If you have to take Richard Dawkins’ theories into account, what happens to concepts like human intelligence or emotions, or reactions to experience?
Of those three possibilities, the one that his theories mostly destroy is the one about human intelligence because, though he would stoutly deny it, if a human being is nothing but matter, if even our brains are simply pieces of wiring with electrochemical reactions in them, and the synapses, as they are called, in the brains, firing now and again, then why should I listen to what you say? Excuse me, I'm not being rude, but if that is the state of affairs, why on earth should I listen to what you have to say or treat your argument seriously?
It is to be observed that Professor John Polkinghorne, a mathematician, physicist, expert in quantum mechanics, and so forth and so on, of that other university called Cambridge, makes that very same point in one of his scientific books. If what the materialist who says there is nothing but matter anywhere, not even in you or your brain, is true, why should I even listen to his arguments? Because if my brain functioning is simply a lot of synapses, firing off, and electrical impulses, and that's only matter, and what his brain is doing is the same, well, so what? As C. S. Lewis used to say, the argument of the materialist cuts off the bough of the tree on which he is sitting.
