Can You Trust Your Thoughts

Here I present the argument in its full form as I have heard it over the years. Can we trust our thoughts? Yes.

A few notes: Our sensory neurons do reliably transmit information about the world around us. Neurons in higher cortical areas can be quite noisy, but averaging the activity from small populations of such neurons still produces a reliable signal.

Its not just our senses that we trust. You didnt hit your hand because you trusted either your memory (of getting hit by an object like a hammer) or your logical reasoning (that hitting your hand with a hammer, though something you have never experienced, would hurt).

Science is a self correcting system. If a result is unable to be reproduced, it is discarded. New findings constantly reshape our thinking. We are continuously learning about the world around us, and have no problem admitting that we dont have all the answers.

So it is clearly safe for everyone to Think about it.

To download this video copyright free please go to:
http://www.mediafire.com/?mwzqfn03mzc

If you wish to translate the subtitles you can download them from:
http://www.mediafire.com/?z0jwgd2aizg
Then send me a link to them and I'll add them to the video.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Evolution
• Brain
• Think
• Thought
• Trust
• Intelligent
• Design
• Creation
• God
• Bible
• Genesis
• Religion
• Logic
• Reason
• Philosophy
• Natural
• Selection
• Mutation
• Random
• Accident

[sk8teh14]

@semperveritatem

Establishing true beliefs about the world and being able to survive and reproduce are perfectly correlated. No organism survives very long believing that tigers are bunnies now do they?

[semperveritatem]

@semperveritatem I don't think the argument works either, but I figured it would be better for you to know the actual argument instead of some weak straw man.

[semperveritatem]

@semperveritatem away from tigers or the belief that if one gets too close to any orange object one will spontaneously combust. But if God exists, Plantinga claims, then we can trust our mental faculties because he would have guided evolution so as to produce trustworthy mental faculties which create true beliefs in us because he wants us to know the world and to know him.

[semperveritatem]

@semperveritatem Plantinga points out that, for every situation in which a true belief would enhance an organisms survival/reproduction chances, there are multiple false beliefs that would do the same thing. For example, the belief that tigers are dangerous and will probably kill you for food is a true belief which would enhance a human's chances of surviving, but so would the belief that a divine being has commanded that humans stay

[semperveritatem]

@sk8teh14 I'm not sure precisely what factorandrew (or whatever his name is) said, but the argument he is probably paraphrasing is Plantinga's. It states that given evolution alone, we cannot trust our mental faculties because natural selection and other evolutionary mechanisms only deal with causing an organism to survive and reproduce, not with establishing true beliefs about the world.

[sk8teh14]

cdk, you didn't explore the nature of his comment as well as you could have. If our thoughts cannot be trusted because of an accident and he claims the Bible can, then we are not the product of an accident. This means we can trust our thoughts about the bible. But this means you can trust your thoughts about evolution being true. But if evolution is true, then you can no longer trust your thoughts about evolution being true and you must go to the bible. But then it's not an accident .. (repeat)

[aaronbcj]

@aaronbcj : Actually, debate like God vs Science is utterly wrong. Science is just a tool you can unlock mysteries and use it to practice godliness (good inventions) or worldliness (disasters) for mankind. But using it as a tool to trace God is like taking a sample from ocean and tracing it back to the river/tributary it came from. It's all mixed already, you will get different answers but none of them concrete, bcoz the question is wrong.

[aaronbcj]

@8698gil : theists are not God, so if you found them arrogant/incomplete, don't blame God for it :) .. actually theists and atheist are same in eyes of God.. Who is God then? He is the loving caring peaceful thoughts we carry in our consciousness that works for humanity and carries on, even after we die, by our deeds. We all have some of it in us rite? Then why this world is torn by war disasters? We all have "less" godliness in us than "worldliness"/Satan in our thoughts so world belongs 2 him.

[8698gil]

@aaronbcj Why do you need to believe this? Isn't it enough that our species has learned and advanced so much since we first stood upright? I find nothing humble about religion, most theists are unbelievably arrogant and smug in their confidence that they have it right and milions of starving children in underprivileged countries are suffering because either they have it wrong or it's part of "god's perfect plan". God never did or made anything, we did.

[aaronbcj]

@topperheartramada It depends on how you define God. If you think He is living at some distant planet waiting for you to die, then you will never find him while you are here. Fortunately it is untrue, you only have to understand how He dwells in you, to find and test before accepting Him. It is His work that reflects through you when you are pious and you will reach the pinnacle and still stay humble and will not be ashamed to admit that none of those works are truly yours. Good bye.