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The above headline (Did a Copying Mistake Build Man’s Brain?) is from the following the article on Fox News.
Is it rational to believe that a copying mistake was responsible for building man’s brain?
1.) If a copying mistake built man’s brain, then our thoughts are nothing more than chemicals fizzing. What makes one person’s fizzing more valid than anyone else’s?
2.) If a copying mistake built man’s brain, then how do you know that your reasoning is reliable?
3.) If a copying mistake built man’s brain, what is truth and how is it verified?
4.) If a copying mistake built man’s brain, what is your grounding for the Laws of Logic?
5.) If a copying mistake built man’s brain, how can you know anything for certain?
6.) If a copying mistake built man’s brain, how do you account for universal, immaterial and invariant Laws of Mathematics?
7.) If a copying mistake built man’s brain, where did Logic come from? Did it exist before man’s brain got copied in error?
8.) If a copying mistake built man’s brain, how do we know our thoughts are not a result of that error?
9.) If a copying mistake built man’s brain, how do you know your senses are valid?
10.) If a copying mistake built man’s brain, what is your basis for trusting your memories?
How can ANYTHING be known with absolute certainty if a copying mistake built our brains?
Across the Fruited Plain 
I don’t know about you bit I’m not absolutely certain about anything, aside from various mathematical and logical statements*. Whilst I have a lot of evidence telling me my house won’t fall down around my ears, ultimately I cannot see the future and so there remains the possibility it might.
But I’m fine with that. Absolute certainty is impossible so waiting around for it is ultimately futile. Instead we should be trying to figure out what is the level of evidence needed for something to be likely true and then go about seeing if that evidence exists for a particular idea.
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*Logic and maths work because they are based off tautological premises. The conclusion of the famous “Socrates is a man” syllogism is essentially a restatement of the premises which were defined to be true. Thus rewording them is also true.
Adam, I was hoping you would engage on this one. Pardon the delay of my response. Before I address your comments, please allow me a question.
Is it impossible for the God of the Bible to exist?
First I’d just like to ask for some clarity: what do you mean when you say God of the Bible? Could you please provide a specific definition?
Yahweh, the God of Israel.
Whilst I had to be finicky that isn’t really the kind of definition I was looking for. Perhaps a better question would be what traits do you ascribe to this deity?
The God of the Bible is the one and only true God. He is the greatest of all beings and depends on no other being for his existence. He is Omnipotent (All Mighty), Omniscient (All Knowing – he cannot learn), and Omnipresent (Everywhere at once). He exists eternally and plans and acts according to his own good pleasure (Sovereign). He works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11). God created the world and acts in it today in accordance with his own perfect, holy, good, and loving plan.
In the same way that this perfectly good God created everything according to his own purposes, so he has acted to save people who have rebelled against him. This action, too, is not because of anything external compelling him, but it is “According to his great mercy” that “he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3)
That was pretty much what I was looking for, excellent. However, I’d like a bit of elaboration on 3 points please.
1. Do you place limits on Gods power? I’ve heard various people claim he cannot (or will not) interfere with free will; or is constrained by logic. Do you also make such propositions?
2. If he exists externally how can he be everywhere at once?
3. A follow on from 2; if he is purely external how can he influence internal affairs?
These are minor quibbles that shouldn’t take too much of your time.
Hi Adam!
1. When I state that God is Omnipotent or Almighty, I mean that according to the Bible, there are no limits on God’s power. I too have heard professions that God is somehow bound by his creation or natural laws, etc., but that is just another form of Euthyphro’s dilemma.
2. & 3. Unfortunately, I cannot satisfy these question with answers since the Bible is silent on these topics so my opinion would only be conjecture. Ultimately, however, if we could squeeze the eternal God into our three pound brains, then WE would be God.
Now back to my original question:
Is it impossible for God to exist?
Well the notion of a being existing only externally, yet being everywhere, seems contradictory to me. However, either alone seems possible (with the latter surely also existing externally?) although I’m no philosopher. Someone with more training in formal logic may destroy your definition (or perhaps my criticism). But without seeing a philosopher do such a take down I’m inclined to exist such a God is possible, based on the current information you have provided about them.
I will add the caveat that such a being may well be so removed from what we use language to describe that it is ultimately incapable of describing the being. Thus the definition could be ultimately be meaningless.
Ok, so since it is not impossible for God to exist, would it be impossible for that same God to reveal things to His creation, such that they can know things for certain?
A God that was completely external arguably couldn’t interact with the world and so would be unable to convey information to it. However, a God capable of interacting could conceivably convey information. And that information could contain knowledge about which you can be certain, provided the God is not lying etc. Thus it is possible for such revelation to occur.
Again, I will add a caveat. Humans are fallible beings, capable of being fooled and so whether they could identify the knowledge as coming from God and truthful is debatable. No divine revelation I’ve encountered has circumvented this problem and shown that the individual is not being fooled at some stage.
In other words revelation is possible but correctly spotting it may not be. At the very least considerable evidence would have to be provided that it has occurred.
Rereading your original definition it seems my whole tangent about an external God comes from misplacing an x when you wrote “eternally.” As such I’m going to drop that whole issue.
Before I do I will make one final note on the topic. An external deity which does not interact with the world would be undetectable and indistinguishable (from our perspective) with one that does not exist. This makes it irrelevant and so I do not believe it and don’t much care to discuss it. However, since you don’t have that definition as your God this is also irrelevant to you.
Scripture teaches that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
Therefore, my claim is that without God, you cannot know anything.
Now, you have conceded that God can exist and can communicate to his creation (divine revelation – the Bible) such that they can know things for certain.
Therefore, according to my worldview, it is possible for me to know things for certain and you corroborated that.
My next question then to you would be, what do YOU know and HOW do you know it?—
Of which you already answered:
“I don’t know about you bit I’m not absolutely certain about anything,”
If you can be wrong about everything you claim to know,
then you don’t know anything.
Therefore, when you admit I can know things for certain and you cannot, the conversation is over.
If you cannot know something without God, how does adding him into the picture change anything? Whilst I’ve said its a possibility he could communicate absolute certainty to his creation, you’ve done nothing to establish he actually does and – if he did – you could tell you were being provided with absolutely certain information.
A micromort is a unit of risk, measuring a 1 in a million chance of dying. 2 ecstasy pills, for example, equals 1 micromort. You take two and you have a 1 in a million chance of it being fatal. However, most people have not done that. But travelling 260 miles in a car is also 1 micromort and that’s something a lot more people have done. In fact, I’d wager you’ve travelled that far in a car at some point (if not, replace assume the following scenario is hypothetical). Before undertaking such a journey would you demand that you’re furnished with absolute knowledge you shall not die? Or would you accept that some uncertainty is tolerable within a position and drive anyway?
“If you cannot know something without God, how does adding him into the picture change anything?”
Excellent question, Adam!
Let’s pretend of all the information in the world to know, (every kingdom, class, phylum, etc of every creature on earth, all 7,000 New Guinea language dialects, all the names of all the wives and children from the 14th Ming Dynasty, etc.), that you possessed 10% of all the knowledge there is to acquire. Would it be possible for something in the 90% you do not know, to contradict the 10% you do know?
The answer is, of course. And you have acknowledged as much.
Therefore, the only way you could know anything with absolute certainty, is if that knowledge was revealed by someone who knows everything. Therefore, since God knows all things, and he has revealed some things to his creation, such that they can know things for certain, we can be absolutely certain about some things.
But without God, you cannot know anything.
So adding a God only changes things if he does actually convey messages to his creation, those messages are truthful and the creation can identify them as certainty-giving revelation from the deity. It’s all of those additional caveats, beyond merely “a God who could convey certainty” that I have a problem with adding.
All true. And the proof that God does exist is that without him, you cannot demonstrate the certainty of anything without reasoning that your reason is reliable which of course, is circular reasoning.
And you cannot have absolute certainty without assuming the required traits explained above. I think a far better assumption is simply “my senses are as accurate as they claim to be” because that doesn’t bias you towards any particular answer (except answers relevant to what you perceive as reality, which is all that really matters anyway).
By assuming a God you can only be a theist. By assuming plain ol’ sensory information you could be either a theist or atheist. It’s a more open assumption and thus avoids many of the pitfalls associated with making an assumption.
Conversely, I’d rather be a theist who can know some things for certain, than an atheist who cannot know anything for certain.
I am appealing above the temporal plane to a God who has revealed to us.
You, on the other hand, are stuck with “I reason that my reasoning is reliable.” “I sense that my senses are reliable.” and “I remember that my memories are reliable.”
You said, ” I think a far better assumption is simply “my senses are as accurate as they claim to be” because that doesn’t bias you towards any particular answer (except answers relevant to what you perceive as reality, which is all that really matters anyway).”
There are people who’s reasoning is not valid. How then can you determine that you are not one of those people?
There can be no firm conclusion with a grounding of circularity.
But since I’m not making dogmatic claims about what is absolute truth, should someone show my reasoning to be wrong I can happily change it. And then I wind up with a better position on the subject, it’s no weakness.
Further, there’s nothing about my starting assumption that precludes a God which can give you absolute certainty. All you need is to find some evidence of that within observable reality.
“But since I’m not making dogmatic claims about what is absolute truth”
You don’t need to make dogmatic claims about what is absolute truth. In fact, you already conceded that you cannot, because you already stated elsewhere that you are “not absolutely sure about anything.” By simply making knowledge claims, as you have done here and on your blog, you are professing to know things.
If you can be wrong about everything you claim to know then you should stop making knowledge claims.
Science makes knowledge claims, not absolute knowledge claims.
Something is either true or it is not true.
Knowledge is verified truth.
Therefore, if knowledge is true, it must be absolutely true.
Also, I would like this question addressed:
There are people who’s reasoning is not valid. How then can you determine that you are not one of those people?
I could be wrong, the trick is to minimise the risk I am by following the tried and true methods summarised here
Whilst the philosophical definition of knowledge is “justified true belief” a brief glance at the OED, Merriam-Webster or even dictionary.com will find there are many other definitions of it, including things like ‘the sum of our understanding.’ I apologise for not being clearer with what I meant, but I was referring to the latter.
Science comes up with an idea about how the world works. It then makes observations about the world, testing them against this idea. The more observations which support the idea, the more likely it is correct. After many, many observations and confirmations the odds of the idea being incorrect are vanishingly small. Whilst there is still the possibility it is wrong, by any pragmatic measure that probability is so small as to be meaningless.
Can anything happen?
You can’t make a circular triangle.
Your very initial sentence of your first remark in this thread was:
“I don’t know about you bit I’m not absolutely certain about anything”
Yet now you are making knowledge claims regarding the impossibility of making a circular triangle.
Can you see how that does not stand up to examination?