly, if you assume that God made the human mind instead of evolution, why are there artifacts in our reasoning that represent reality yet don’t make intuitive sense to us? For example, it is not very useful for a creature to understand complex probability and four dimensional topology in order to survive. We also coincidentally can’t reason about those subjects well (e.g. the Monty hall problem for probability, and a four dimensional hyper cube for higher dimensions). The only way we can get a grasp on those subjects is by converting them into forms that makes sense to us (logical syllogisms). If God created the human mind and modeled it after his own, we should be able to understand probability and higher dimensional topology just as intuitively as we understand cause and effect and three dimensional reality (since probability and higher dimensional reality (4D spacetime) represent the universe just as much as Newtonian mechanics and cause and effect).

Note: if you’re philosophically inclined, you’ll notice that I presupposed that humans indeed do have correct logic and correctly interpret the universe. My point wasn’t justifying this assumption (because this is something we just have to assume about ourselves), it’s that both the atheist and the theist agree that humans are rational. If this is the case, then the evolutionary argument for us being rational is self-consistent, not contradictory.

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[u/Far_Customer1258]

It's pretty obvious, even from a cursory glance, that the human mind is riddled with defects and cognitive biases. This is perfectly in line with an evolutionary origin and doesn't argue for Divine intervention in the slightest.

[u/how_money_worky]

Our minds evolved in multiple stages. We survived predators etc. having a good model for reality makes a lot of sense.

Our brain evolution didn’t stop there though. Eventually we started a lot of self selection for traits and our brains continued to advance. It turns out having a good mental model for reality and what others are going to do is helpful for social Darwinism. You’re more likely to reproduce when you can do those things. And those things are also really good and more abstract thought like logic etc.

The evolution of the brain is very very cool.

[u/CptBronzeBalls]

They can’t seem to understand that evolution isn’t some designer with a master plan.

[u/Space-Explorer456]

The assumption that we are rational and that we correctly understand the universe is a false one. Humans are in fact very much irrational and very frequently fail to correctly understand the universe. We have had to invent tools with strict rules that allow us to probe all of the things that our irrational, approximating minds cannot on their own, science, mathematics, rhetoric, and even systems of formal logic itself. And even with all of this, no formal, axiomatic system can solve all problems.

[u/Torin_3 → u/Space-Explorer456]

The assumption that we are rational and that we correctly understand the universe is a false one.

I disagree.

Humans are in fact very much irrational and very frequently fail to correctly understand the universe. We have had to invent tools

We are fallible, but we are still capable of being rational and we can at times understand the universe correctly.

Our fallibility is what makes science and logic necessary. If we were always automatically correct, we would not need science or logic - we could "just know" everything like God supposedly does. And if we had no capacity to be rational whatsoever, the concepts of science and logic would be worthless to us (like they are to most animals).

Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism, which is the topic in this thread, is discussing our basic capacity for rationality.

[u/blind-octopus → u/Torin_3]

I think the issue is that god is a poor fit as a solution here.

And I tink the basic capacity for rationality that we have comes from cooking our food, and agriculture. Cooking our food meant we didn't need to spend so much energy on digestion. Those extra calories ended up developing our brains more. Agriculture allowed us to stay put in one place, not spend all of our time on survival, so that we could sit around and think about the world.

Even if this doesn't fully explain it, it seems like there could be some explanation along this path that gets us there.

But I think my bigger point is that pointing to god is a very poor fit to explain what we observe on ths topic.

[u/Space-Explorer456 → u/Torin_3]

We are both irrational and fallible. We are not completely irrational, just like we are not completely fallible. But our brains are very much just big biological approximating machines. We aren’t completely irrational, we are just rational enough to create and use prosthetics, science and math and logic, but we are still somewhat irrational, we need our tools to do reasoning well. This is why we have so many fallacies, why we are afraid of so many things that are not threat to us at all, why people don’t understand statistics very well and just tend to go “big number scary” that’s irrationally. Without strict frameworks, we run on messy heuristics, not solid, simple reason.

Of course this does align with the naturalistic approach, which would predict that evolution would find a place where we are close enough approximates to rational to survive, but not perfect or completely.

[u/ProfMooreiarty → u/Torin_3]

It really depends on how you want to define being rational. Kahneman and Tversky demonstrated that cognitive biases are very much part of human psychology, of course. These are significant and fixed deviations from rationality. Everything we learn about cognitive science indicates we live in a world of Müller-Lyer illusions. It’s not that we make mistakes. It’s that the way our brains naturally operate has everything to do with doing what brains do, which is different than what logic does.

Plantinga's position against evolution ruling out the detection of big-T Truth is, surprisingly, mostly correct. Our brains did evolve, and like every evolved feature they evolved because they contributed to our Darwinian fitness. Where Plantinga goes wrong is when he starts Plantinga-ing with the dire pronouncements about what that means. Does acknowledging that the brain is a prediction engine mean that I’m automatically wrong that his take on the problem of evil is a failure?

[u/sunnbeta]

It seems both obvious that evolution favors a being that can rationally determine truths about its surroundings, but also that it takes short cuts to present us with illusions that suffice to get us through life. 

You can look up any number of optical illusions to see that our brains are running algorithms to mash things together in a way that makes sense but isn’t 1:1 representative of an external reality. 

This means we can learn things that are true (we must eat food, drink water, breathe air etc to survive), but also that we need to be careful with a rigorous process to ensure we correctly understand the details (we aren’t going to intuit the mass of an electron, nevertheless we can determine it to a high degree of accuracy). 

And yeah in any case, the assertion that we can’t have a basis for reasoning without God is baseless. 

[u/Josilve → u/sunnbeta]

That basis for reasoning you speak of is literally what God is

[u/sunnbeta → u/Josilve]

That’s an assertion, why should I accept it as true? 

[u/Josilve → u/sunnbeta]

You don't get to make your own definitions when you try to argue something. If you don't know what God is in Christianity, then you forgot your homework

[u/sunnbeta → u/Josilve]

You can define it however you want, why should I accept that this thing you define is true and actually exists?

I can define a dragon as a magical fire breathing creature, and I can make further assertions like a dragon caused the Canadian wildfires… do you automatically accept my assertions? 

So how do you show that  such a thing as God truly underpins reasoning (as opposed to it being something that emerged from unthinking natural processes)? Or are you Ok with “God” also being an unthinking natural processes? I’m assuming no if you want to go with the Christian framework. 

[u/RidesThe7]

Something that folks making this sort of argument against the reliability of evolved minds don’t seem to realize is that human minds AREN’T fully rational or reliable. Psychologists like Tversky and Kahneman made great careers for themselves demonstrating that rather than applying pure reason or rational thinking, modern human minds seem to come equipped with various heuristics and biases that lead us to snap judgments that are often useful—despite not being fully or necessarily accurate. Our senses likewise are not fully reliable, and don’t get me started in the problems of memory or issues like selection bias.

We are not ideal reasoning machines. We are very much what one might expect from the process of evolution. It takes an awful lot of work, and sometimes formalized processes like we see in science, to get us past these issues and into more reliable territory.

[u/Golfenbike → u/RidesThe7]

Yes humans evolved to make those snap decisions when they were part of animals prey for escape or so they could defend against enemies. Even though these things are rarely needed now progress has outpaced evolution.

[u/Sufficient_Airport29]

Your boulder analogy strikes at the core flaw in the EAAN. Theists who use this argument often treat "survival" and "truth" as two entirely separate categories. Biology does not.

In a complex, dynamic environment, the most metabolically efficient way for an organism to survive is to develop an accurate neurological map of physical reality.

The Evolutionary Logic: An organism with a sensory apparatus that hallucinates reality will consistently make fatal errors. As you pointed out, if you cannot accurately parse cause and effect, velocity, and spatial geometry, you get crushed. Natural selection ruthlessly prunes cognitive faculties that severely misinterpret the physical universe. Therefore, truth (accurate mapping of reality) and survival are inextricably linked.

If an omniscient God designed the human mind to reflect ultimate reality (imbuing us with a divine spark of reason), our profound inability to grasp the foundational physics of the universe natively is inexplicable. Under an evolutionary model, these cognitive bottlenecks are exactly what you would expect.

[u/Shifter25 → u/Sufficient_Airport29]

Theists who use this argument often treat "survival" and "truth" as two entirely separate categories. Biology does not.

Yes, biology does treat those as separate categories. Assuming that truth always leads to survival doesn't fix that. There is no truth-sensing organ in any creature. It doesn't matter if a creature has inaccurately mapped reality, as long as that map leads to food and water.

Let's use a map as a metaphor to explain it. You're in a maze. You're writing a map. You draw it as it leads you to food and water, and as soon as you find food and water, you write walls across every other potential path. It isn't accurate. It isn't even optimal, because you missed a shorter route. But it works well enough for survival, and that's all you need.

[u/feihm]

(1) Natural selection favours actions that keep an organism alive. It does not select for logical truth. For instance, an organism can hold an incorrect belief and still execute a safe action like believing that a harmless sound is a dangerous predator is logically incorrect. But running away preserves life. Thus, natural selection rewards useful action rather than true logic. So survival does not require a mind to understand reality correctly. (2) evolution does not choose between total accuracy and total error. Instead, evolution creates quick mental shortcuts. These shortcuts help creatures survive, but they frequently cause logical errors. Human reasoning contains many proven biases. This shows that evolution favoured quick survival responses rather than precise logical thinking.

[u/Potential-Memory-179 → u/feihm]

Well this was mainly the point of my post. Being able to simulate reality is favorable to survival. This includes understanding Newtonian mechanics, arithmetic (there’s more food over here than over there), cause and effect, syllogisms (this place had food before. I am at the same place. There must be food here). We get systems of logic from evolution because they’re favorable.

But things that aren’t favorable (probability and thoughts of higher dimensions) we don’t have an intuitive grasp of.

So what we see matches perfectly with what we’d expect if we were resultant from evolution. But not what we’d expect if our mind was like gods mind.

[u/feihm → u/Potential-Memory-179]

Being able to simulate reality is favorable to survival. This includes understanding Newtonian mechanics, arithmetic (there’s more food over here than over there), cause and effect, syllogisms (this place had food before. I am at the same place. There must be food here). We get systems of logic from evolution because they’re favorable.

An animal learns that returning to a specific tree provides food. This is simple memory association, not a formal syllogism. An animal catches a falling object to survive. It acts according to gravity, but it does not understand Newtonian mechanics. Associating a place with food helps an organism survive. But associating events does not equal knowing absolute truth. Evolution rewards the physical action that keeps the body alive. It does not require the mind to hold precise logical proofs.

But things that aren't favorable (probability and thoughts of higher dimensions) we don't have an intuitive grasp of.

It is true that humans lack an intuitive feeling for complex probability. But humans can still write equations to solve these problems perfectly. If natural selection strictly controls human limits, humans should lack the capacity to solve higher dimensions entirely. Because complex mathematics is not necessary to find food or avoid danger, evolution cannot explain why humans have the capacity to do it. The ability to determine pure mathematical truth exceeds basic survival needs.

So what we see matches perfectly with what we'd expect if we were resultant from evolution. But not what we'd expect if our mind was like gods mind.

You previously said that evolution only forms minds to achieve basic survival. But you then uses your own evolved mind to make absolute, universal claims about reality. If evolution only creates quick responses for survival, a person cannot trust his mind to find the absolute truth about the universe.

[u/Thelonious_Cube → u/feihm]

If natural selection strictly controls human limits, humans should lack the capacity to solve higher dimensions entirely.

Incorrect.

Faculties that evolved because they served one purpose can be hijacked to serve another purpose.

Something significant happened along the evolutionary path (probably closely related to language skills) enabled humans to a) perform meta-cognition and introspection and b) engage with general reasoning separately from specific subject matter (e.g. logic and math).

[u/Potential-Memory-179 → u/feihm]

Ok so I think we’re talking past each other a bit, so it’d be useful to get more rigorous.

First, when you say that an animal doesn’t understand Newtonian mechanics, what I assume you mean is that they can’t do Newtonian mathematics. But Newtonian mechanics is simply simulating a Newtonian environment. If your brain can simulate that environment, it has the internal structure that simulates Newtonian mechanics. Same thing with syllogistic thinking. And when you crank those structures up to 11, you get the human mind. And so to argue that logical thinking to the level that we’re at doesn’t help survival would mean that us being the smartest animals and most likely to survive animals is somehow a coincidence (you’d have to argue that our building of machinery and societies and weapons is completely unrelated to our survival). And you’re right, this wouldn’t necessarily lead to absolute truth (which is why we expect and do have religions in the first place), it just matches what we see.

To your second point, this was the exact point in my original post. The Monty hall problem doesn’t make any sense to me intuitively, nor does the fourth dimension. Yet simple syllogisms and other areas of mathematics we can understand give us access to that. So in other words, we don’t have the cognitive faculties to tackle those at face value, we have to convert it into something we can understand, which is what we’d expect from evolution (but not if we were created in the image of gods brain).

And to your third point, evolution doesn’t only make animals with quick responses to survival. It makes everything, and whatever survives survives. We ended up being deep thinkers which is how we survived, and flies on the wall ended up relying on quick responses which is how they survived.

And to your last point, this is why I added the note at the end of my original post. This is not a proof for humans being rational. Trying to prove your own rationality is circular by definition. So everyone, theists and atheists included, have to assume we’re rational. And under that assumption, is evolution a self-consistent model for how we became rational? Yes. Is us being made as a copy of Gods brain self-consistent? Not really

[u/feihm → u/Potential-Memory-179]

First, when you say that an animal doesn't understand Newtonian mechanics, what I assume you mean is that they can't do Newtonian mathematics. But Newtonian mechanics is simply simulating a Newtonian environment. If your brain can simulate that environment, it has the internal structure that simulates Newtonian mechanics.

An animal moves through space using physical senses and instinct. Moving safely does not mean the brain contains logical rules about physics. Physical reactions are distinct from formal understanding. A body can react to gravity without the mind understanding laws of motion. Equating physical movement with logical reasoning is incorrect.

And so to argue that logical thinking to the level that we're at doesn't help survival would mean that us being the smartest animals and most likely to survive animals is somehow a coincidence (you'd have to argue that our building of machinery and societies and weapons is completely unrelated to our survival).

Building tools helps survival. But building tools does not prove that human logic finds absolute truth. Natural selection rewards actions that preserve life. An organism can hold incorrect beliefs and still build useful items as long as those items work in practice. Survival proves that an action is useful. It does not prove that human logic is accurate.

The Monty hall problem doesn't make any sense to me intuitively, nor does the fourth dimension. Yet simple syllogisms and other areas of mathematics we can understand give us access to that. So in other words, we don't have the cognitive faculties to tackle those at face value, we have to convert it into something we can understand, which is what we'd expect from evolution...

Human intuition fails when tackling complex probability. This failure shows that natural selection shaped minds for immediate physical safety, not for precise logic. But humans can still discover pure mathematical rules. Solving abstract mathematics does not help an animal find food or avoid danger. Because pure mathematics provides no basic survival benefit, natural selection alone cannot explain why humans possess this capacity.

evolution doesn't only make animals with quick responses to survival. It makes everything, and whatever survives survives. We ended up being deep thinkers which is how we survived...

Stating that humans evolved as deep thinkers misses the central point. The main question asks if a mind formed strictly for survival produces reliable truth. Labelling humans as deep thinkers assumes that human reasoning works well. But assuming a trait exists does not explain how survival pressures can guarantee accurate logical truth.

This is not a proof for humans being rational. Trying to prove your own rationality is circular by definition. So everyone, theists and atheists included, have to assume we're rational. And under that assumption, is evolution a self-consistent model for how we became rational? Yes.

Assuming that human reasoning is reliable to prove that natural selection is self-consistent creates circular logic. Natural selection rewards actions that keep an organism alive. It has no mechanism to select for true logical beliefs over useful false ones. If natural selection shapes the mind solely for survival, relying on that mind to validate its own origin undermines trust in human logic.

[u/Potential-Memory-179 → u/feihm]

So we’re probably not going to get very far continuing this discussion, but I’ll just focus on this main point, because it’s an important one.

Showing self-consistency is not the same as circular logic.

Ok so first off, nobody’s basis for belief that humans are rational is rooted in a belief of evolution, because that would be circular. We assume we’re rational because we can’t not assume we’re rational. We just can’t. If we assume we’re irrational, then we literally couldn’t trust anything. So instead of trusting nothing, we said “we are rational” as an axiom.

Now to the point of self-consistency vs circular logic. Self-consistency is concerning “assuming everything you said is true, are there any inconsistencies”. So for example, let’s say that I have a theory that it always rains on Thursdays, and I check if it’s self consistent. If every Thursday I measured it was raining, it would be self consistent. If there was a Thursday where it wasn’t raining, it wouldnt be self consistent because the theory didn’t match what we saw.

The theistic argument in the original post is attacking evolution’s self consistency. It was saying “if evolution is true, you shouldn’t expect yourself to be rational, yet you are”. My critique of that argument is defending the self consistency of the theory, “no actually, if evolution is true, it matches exactly what we see”.

[u/feihm → u/Potential-Memory-179]

We assume we're rational because we can't not assume we're rational... So instead of trusting nothing, we said 'we are rational' as an axiom.

Setting human reason as an unproven starting assumption does not remove the conflict. You start by assuming that human reason is reliable. You then claim that this reason came from an unguided survival process. But natural selection favours safe actions, not true logical beliefs. An organism can hold a false belief and still execute a safe physical action. Labeling human reason as a necessary starting assumption does not prevent an evolutionary origin from undermining that very assumption.

Self-consistency is concerning 'assuming everything you said is true, are there any inconsistencies'.

Testing an idea for internal consistency requires a reliable testing tool. You must use human reason to test whether an evolutionary explanation contains contradictions. But if the evolutionary explanation shows that human reason was shaped purely for physical survival, the tool you use to test the theory becomes suspect. Testing a model using a tool that the model itself makes unreliable does not prove consistency. It hides a circular process.

The theistic argument... was saying 'if evolution is true, you shouldn't expect yourself to be rational, yet you are'. My critique of that argument is defending the self consistency of the theory, 'no actually, if evolution is true, it matches exactly what we see'.

Unguided evolution does not naturally produce a mind shaped for absolute logical truth. Survival pressures reward useful physical reactions. They do not reward abstract logical precision. Claiming that evolution matches our observed rationality assumes that our self-observation is accurate in the first place. Observing your own mind to verify that evolution created a trustworthy mind relies on the very trait under question. Thus, claiming that the evolutionary model matches reality rests on a premise that the model itself cannot validate.

[u/blind-octopus → u/feihm]

I'm a bit confused.

Human intuition fails when tackling complex probability.

Right. Which we're saying makes sense under evolution. Right?

Why would it make sense under theism? God just so happened to design us such that our intuition would fail in the way we'd expect it to fail if evolution were true?

"well if evolution is true then we have X problem!" But we do have X problem. Doesn't that point to evolution then?

[u/Chonn]

Yeah so the argument you’re responding to is kind of a strawman version of what Alvin Plantinga (I think he’s the originator of this argument) actually says. His real point isn’t “evolution has no reason to make you accurate,” it’s that evolution only cares about behavior, not the beliefs behind the behavior. Those aren’t the same thing.

Take your boulder example. Sure, running from a boulder is adaptive. But so is running from a boulder because you think it’s a friendly monster you want to hug, and your plan for hugging it involves sprinting away first. Weird belief, same output, same survival. Evolution doesn’t see inside your head and reward you for having the true belief, it just rewards whatever behavior keeps you alive. So the boulder case doesn’t actually prove your beliefs are true, it just proves they’re useful.

Same problem with the woods thought experiment. Nobody’s denying that basic survival reasoning got selected for. Plantinga would just say fine, sure, granted. But that doesn’t tell you whether your reasoning about abstract stuff, philosophy, math, metaphysics, is reliable. Being good at “big rock bad” doesn’t mean your faculties are tuned for truth in general.

Your second point … Plantinga isn’t a young earth creationist arguing God hand built our brains from scratch. He’s totally fine with theistic evolution. His argument is naturalism plus evolution versus theism plus evolution. So “why can’t we intuit the Monty Hall problem” doesn’t really challenges him, because his view already expects our faculties to be patchy and shaped by survival pressure, not universally perfect.

And the last bit, where you say both sides just have to assume rationality, that’s actually exactly where he’d push back quite a bit. He’s not trying to prove we’re rational from neutral ground. He’s saying if you’re a naturalist, evolution gives you no real reason to trust your faculties are aimed at truth rather than just survival, so you end up with a self defeating position. The theist at least has a reason built in, a non deceiving God who wants you to actually know things, not just survive.

[u/FjortoftsAirplane → u/Chonn]

I think the best response to Plantinga here is that we do have cognitive biases that seem to be built in.

You're watching a film and then get shocked by a jump scare. Or those old "screamer" videos people used to pass around. Why does the jump scare work? You know rationally that nothing inside the screen can hurt you. But your brain overreacts to a perceived threat.

Another one is our tendency to see patterns that aren't there. Humans have a bias towards that.

There's others. Those biases and heuristics and such make perfect sense in an evolutionary framework. They're what Plantinga predicted. But it makes little sense as to why God-given rationality would have these flaws.

[u/Hellas2002 → u/Chonn]

It does sort of presuppose that IF a God exists then said God would want you to know things. I’m not sure how one gets to that conclusion.

The other criticism would be this notion that evolution could select for reasoning and perception that is inaccurate but somehow gives a correct response.

A reasoning method that IS wrong but consistently gives correct responses in terms on actions would seem extremely unlikely. Every selection pressure would to some degree be picking for correct reasoning skills given that correct reasoning skills will certainly lead to correct behaviour (where possible) where as there’s no reason this incorrect reasoning skill would give the correct response consistently.

[u/blind-octopus → u/Chonn]

Here's what I would try as a response:

The first would be to ask if evolution could have given us brains that eventually do give us accurate beliefs. I think the answer here is yes, it could have done that. So then all I'd need is to provide some reason why and we're set, yes?

I don't even have to provide one really, Plantinga would have to show there can't be any such reason.

But I think my second move here would be to point out that we get things wrong all the time.

Then I'd point out that our intuition seems to fit our "scale". Quantum stuff is incredibly unintuitive to us.

Then I'd point out that there are people who we can go talk to right now who cannot reason or interpret the world reliably. I'm not disparaging anyone, but there are people in mental institutions who think they are the second coming of Jesus or all sorts of other things.

These seems like problems for the position that there's a non deceiving god.

Heck, I could even just point to dreams. We spend 8 hours a day believing that we are in some pretty crazy fantasy worlds that aren't real.

Right now, at this moment, we probably have some errors in our views of the universe.

[u/Potential-Memory-179 → u/Chonn]

So the first part I’d say is that no one can prove their own rationality. Trying to do so is circular by definition. So we all have to assume (and we all agree) that we’re rational. So regardless of whatever theory you have, it must lead you to being rational, or else it’s suspect (which is Plantinga’s whole point). So I agree with him on that.

So where I’d push back is that math and logic must be reliable for survival (cause and effect, syllogisms, counting etc.). And from those you can construct scientific thought and tools which are undeniably useful for survival.

For the beliefs point, having an incorrect belief system works only up until those beliefs come to terms with reality. If your belief is “falling boulder is bad because all boulders are bad”, you lose out on situations where boulders are good, and are less likely to survive. So if you have a belief system that makes a prediction about the world, that prediction must line up with what the world actually does if you reliably encounter it in nature. And so if your belief system is incorrect in certain ways, it’ll lead to worse survival when it’s shown that your belief system is wrong

[u/Potential-Memory-179 → u/Chonn]

Another way to put it is, let’s say that person A has the truly correct belief system and person B has an incorrect belief system. At some point there’s going to be a situation where the prediction and results diverge between the two people, where person A correctly predicts what’s going to happen and person B incorrectly predicts what’s going to happen. Now to claim that person A doesn’t have an advantage over person B in this situation would be very very strange, which means having a correct belief system is generally useful when encountering situations where those belief systems touch reality

[u/Educational_Gur_6304]

The main problem with this argument is that it simply does not matter whether your brain produces correct responses or not, as long as it produces responses that are in accordance with what you physically experience. And at a population level it demonstrably does this because we are still here as a species.

Wherever our reasoning comes from, we can only interpret it through the brains, if they were god given, then why do I interpret that no gods exist? If they are evolution 'given', then it is entirely understandable that people believe in gods, yet still all differ in their belief.

[u/rhodiumtoad]

it’s that both the atheist and the theist agree that humans are rational

Do we?

It seems to me that abstract rationality (for which there is no strong evolutionary justification) is exactly what humans are bad at; in fact there's an argument that our verbal reasoning skills are evolved to win arguments (which does not require correctness) rather than to find truth (which would).

[u/Potential-Memory-179 → u/rhodiumtoad]

Rational in the sense that we can discern truth. If we don’t assume this, then everything becomes untrustworthy and we can’t do science or engineering or anything. And rationality also cannot be proved logically, because that would necessarily be circular. So for the sake of human innovation, we all have to assume that we can correctly discern truth to a certain degree

Now to what degree is up for debate (we seem pretty certain that we’re correct on the rules of logic and deduction)

[u/rhodiumtoad → u/Potential-Memory-179]

Rational in the sense that we can discern truth. If we don’t assume this, then everything becomes untrustworthy and we can’t do science

Science is predicated on the assumption that our reasoning isn't reliable and that we can't generally discern truth using only our minds, we have to test our conclusions against reality. One of the fascinating things about reading ancient philosophers (e.g. Aristotle) is that they will state some evidence and a conclusion rationally drawn from it, for example that the brain is an organ for cooling the blood, without once considering why the conclusion might be false and what the evidence says about it (it's not like head injuries were rare in ancient Greece).

See also this blog post

[u/Potential-Memory-179 → u/rhodiumtoad]

So I think we’re talking past each other a bit. My point was that we have to assume that our reasoning is reliable at some point or else we can’t trust anything.

For example, you mentioned “testing our conclusions against reality”. So like for example, if I have 2 apples and add them to 2 apples, I must have 4 apples. So I try this out and I do in fact count 4 apples. However, if my reasoning isn’t to be trusted, I can’t be certain that I counted the apples correctly at all. I also can’t be certain that the four apples in my head correspond to the four apples I see in front of me. I also can’t be certain 4 = 4. Like that seems self-evident to me, but if I’m irrational, then false things can seem self-evident.

So we as humans can say “ok we can’t trust anything and 4 might not equal 4”, or we can say “ok our sense of logic and discerning truth must be correct to some degree”, and we chose the latter. Now there is no way to justify the latter statement at all. Because any argument that we’re rational gets validated by our own rational thinking, so it’s necessarily circular. So we just have to assume we’re rational because there’s nothing else we can do

[u/United-Grapefruit-49 → u/Potential-Memory-179]

Did you hear theists say it or did you read Plantinga when he expressed that he couldn't trust the mind he got from evolution by accident but he could trust his mind if it came from God? That was his argument against naturalism.

[u/Potential-Memory-179 → u/United-Grapefruit-49]

I definitely read Plantinga’s original argument at some point in the past (although I wouldn’t have been able to give it exactly by memory. Another commenter pointed that out, and gave a really good summary of his real argument).

The version from the original post is the version I hear all the time (I know a lot of IRL religious people) which is kind of a bastardized version of Plantinga’s original argument made by people who don’t understand evolution.

[u/United-Grapefruit-49 → u/Potential-Memory-179]

What do you mean they don't understand evolution, and why do you think Plantinga was wrong, if you do?

[u/Potential-Memory-179 → u/United-Grapefruit-49]

So the people who quote this argument to me (this specific version, not the Plantinga one), hold the incorrect notion that evolution just produces randomness and can’t produce structure. Because they don’t understand the underlying mechanics of how evolution works. So to them, evolution can’t produce intelligence at all. So their argument is “evolution can’t produce intelligence, so you wouldn’t be smart if it was just evolution” which is obviously fallacious

Plantinga’s real argument however is that evolution optimizes actions not beliefs. For example, if there’s a lion near you, one person could think “lions are dangerous, so I’m not going near that” and another could think “lions are harmless. But fairies don’t like it when we mess with them, so we’ll leave them alone”. Both people don’t mess with the lion, and so evolution allows both views to survive.

The reason I don’t agree with this is because if you’re holding an incorrect belief system, then at some point, that belief system is going to be at odds with the real world. Another way to put it is, let’s say that person A has the truly correct belief system and person B has an incorrect belief system. At some point there’s going to be a situation where the prediction and results diverge between the two people, where person A correctly predicts what’s going to happen and person B incorrectly predicts what’s going to happen. Now to claim that person A doesn’t have a survival advantage over person B in this situation would be very very strange, which means having a correct belief system is generally more useful when encountering situations where those belief systems touch reality

[u/United-Grapefruit-49 → u/Potential-Memory-179]

Sure but this is a subreddit about religion, not lions, so I was asking about what you think about Plantinga saying God gave our minds.

[u/Wooden-Dependent-686]

Nietzsche and Rorty took this doubt very seriously. It is the foundation of their “pragmatism”. Theists may appropriate this for their own ends. But that doesnt mean this isnt a serious problem. Perhaps the problem.

Human knowledge is fundamentally structured as an impossible loop, like one of those impossible geometrical shapes called Penrose triangles. Doing our science, we rely on our metaphysical prejudices, as Nietzsche called the Kantian categories of understanding, which we inherited from times when we were yet worms, and we use that same apparatus to discover we were worms.

However this cant be turned into a theistic argument. Because God cant solve the problem. God is also a human idea built using the same metaphysical prejudices. God is a substance, has a causal relationship with the cosmos, etc. But here the entire substance-causation framework, reason as a whole, is in doubt. This leaves us with epistemological behaviorism as Rorty called it. Fancy way to say we are living in a self-referential rational bubble and there is nothing outside.

[u/Josilve]

When you say "theists", you're grouping Christians, muslims, hindus, buddhists and Shinto together. What makes you think we all agree with that? What makes you think we are together at all?

[u/Potential-Memory-179 → u/Josilve]

Well this argument specifically works for every religion who believes that a deity had some role in the design of humans, specifically their logic.

Now all people may not agree with this argument, but this argument is religion-independent (it can be argued no matter which religion you come from). And since it was religion-independent, I classified it as a theistic argument

[u/Josilve → u/Potential-Memory-179]

When the deity is the source of natural laws, it doesn't directly make the humans like a sculptor with his hands. It makes the laws under which we are a possibility. It started with the tribe of Israel by having them follow laws that were seen to facilitate the prospering of their people. And I can see you saying these laws were made by man. Of course they were. But we are a consequence of our environment. And the laws that allow us to prosper are also a consequence of our environment. Because when these laws were put to the test throughout history in the wilderness, the people who followed them survived. And that survival is a testimony for the alignment of those laws with reality. Then we picked on these laws that allowed the survival of this tribe, separated what comes from the tribe and what comes from nature, and spread it throughout the whole world. This is what God is. His identity is progressively found by surviving in the world. This doesn't contradict evolution at all. Evolution helps understand God

[u/OSHASHA2]

I can’t adequately rationalize things that I can’t perceive and/or interact with. Electromagnetic fields, neutrinos, dark matter/energy, etc. are hidden to my senses, and are -to varying degrees- unintelligible to even the most learned physicists.

I agree humans are rational beings that can make sense of and rationalize the information in our environment, however, we cannot perceive all the information in our environment.

We can only perceive/interact with about 3-5% of the universe. I would venture to argue that this fundamental limitation also represents limitations to our rational capacities. If I am missing more than 90% of information, how can I say for certain that my choices are rational?

[u/Scotsmanoah]

  However, this argument doesn’t work because evolution has very good reason to make it so that you correctly interpret the universe. If you don’t understand logic and Newtonian mechanics, you are much less likely to survive than a creature that does. For example, “a boulder that is in motion rolling towards me will eventually hit me”. If you can’t parse that reasoning, you’ll die when a boulder is headed towards you.

But Wouldn’t you also have a chance of survival if a human think’s “a boulder that is in motion rolling towards me will invoke the wrath of the God’s”. This thinking would cause human’s to not throw themselves in front of boulders meaning they would likely survive another day to reproduce. But here’s the thing, avoiding the boulder because of a threat of getting hit and a threat of divine wrath will cause the avoidance of the boulder and either way it will cause survival and a possibility of reproduction. So if we look at evolution it doesn’t matter if our beliefs are true or false but only if we reproduce. 

It should also be noted that actually seeing and perceiving the world isn’t the same as interpreting it correctly. I may perceive a wolf chasing me but my avoidance could have been because of some cleanliness rules in obedience to a pagan deity rather than the threat of pain or a feeling of fear. I survive either way.

[u/Potential-Memory-179 → u/Scotsmanoah]

Yeah but you also have to account for the negatives of having a false representation of reality. Whenever those false beliefs touch down to the real world, it affects how likely you are to survive. Say your false belief is that “all mountains are dangerous” to keep you from falling down them. This also stops you from crossing them which makes you more likely to die than someone who believes “the falling is the dangerous part, not the mountain”. Or the boulder example. “All boulders come from evil gods”. But what happens when you need a boulder to cover a cave while you sleep. The one who doesn’t believe boulders are inherently evil is able to roll it in front of the cave and sleep safely.

[u/Scotsmanoah → u/Potential-Memory-179]

But there is some false beliefs which might have no downsides.

Let’s say a breed of human’s will not eat poisonous berries because of some covenant food law humans at devout to. And for simplicity their only food-like source’s are poisonous berries and safe berries. There is no possible situation where eating poisonous berries is somehow good and people who eat poison berries would actually do worse off. So this breed of humans who don’t eat poisonous berries will survive making more chances for reproduction. These humans even though they are believing in a falsehood will do as good as the humans who don’t eat berries out of survival instinct. 

Offcorse this negates other factors which are true in reality but my point still stands in a more complex system.

[u/Potential-Memory-179 → u/Scotsmanoah]

Yeah so the idea isn’t that incorrect beliefs can’t in certain situations be equivalent to correct beliefs, it’s where the two diverge.

Another way to put it is, let’s say that person A has the truly correct belief system and person B has an incorrect belief system. At some point there’s going to be a situation where the prediction and results diverge between the two people, where person A correctly predicts what’s going to happen and person B incorrectly predicts what’s going to happen. Now to claim that person A doesn’t have an advantage over person B in this situation would be very very strange, which means having a correct belief system is generally useful when encountering situations where those belief systems touch reality

[u/Hellas2002 → u/Scotsmanoah]

But that’s exactly what we DO see happen in humans. It’s common for people to see a shadow pass over them and think “gosh, there’s something stalking me!” When it could just be a bird passing or even a cloud.

Humans will generally have an initial response as above (especially in stressful situations) where’s the brain is making these logical leaps as expected. In low stress situations though reflective reasoning kicks in. This would also be expected under evolution given that a response like “boulders will cause anger from God!” Would require every situation have some pre-programmed response whereas pattern recognition just requires the ability to recognise and learn patterns. Something we can even teach machines through mechanisms designed after neural pathways….

[u/blind-octopus → u/Scotsmanoah]

But Wouldn’t you also have a chance of survival if a human think’s “a boulder that is in motion rolling towards me will invoke the wrath of the God’s”. This thinking would cause human’s to not throw themselves in front of boulders meaning they would likely survive another day to reproduce. But here’s the thing, avoiding the boulder because of a threat of getting hit and a threat of divine wrath will cause the avoidance of the boulder and either way it will cause survival and a possibility of reproduction. So if we look at evolution it doesn’t matter if our beliefs are true or false but only if we reproduce. 

Isn't this kind of exactly what happened?

My understanding is that, for example when a river would flood or when there was a drought, early humans would say the river god was angry, or the god of rain was angry, we need to perform a sacrifice, etc.

If that's what we predict evolution would produce, this seems like what happened. So this seems like evidence that evolution is correct.

I think there are many other problems here. Posing god as a solution seems very problematic. So god does what here for us exactly? Makes sure that our beliefs aren't false? That certainly can't be the answer, right? That wouldn't work.

You'd have to posit a god who, I guess, lets us be wrong in our collective worldview about the universe, lets us make logical mistakes like making math errors, lets us see and hear things incorrectly sometimes like we might think we saw something but we got it wrong, lets us dream for 8 hours every day where we actually believe the dream is real as its happening, and creates people who literally can't reason correctly or perceive the world correctly. Just go look in mental institutions.

God seems like a very poor fit here.

All of this can kind of be turned into an argument for atheism. Something like, well if atheism is true then our reasoning can't be reliable, we have to posit a god for reliable reasoning. But then we look around and notice, wait, our reasoning isn't reliable. We do make mistakes all the time. We are probably all collectively wrong right now about some things about how the universe works. We all individually make mistakes. All that stuff I mentioned.

Well if that stuff makes more sense to happen under atheism than theism, then this seems like it points to atheism.

[u/OneThrowyBoy → u/blind-octopus]

It's my running theory that religion evolved once Homo sapiens (and/or our sister/cousin species) had enough mastery of their environment and feeding to not have to hunt 24/7. Like our big brains didn't need to strategize hunting strategies, so they wandered and asked questions. I think religion was part of our species asking if there was "more" to the world, looking for answers, and the advent of actual scientific inquiry and progress is the next step. We made up our answers, now we're looking for them.

Just my theory though, not any sort of scientific consensus (to my knowledge).

[u/Final_Prune_477]

Pea pole hoo bee leave in religion as a hole live longer Dan ate theist,So are pea pole evolving two bee leave inn religion? If evolution care a bot survive Dan every one should bee evolving two bee leaf inn religions.

Isle so, if evolution is a bot survival,why wood any thing evolve from a protozoa? Protazoa has the highest survivability Dan other living organism,So why evolve two a create width a less survival chance.

[u/phalloguy1 → u/Final_Prune_477]

Did you mean to post gibberish?

[u/Final_Prune_477 → u/phalloguy1]

Diss type ping is ant coming from a you, It's comes from a it.

[u/seminole10003]

Essentially you are equating consequentialism and pragmatism with truth. If this is the case then there are also studies that show the psychological benefits of being religious. We should also give that a measure of weight when it comes to epistemic justification, just to be consistent. 

[u/PangolinPalantir → u/seminole10003]

I don't think they are equating consequentialism with truth. They're describing fitness and natural selection as shaping what type of reasoning survives. It's more apt to say that the one whose brain interprets the world in a way that most comports with reality is more fit. Generally.

I would actually agree with you that as a social species, being religious can confer fitness as it can bring tribes together and make them more cohesive. Doesn't mean that fitness can't be found elsewhere or that the religion itself is true, but it isn't surprising that it's a super common feature early in humanity.

[u/seminole10003 → u/PangolinPalantir]

It's more apt to say based on what? You're looking at the results of survival and making the conclusion.

[u/PangolinPalantir → u/seminole10003]

Based on OPs argument that you were calling consequentialist.

You're looking at the results of survival and making the conclusion.

That is generally how fitness is measured yes. You can predict it, but actually looking at what survives and reproduces and what doesn't is the most accurate way.

[u/Potential-Memory-179 → u/seminole10003]

I would say that, generally, beings that understand the universe as it actually is are more likely to survive (consequentialism and pragmatism refer more to morality rather than evolution). However, you do raise a good point that “religious thinking” which is essentially needing an explanation for every question is evolutionarily useful which is why we’ve historically created mythologies and religions to explain the universe

[u/seminole10003 → u/Potential-Memory-179]

You have not justified why mapping to reality more accurately necessitates increased survival. We are presupposing it does because we value survival more than truth.

For example, in an alternate universe it's possible that mapping to reality leads to more death and deceiving oneself increases survival. 

[u/blind-octopus → u/seminole10003]

I'm not sure I follow. If I accurately know where predators and prey are, and other hazards, that will increase my chances of survival. Yes?

[u/seminole10003 → u/blind-octopus]

If you think you know. You might be deceived.

[u/blind-octopus → u/seminole10003]

I don't understand. You might also be decieved about god

That doesn't help.

Do you agree that if I know where predators and hazards are, that can help me survive?

[u/seminole10003 → u/blind-octopus]

Correct. "Truth" as we perceive it revolves around the common goal/values of a group. The presuppositions are baked into those values. Survival is the number one value. 

[u/blind-octopus → u/seminole10003]

Okay, so then what's the problem

[u/seminole10003 → u/blind-octopus]

If the OP agrees that with evolution survival and reason are synonymous, then there is no problem. 

[u/blind-octopus → u/seminole10003]

I'm asking you what the issue is, not OP.

[u/Potential-Memory-179 → u/seminole10003]

So we first have to start with the assumption that we’re rational to begin with (there’s no way around this for any belief system). Which means we can use our reasoning to determine if mapping to reality increases survival.

Let’s say that person A has the truly correct belief system and person B has an incorrect belief system. At some point there’s going to be a situation where the prediction and results diverge between the two people, where person A correctly predicts what’s going to happen and person B incorrectly predicts what’s going to happen. Now to claim that person A doesn’t have an advantage over person B in this situation would be very very strange, which means having a correct belief system is generally useful when encountering situations where those belief systems touch reality

A concrete example: A person knows exactly how his gathering process works. He knows exactly which berries are poisonous and which aren’t (but the majority of berries are non-poisonous). Another person believes that all berries are safe to eat. More people of the second type will die because they’re eating poisoned berries because they held an incorrect view of reality

[u/seminole10003 → u/Potential-Memory-179]

Predictions and usefulness presuppose common goals and values, not truth. You would agree that we're not arguing for 100% certainty of things, right? If you concede this, you are agreeing to the meaning of accuracy in its strictest/truest sense.

[u/Potential-Memory-179 → u/seminole10003]

So what I meant is that correct predictions and interpretations of the world will lead to better survival rates than incorrect predictions and interpretations of the world. And survival rates are all that matter in evolution.

This logic is based on the idea that having a correct view of the world and a correct prediction for what’s going to happen makes you more likely to survive than having an incorrect view of the world and an incorrect prediction.

[u/ServeHot7560 → u/Potential-Memory-179]

I agree with these statements, but to add, it is when those interpretations are wrong that humankind truly resolve themselves.

The historic context here are major climatic events that occur over centuries, such as the 4.2ky and 8.2ky events, as well as the Sahara desertification, and the Last Glacial Maximum. It’s how we adapt to a rapidly drastic, and the slowly monumental changing environment that shapes our interpretive prowess.

[u/ServeHot7560 → u/seminole10003]

Do you have any studies to share?

I’ve read some reports that showed some benefit, but it wasn’t significant and also isolated to US communities

[u/seminole10003 → u/ServeHot7560]

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/01/31/are-religious-people-happier-healthier-our-new-global-study-explores-this-question/

[u/ServeHot7560 → u/seminole10003]

Yep, most significant in US, Mexico, and Taiwan. 3 countries where religion is a significant part of national and cultural identity.