Q&A: Evolution from a Philosophical Perspective
Evolution from a Philosophical Perspective
Question
I had a bit of difficulty with the book and the notebooks, and I’d be glad if you could answer me here. I’ll formulate it this way:
Hume’s difficulties about induction and causality, etc. — attempted answer: evolution. Evolution is responsible for the fit between the world and man. Rejection: where does the claim that there was evolution come from in the first place? On the basis of intuition! In other words, it’s a circular argument.
Hume’s difficulties about induction and causality, etc. — attempted answer: God. God is responsible for the fit between the world and man. Rejection: where does the claim that there is a God come from in the first place? On the basis of intuition! In other words, it’s a circular argument.
Something here is slipping past me. It seems equivalent to me. Where did I go wrong?
Answer
Evolution does not rely on intuition but on the findings of science. Science itself relies on methods that contain an intuitive component, and therefore I fully accept those methods. But I ask how it came about that we have reliable systems of perception and thought. And I answer that this is thanks to God, who implanted them in us. Without Him, it is not probable that this would have happened.
By contrast, belief in God relies on direct intuition (I “see” Him with the mind’s eye).
Isn’t this simply a classic theological proof?
I accept the intuition and therefore God as well.
It’s kind of like asking: who said there’s a table in front of me? — my eyes. And I assume my eyes are right, so there is a table.
But if I think there is no table, yet I see it, then it’s harder to think my eyes are right… but in the earlier form I’m completely coherent.
The simple question that you didn’t ask, and that the Rabbi doesn’t answer, is that the ideas he proposes immediately don’t fit with the modern worldview at all, and certainly not with that of the average person. For example, his suggestion that there is even such a thing as intuition.
It is so incompatible that even if it is the only solution, it is hard to accept it..