Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. Charles Darwin, the father of modern evolutionary theory, once wrote, in a personal letter to a friend, The horrid doubt always arises, whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.
Well, today on Breakpoint, theologian and professor Thaddeus Williams talks about Darwin's horrid doubt and why it matters so much. Here's Dr. Williams. Do you understand Darwin's horrid doubts? If our minds came from a capital M mind, God, gifted to us as truth-knowing mechanisms?
then we have a reason to reason. But if our minds came from non mind, a literally dumb process of random mutations and natural selection, then our minds are not fundamentally truth knowing mechanisms, but mere survival mechanisms. We cannot trust our minds on an atheist's story of our origins any more than we can trust, in Darwin's words, the convictions of a monkey's mind. With progress in the field of philosophy of mind since Darwin's day, especially over the last fifty years, we have found at least nine profound reasons that Darwin's horrid doubt was justified. How can the impersonal and mindless it, that is the material world, possibly account for the non material realities you and I experience ten thousand times a day?
There's the reality of I-ness, that is first-person consciousness. being more than an impersonal it. a reality known by philosophers as indexicality. There is aboutness. That is the ability to think abstractly.
You can think about Mars without the splitting headache of the red planet materializing in your brain matter because thoughts can be non-physical. Then there's what it's likeness, that is the phenomenological texture of subjective experience, or what philosophers call qualia. As in what it's like to behold the cysteine ceiling, which can't be reduced to mere firing synapses. Then there's what we could call foreness, that is your mind's ability to think toward goals, known as teleology. as something more than the accidental collision of atoms.
then there is thereforeness, that is, the laws of logic that are not physical and would remain true even in the absence of physical reality. Then there's what we could call this or thatness, that is, choice making power that can't be reduced to machine like determinism or quantum indeterminism. we also experience what we might call awness. That is creativity and beauty that go beyond the physical. As Wordsworth famously said, there's more to the flower than the botanist can study.
Every day we use whatness, that is, the meaning in language that transcends its physical medium known as semantics. we all also experience oughtness. The reality of moral values that can't be reduced to chemicals clashing and neurons firing. Do you see the big point? If we originate from mindless matter alone, then we, hunks of sophisticated steak that we are, must make faith leap after faith leap.
to pretend we have a reason to trust reason and all that goes with it. Thankfully, because the capital M mind exists, God. Our minds are at home in reality. In Him we find a reason to reason. our freedom, morality, logic, meaning, creativity, individuality, experience, and purpose are no longer explained out of existence, but are nourished and expanded.
reason and imagination are not reduced to mere survival mechanisms, they are truth knowing and beauty detecting mechanisms gifted to us by a God of truth and beauty. Your reasoning and creative powers are not The product of dumb forces. They come from God, so let's not waste them. Instead, let's obey Jesus' greatest commandment to love God not only with our hearts, souls, and strength, but also with our minds. That was theologian and professor Thaddeus Williams, author of the book Revering God and the soon to be released book Reflecting the Sun.
You can learn more about Thaddeus Williams and his work by visiting the Shed and Beam YouTube channel. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And for more resources or to share this commentary with other people, go to breakpoint.org. Scripture offers us the capital T true truth account of the world as it actually is.
If this is the story of the world, there is a storyteller. In a world that says live your truth, Christians have the responsibility to live out the truth. Truth Rising the Study explores the true story of the world through creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. You'll see this cultural moment through the bigger story of reality written by God. Start this free study today at colsoncenter.org/slash study.
That's Colson Center.org slash study.
