Can we trust our brains?

Imagine that you are about to take a long drive through a country you have never visited. Someone hands you a GPS and says, “This will tell you exactly where you are and show you how to get where you are going.”

You look at it. It seems to work. “But who made it?” you ask.

“Nobody.”

“What do you mean, nobody?”

“Nobody designed it. Nobody programmed it. Nobody had a purpose in mind. It simply came together through a very long series of accidents. Isn't that fascinating!”

Really think about that. Would you trust such a GPS?

And that brings up a rather interesting question: Why do we trust the human mind?

We trust our mind every day. We trust it to tell us what is real and what is not, what is true and what is false. Scientists trust their minds to understand mathematics, interpret evidence, recognize patterns and draw conclusions about things they cannot even see.

Science depends upon this trust.

But what if the human mind itself is ultimately the product of nothing but blind, unguided processes; accidents ... just like the GPS. That's so curious. It raises big questions.

The Strange Problem of Reason

This is where the question gets particularly interesting.

What is a human mind actually?

We don't merely have a brain that helps us find food, avoid danger and get through the day. We have minds that can ask whether something is true. We can discover mathematics that describes things we cannot see. We can reason from evidence to conclusions. We can recognize when an argument is wrong. We can think about the beginning of the universe and wonder what, if anything, lies behind it.

And here is the puzzle:

Why should our minds be capable of knowing truth about a world outside our minds?

That may sound like a strange question because we are so accustomed to trusting our own thinking. We use our minds all day long without stopping to wonder whether they are giving us a reliable picture of reality. (Especially if our mind is simply like the GPS that arrived by sheer accident?)

John Lennox, the acclaimed mathematician, asks us to stop here.

Suppose, at the deepest level, there is no intelligence behind reality. Suppose everything that exists is ultimately just matter and energy, operating according to impersonal laws, with no mind behind those laws and no purpose behind the whole thing; an accident.

Then where does reason fit?

Where does our ability to recognize truth come from? Why should a collection of physical processes inside our heads be capable of telling us something genuinely true about the universe outside our heads?

The question isn't whether our brains are complicated enough. They obviously are. The question is whether matter alone can explain the remarkable fact that matter can think.

And this is where Lennox's questions becomes so provocative. We don't simply experience the world. We understand it. We don't simply see patterns. We discover mathematical laws behind those patterns. We don't simply have thoughts. We can ask whether our thoughts are true.

Think about that last one. The human mind can turn around and examine itself.

It can ask, Can I trust my own reasoning? And immediately we run into a strange little circle: we have to use reason to decide whether reason is trustworthy.

That is the problem Lennox wants us to notice.

He isn't saying that science cannot explain many things about the brain. Science can... and has ... explained an enormous amount. He is asking whether science, operating within a purely material view of reality, can explain something more fundamental: Why should we trust the reasoning that makes science possible?

Because science begins with trust in reason.

A scientist assumes that logic is real. That mathematics can reveal something about the world. That evidence matters. That careful thinking can lead us closer to truth.

Those assumptions are not the discoveries of science. They are the things science must assume before it can begin. That is why the question of God is not as far away from science as we sometimes imagine. Our earliest scientists were firm believers in a rational mind behind it all.

And as believers they began somewhere very different.

They begin with the idea that Mind comes before matter. In the Christian story, the universe is not an accident that somehow became intelligible. It comes from a Creator who is rational, purposeful and intelligent. And human beings are not merely animals that learned to survive. We are creatures made in the image of that Creator. Suddenly, something rather remarkable makes sense. The universe can be understood because it has an underlying order. And we can understand it because our minds are, in some small way, fitted to that order.

Think about what human beings have actually discovered. We can measure the movement of planets we have never visited. We can calculate the age of stars. We can write equations describing forces we cannot see. We can send a machine to Mars using mathematics worked out in a room on Earth. And we can build a GPS that tells us where we are on a planet spinning through space.

The astonishing thing is not only that the universe has order, but that our minds can find it.

That is the mystery beneath the mystery. Why should a lump of matter inside our skulls be able to think about the beginning of the universe? Why should electrical activity in a brain be able to contemplate infinity, beauty, justice, love and God? Why should matter care about truth?

And why, of all things, should it be able to ask whether truth exists?

Lennox asks us not to rush past these deep philosophical questions. The biggest assumption we make every day is not that the universe exists. It is that our minds are telling us the truth about it.

We wake up each morning and simply trust that the world we see is real, that our memories mostly belong to things that actually happened, that two plus two will still equal four, and that when we reason carefully, our conclusions have some connection to reality.

We don't usually think about how extraordinary that is. We just get on with our day.

We use our minds to make breakfast, solve problems, read books, love people, build bridges, write poems ... and argue about whether God exists. There is something wonderfully circular about the whole thing. The mind is examining the universe while the universe is raising questions about the mind. We are creatures made of matter who somehow find ourselves longing for meaning. We are temporary beings who ask questions about eternity. We are made from dust, yet we spend our lives

searching for truth.

And that is why the Christian idea of a Creator is worth considering. Not merely because it answers the question, “Who made the universe?” But because it may also answer the quieter question underneath it:

Why is the universe understandable at all ... and why are we capable

of understanding it?

A GPS that appeared by accident would be difficult to trust.

So perhaps we should pause before assuming that a mind capable of discovering the laws of the universe somehow appeared without any deeper explanation. After all, if we would never trust a map without a mapmaker, or a GPS without a developer, we should at least wonder about the strange fact that we have been given minds capable of reading the complexities of our world.

Here's the provocative question:

What would have to be true about reality for you to be able to trust the mind with which you are asking the question?

We spend so much time asking whether God exists that we sometimes forget to notice what is right in front of us: a universe we can understand, a mind capable of understanding it, and a human heart that cannot seem to stop asking why any of it is here.