Darwin’s Horrid Doubt

Author: John Stonestreet and Dr. Thaddeus Williams

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.” 

Today on Breakpoint, theologian and professor Thaddeus Williams, talks about Darwin’s Horrid Doubt and why it matters. 

Do you understand Darwin’s “horrid doubt”? If our minds came from a capital “M” Mind—God—gifted to us as truth-knowing mechanisms, we have a reason to reason. But if our minds came from a 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 could the impersonal and mindless “It,” that is the material world, possibly account for nonmaterial realities people experience ten thousand times a day?  

There is the reality of I-ness, that is first-person consciousness, being more than an impersonal “It.” This reality is known by philosophers as indexicality. There is also about-ness, the ability to think abstractly: one 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-like-ness, the phenomenological texture of subjective experience or what philosophers call “qualia.”  

There’s also for-ness, or one’s ability to think toward goals, known as “teleology,” and therefore-ness, which are the laws of logic that aren’t physical. There is this-or-that-ness, which is choice-making power that can’t be reduced to machine-like determinism or quantum indeterminism. We also experience, awe-ness, creativity and beauty that go beyond the physical. Every day we use what-ness, that is, the meaning in language that transcends its physical medium, known as “semantics.” And we all experience, ought-ness, the reality that moral values that can’t be reduced to chemicals clashing or neurons firing. 

Do you see the big point? If we originate from mindless matter alone, then we—the 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, who is God, exists, 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-making mechanisms gifted to us by a God of truth and beauty.  

Human reasoning and creative powers are not the product of dumb forces. They come from God. So, let’s not waste them. Let’s obey Jesus’ greatest commandment to love God not only with our hearts, souls, and strength, but also our minds. 

That was theologian and professor Thaddeus Williams, author of the book Revering God, and the soon to be released book Reflecting the Son. Learn more about his work by visiting the Shed & Beam YouTube channel.