Why Evolutionary Theory Cannot Survive Itself

All the criticisms atheists use to reject paranormal phenomena, the mind evolved to be superstitious, to be religious, consciousness is an illusions, free will is an illusion, etc also undermine belief in materialism and Darwinism, but materialists seem to have a blind spot when it comes to applying this criticism uniformly to their own cherished beliefs.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/03/why_evolutionar094171.html
Why Evolutionary Theory Cannot Survive Itself
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ENV is pleased to share the following excerpt from Nancy Pearcey's new book, Finding Truth: Five Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes.
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An example of self-referential absurdity is a theory called evolutionary epistemology, a naturalistic approach that applies evolution to the process of knowing. The theory proposes that the human mind is a product of natural selection. The implication is that the ideas in our minds were selected for their survival value, not for their truth-value.

But what if we apply that theory to itself? Then it, too, was selected for survival, not truth -- which discredits its own claim to truth. Evolutionary epistemology commits suicide.
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Astonishingly, many prominent thinkers have embraced the theory without detecting the logical contradiction.
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To make the dilemma even more puzzling, evolutionists tell us that natural selection has produced all sorts of false concepts in the human mind. Many evolutionary materialists maintain that free will is an illusion, consciousness is an illusion, even our sense of self is an illusion -- and that all these false ideas were selected for their survival value.

So how can we know whether the theory of evolution itself is one of those false ideas? The theory undercuts itself.

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Leon Wieseltier writes, "If reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? ... Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it."
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Thomas Nagel asks, "Is the [evolutionary] hypothesis really compatible with the continued confidence in reason as a source of knowledge?" His answer is no: "I have to be able to believe ... that I follow the rules of logic because they are correct -- not merely because I am biologically programmed to do so." Hence, "insofar as the evolutionary hypothesis itself depends on reason, it would be self-undermining."
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Darwin's famous "horrid doubt" passage where he questions whether the human mind can be trustworthy if it is a product of evolution: "With me, 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."
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In short, it was on occasions when Darwin's mind led him to a theistic conclusion that he dismissed the mind as untrustworthy. He failed to recognize that, to be logically consistent, he needed to apply the same skepticism to his own theory.
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Modern followers of Darwin still apply the theory selectively.
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Gould should turn the same skepticism back onto Darwin's ideas, which he never did. Gould applied his evolutionary skepticism selectively -- to discredit the idea of God.
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Applied consistently, Darwinism undercuts not only itself but also the entire scientific enterprise. Kenan Malik, a writer trained in neurobiology, writes, "If our cognitive capacities were simply evolved dispositions, there would be no way of knowing which of these capacities lead to true beliefs and which to false ones." Thus "to view humans as little more than sophisticated animals ...undermines confidence in the scientific method."
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The reason so few atheists and materialists seem to recognize the problem is that, like Darwin, they apply their skepticism selectively. They apply it to undercut only ideas they reject, especially ideas about God. They make a tacit exception for their own worldview commitments.
 
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Well, this is a revealing article. I hope to hell they don't get anywhere near the school system. They've shown themselves point blank here to be motivated by their religious beliefs. The quote Paul highlights is also a nice little bit of arbitrary division; the usual religious horse shit of "only those who believe in (insert your choice of death cult here) are rational and true.
 
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