A Slice of Infinity
Monkey See, Monkey Do
by Stuart McAllister
A friend was chatting about Christianity with an agnostic who believed that the evidence for evolution was strong and that this belief was true. Now, what is unique is not this individual’s belief. Many people believe this very thing; they think that all of us human beings are products of evolutionary processes. But Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory, expresses grave doubts about this belief being true. He states, “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. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”
You see, Darwin expresses here, the irony of his own view and the impact of the theory that he has just proposed. He is truly skeptical that a purely random evolutionary process—a process not guided by a creator—can explain the existence of our mind; more specifically, the existence of a mind that accurately portrays the world around us. For you see, if we have no reason to think that our minds accurately portray the world around us, then we have no reason for believing in evolution either.
Let me try and make this a little clearer. A colleague used to have pet monkeys in their backyard. Wanting to teach these monkeys a few tricks, they used food as a stimulus to get the monkeys to do what they wanted. I wish I could say that they trained them to do all their chores for them, but that would be stretching the truth much too far! The point here, though, is that what they were concerned with was these monkeys’ behavior. They couldn’t care less what the reason was for them doing what they were doing.
This bears a certain analogy to our discussion of evolution. If evolution is a blind mechanism that is selective according to behavior, what reason do we have for thinking that our beliefs accurately represent the world around us? Maybe we are just like the monkeys behaving the way we do because we were manipulated by nature.
But here is the rub—and it is at the heart of Darwin’s doubt. If we are merely like the monkeys, manipulated by nature, then we have no reason to think that evolution is true. Let me repeat that: If we are like the monkeys, manipulated by nature, then we have no reason to think evolution is true. We only have the thoughts we do about evolution because we are manipulated into thinking them.
Perhaps a more plausible view comes from the contrast given to us from the wisdom of God. Our rationality and our ability to reason is derivative from a Creator God in whose image we are made. Indeed the very fact that we are having this discussion may be a signpost to a higher source of reason than mere nature, may it not?
© 2008 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. All Rights Reserved.
