Innate Knowledge and Neo-Darwinians

If you listen to the new atheists struggling to make a point against the bible you might hear one like Christopher Hitchens say something like 'Are you telling me that no one thought it was wrong to murder until Moses came down from Sinai?' Indicating that people had an understanding of right and wrong before and apart from Moses (also indicated by Moses- Gen.2:9) bringing down this revelation of the 10 commandments. Whether deliberately or inadvertently they miss the point. The point being that Jehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the source of revelation and our innate knowledge structure and morality.

The bible teaches us that innate knowledge and structure to understanding is what man is designed with (Isa.1:18, Job 38:36, Prv.2:6). The knowledge of God himself is structured in man. "Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them." (Rom.1:19) Man is programmed with the correct 'glasses' to see God's design and his person in creation. "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:" (Rom.1:20) God likewise programmed man with moral code reflective of God's nature. "For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another" Rom.2:14-5. And of course the fall of man and the law of sin (Rom.7-8) working in us account for why man does not like to retain God in his knowledge but would rather degenerate into idolatry (Rom.1:21-3). Man is created by God and in his image (Gen.1:26-7, Eph.4:24, Col.3:10) and obligated to have dominion over creation, develop its resources to meet ours and others needs by our labor (Eph.4:28, 2 Thes.3:10) (not our lusts facilitated by central banks- Jam.4:1-2, 5:1, Isa.1:22).

Interestingly it appears that language itself is not possible without predesigned innate faculties working together in us. According to Noam Chomsky (not anything close to resembling a bible believer) in order to have a language faculty it would have to be connected to or accessible to the motor apparatus/the auditory systems and the articulatory organs plus it has to be connected to the thought faculties (1:08 min). This appears to be potentially an optimally designed system (1:11 min.) which is unique in humans. We find something similar he says only in bee communication and displaced reference. Displaced reference is communication about something not in our sensory field -only humans and bees are known to communicate about remote things (there is a certain flower over in this location and this much honey can be made from it -40 min)

Chomsky also acknowledges the mystery of arithmetic. He confirms people having the ability to do mathematics is a mystery from evolutionary theory - it certainly was no factor in natural selection. He amusingly observes that in hunter gatherer societies you didn't have more children if you could prove theorems about prime numbers. So, if it played no role in human evolution what is it doing there? (1:29 min.) He also recognizes internal structure and innate morality that we are designed and programmed to be what we are. Some psychologists as Piaget believe “neonatal schemas are the cognitive structures underlying innate reflexes. These reflexes are genetically programmed into us.” Reflexes such as sucking and clinching are not taught to infants yet they know them innately.

Neo-Darwinian scientists and philosophers want to explain all these things in terms of a random unguided unintelligent process which only appears to be designed and intelligent. Reprobate minds hardened in pride will not see with their eyes or hear with their ears nor understand with their hearts. (As a side note, someone has said the difference between a scientist and a philosopher is a scientist is someone who learns more and more about less and less until he finally knows everything about nothing. But a philosopher is someone who learns less and less about more and more until he finally knows nothing about everything.)

 
This innatism inevitably will lead us into the discussion of intelligent design, information theory and our encoded DNA resembling computer binary code and the fine tuning of the universe for our existence to even be possible. Even mutations appear to be a designed adaptive capacity which organisms have preprogrammed in them. (28 min) When stress is put on an organism certain proteins are produced because the organism is designed to produce them. Perhaps if physics alone cannot explain creation maybe we should look to metaphysics.

Einstein reflected on science after David Hume that “a fateful 'fear of metaphysics' arose which has come to be a malady of contemporary empiricist philosophising; this malady is the counterpart to that earlier philosophising in the clouds, which thought it could neglect and dispense with what was given by the senses. ... It finally turns out that one can, after all, not get along without metaphysics.”

Eventually they will be dragged kicking and screaming to biblical metaphysics and Moses waiting at the foot of Sinai to make them drink the gold of their idolatry (Ex.32:20). It turns out that evidence in general for anything is not possible unless the God of the bible exists as he reveals himself in the scripture as the source of our minds, of logic, science, language, morality and justice.