Lennox: Does Our Ability To Reason Prove God?

I came across this recently (linked from The Sensuous Curmudgeon). It is an interview with John Lennox, whom I posted about a year or so ago. For all his credentials, Lennox seems a pretty poor thinker (but I suspect that is his religion clouding his brain specificall;y when it comes to thinking about religion).

When atheists ask him how it is possible for him to be both a scientist and a Christian he inquires of them: "What do you do science with?" and he points to his head to make it obvious.

Most of them reply that they do science with their brains. Lennox then lets them simmer on that thought and then asks them to tell them about their brains with which they do science.

"What do you really believe about it? Give me a short history of the brain," he presses them.

They often say something like "that's relatively easy because the brain is the end product of the mindless unguided process," he said.

"And I look at them and I sometimes smile and I say: 'And you trust it?'"

"Be honest with me, if you knew that the computer you use every day in your lab was the end product of a mindless, unguided process would you trust it?

We can readily answer this two ways.

Past Experience

Firstly, if this is a computer I have been using every minute of every day since I was born, a computer I have learnt to trust because of how well it performs, then yes, I would trust it. It does not matter where it came from, I already have good reason to think it works well.

The simple fact is that I trust my reasoning because it has served me well all my life. It is the same for all of us. As toddlers and children, we do not give a second thought to the origin of our ability to reason, and yet we all contrive to learn mathematics to whatever degree.

Origins

Secondly, if this computer is the product of an incremental improvement process over 4 billion years, then yes, I think I can trust it.

Straw man

In fact, I kind of doubt any atheist Lennox talked to characterised evolution as a "mindless unguided process". That is how ignorant creationists - like Lennox - describe it, not how evolutionists describe it. Which makes me suspect he is making up these atheists.

CS Lewis

Worth noting that Lennox' brilliant argument was put forth by CS Lewis over seventy years ago.

“Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.”

- The Case for Christianity, 1943 (from a radio talk given sometime between 1941 and 1943)