Introducing the brain: it's abilites prove God (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, April 20, 2022, 21:24 (736 days ago) @ David Turell

Egnor, Feser and Taylor each using the other:

https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/at-mind-matters-news-yes-there-is-eviden...

"To see how this points to intelligent design of the brain, consider a very compelling argument for God’s existence proposed by philosopher Richard Taylor (1919–2003) in his book Metaphysics. Thomist philosopher Edward Feser has a nice synopsis and commentary here. I paraphrase Taylor’s argument:

"Imagine that you are on a train in England and you see a collection of stones on a hillside that says THE BRITISH RAILWAYS WELCOMES YOU TO WALES.

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"Now you could believe, based on the stones, either that you were in fact entering Wales or you could not believe that. Whichever you believe is also irrelevant to the argument. Taylor’s point is that you could not justifiably believe that the stones came to be by random arrangement and at the same time believe that they were conveying the message that you are entering Wales. That is, you are only justified in believing semantic content conveyed by matter if the arrangement of the matter is intelligently designed.

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"Taylor now draws an analogy to the neurological processes of our brain. We believe the messages conveyed by our neurophysiology — by the arrangement of our neurotransmitters and our neurons. If these brain functions evolved by Darwinian evolution — that is, they came to exist as a result of unintelligent, random, heritable variation and natural selection — then you could have no justified belief that the perceptions and concepts generated via your brain have genuine meaning. It would be irrational to ascribe semantic content to a material process that lacks an intelligent designer.

"Taylor uses this argument to argue for God’s existence. When we believe that our perceptions and concepts point to the truth, we implicitly acknowledge the existence of God who designed them. If the neurophysiology that generates our perceptions and concepts were not intelligently designed, we would have no justified reason to believe that they point to truth, anymore than we would have justified reason to believe that and unintelligent conglomeration of stones tells us where we are in England. It is a quite good argument for God’s existence, and of course it is also a good argument for the intelligent design of the brain.

"Note that this argument puts those who deny God’s existence in a difficult rhetorical position — if they deny God’s existence, they cannot believe that their perceptions and concepts have any orientation to reality.

"Ed Feser in his commentary on Taylor’s argument discusses a number of objections that might be raised to Taylor’s analogy. He points out that none of the expected arguments succeeds. For example, an atheist might argue that we have justifiable inductive reasons for trusting our senses and concepts, even if our brains are not intelligently designed because we have daily experience that our perceptions and concepts correlate with reality...If our brain is not intelligently designed to begin with, we have no justification for trusting our inductive reasoning process or perceptions.

"Taylor’s argument for God’s existence is also a good argument for intelligent design of the brain. As I noted, the evidence for intelligent design of the brain is massive and undeniable, just as it is for all aspects of biology. The nice thing about Taylor’s argument is that it logically compels atheists and others who deny intelligent design to also deny their capacity to know reality and truth. Of course, the lack of the capacity to understand reality and know truth is a hallmark of atheism and of the denial of intelligent design, and Taylor’s argument provides a clear and quite clever way of pointing that out.

"Feser's arguments are here:

"https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2022/02/taylor-on-cognition-teleology-and-god.html

"I hasten to emphasize again that Taylor’s point has nothing whatsoever to do with probabilities, and in particular nothing to do with how likely or unlikely it is for arrangements of the kind in question to form via natural processes. He allows, for the purposes of the argument, that that could happen. His point is rather that, no matter how complex and orderly are the arrangements of physical components that might be generated by purely impersonal and purposeless natural processes, they could never by themselves generate something with intentional or semantic content... This is not a point about probabilities, but rather a conceptual and metaphysical truth. Neither stones nor marks on a rock have any inherent connection with any semantic content we might decide to convey through them. The content they might have must derive from a mind which uses them for the purpose of conveying such content. Delete such a mind from an explanation of the arrangements of stones or marks, and you delete the semantic content along with it.

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"Notice that, though Taylor is not explicit about it, this is compatible with an evolutionary story about the origin of our cognitive faculties. It just isn’t compatible with a materialistic-and-mechanistic evolutionary story about the origin of our cognitive faculties – one that entirely excludes mind and purpose from the story."

Comment: purely, our brain is designed to present thoughtful perceptions of reality: conclusion there is a designer