The Circular Reasoning and Cognitive Untrustworthiness of Naturalism

In modern discussions, naturalism often gets presented as the go-to framework for understanding reality. Naturalism claims that everything can be explained by natural causes and laws, leaving no room for metaphysical or divine explanations. While that may seem rational at first glance, a deeper look reveals serious issues—namely, its reliance on circular reasoning and the cognitive untrustworthiness it leads to.

In this article, I’ll break down these problems, showing that naturalism undermines itself by failing to account for the very tools we rely on to reason and understand the world.

Circular Reasoning in Naturalism

Circular reasoning happens when the conclusion is baked into the premise. Naturalism falls into this trap by assuming from the outset that all phenomena must be explained by natural causes. By doing so, it excludes metaphysical or divine explanations by definition, not by evidence. This leads to a situation where naturalism “proves” itself simply by ruling out other possibilities from the start.

Take the issue of consciousness, for instance. Naturalists claim that human consciousness arises from physical processes in the brain. But this assumes from the beginning that all mental phenomena are reducible to physical processes. The possibility that consciousness might have a metaphysical origin or be something beyond matter is ruled out before the argument even begins. This creates a closed loop: naturalism is true because naturalism doesn’t allow for anything else.

So, naturalism employs circular reasoning—it assumes its own conclusion (that only natural causes exist) as its premise (that all phenomena are caused by natural processes). There’s no real way to challenge it from the inside because it’s designed to validate itself.

Cognitive Untrustworthiness of Naturalism

Even more problematic than naturalism’s circular reasoning is how it renders our cognitive faculties unreliable. If naturalism is true, human reasoning, perception, and cognition are the byproducts of evolutionary processes—designed solely for survival, not for discovering truth.

If our cognitive faculties are purely the result of evolution, their primary function is survival, not truth-seeking. In this view, truth is just an evolutionary accident—something we stumble upon only if it helps us survive. But if our cognitive faculties aren’t designed for truth, why should we trust them when making philosophical or scientific claims? If naturalism is true, there’s no reason to believe that the conclusions we reach—whether about the external world or about naturalism itself—are valid.

Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN) makes this point clear. Plantinga argues that if both naturalism and evolution are true, we have reason to doubt the reliability of our cognitive faculties. Evolution selects for survival, not truth. False beliefs could still be beneficial for survival, and there’s no reason to think that natural selection would favor truth-oriented reasoning.

This leads to a self-defeating position for naturalism. If it’s true, then we have no reason to trust our own cognitive faculties—including the reasoning that led us to adopt naturalism in the first place. In contrast, worldviews that ground human reason in something beyond survival instincts—like Christianity, which holds that humans are made in the image of God and designed to discern truth—offer a more coherent explanation for why we trust our ability to reason.

Responding to Naturalist Objections

Naturalists might argue that science, grounded in naturalism, has produced reliable knowledge about the world—and this reliability itself is evidence that naturalism is true. But this response confuses practical success with metaphysical truth. Just because scientific methods work doesn’t prove that naturalism is metaphysically true; it only shows that science works within the natural world as we observe it. This doesn’t address deeper questions about the nature of truth, consciousness, or the reliability of our minds.

Another common objection is that the burden of proof falls on those who claim there is something beyond the natural world. But this is just more circular reasoning—it assumes from the start that only natural causes are valid. The burden of proof falls on any worldview to show that it is logically coherent, internally consistent, and capable of explaining human experience, including our ability to reason.

A More Coherent Worldview

By contrast, a worldview like Christian theism offers a more consistent and trustworthy foundation for reason. Christianity holds that our cognitive faculties were designed by God to apprehend truth. While human reason is imperfect, it’s fundamentally oriented toward truth because it reflects the rationality of a Creator who designed both the world and the human mind.

Moreover, Christianity avoids the circular reasoning of naturalism by grounding truth, logic, and reason in a metaphysical reality beyond the physical world. The existence of immaterial realities like the laws of logic, mathematics, and moral values points to a metaphysical Creator who grounds these concepts in His nature. This provides a coherent explanation for why we trust our minds to seek and find truth.

Conclusion

Naturalism, despite its popularity, suffers from serious philosophical problems. Its circular reasoning makes it impossible to prove its validity without begging the question, and its assumption that human cognition is purely the product of evolutionary processes undermines our trust in reason itself. By contrast, worldviews that acknowledge a metaphysical dimension to reality—such as Christianity—offer a more consistent and trustworthy foundation for understanding the world.

Naturalism’s reliance on circular reasoning and its cognitive untrustworthiness show its inherent limitations. It’s only reasonable to seek a worldview that accounts for all of human experience—reason, morality, meaning—and Christian theism provides that framework.