I'm hoping Mr. Tom Gilson doesn't think of me as some sort of blog stalker, because the majority of my posts as of late have come from reading something he has written or linked to. It's just that I can hear the gears in my head crank a lot louder when I read his stuff more than any other religious blog, and I sincerely hope he takes that as a compliment.
So once again, I've found a tasty morsel on Tom's blog. He links to an article in Christianity Today by Notre Dame philosopher Alvin Plantinga entitled Evolution vs. Naturalism. As described by Tom, the essay states that "[I]f you’re a believer in evolution, you have no warrant for believing in naturalism".
"No warrant for buh guh wha...?"
Try to wrap your mind around this. Evolution is the natural explanation of life's diversity here on Earth. Naturalism is the belief that everything can be explained through natural causes. And Plantinga is telling us that they're incompatible?
Well, color me interested!
I have to admit, I was struck with both great intrigue and and a little concern. I mean, as crazy as the claim that the belief in evolution and naturalism are incompatible is, this was coming from a friggin philosopher from Notre Dame! I had taken on a nuclear physicist before, but he was just talking philosophy. But this time it was a philosopher talking philosophy! This guy has the homefield advantage. Boots quaking, I clicked the link and began to read.
Plantinga begins with the token, prerequisite bashing of the "New Atheists™". Everyone knows how this goes - "...blah blah blah, their books are incoherent hateful screeds, blah blah blah, illogical and full of righteous indignation, blah blah blah, I refuse to provide any examples of their errors right now, blah blah blah..."
Is there some sort of contract that Christian apologists must sign that states that they must begin any essay about atheism by tossing empty criticisms at the "New Atheists™", or is this just an agreed upon formality?
Moving forth, it takes a few paragraphs for Plantinga to get to the meat of the essay - his explanation as to how evolution and naturalism are "belligerent combatants" is as follows:
- A naturalist believes that all cognition (including beliefs) is determined by neurophysiology.
- A naturalist believes that all behavior is ultimately determined by neurophysiology.
- Evolution states that our behavior must have been adaptive for us to survive.
- That means that our neurophysiology is adaptive as well.
- Evolution rewards adaptive behavior, and punishes maladaptive behavior.
- As long as the behavior is adaptive, evolution cares not whether your beliefs are true.
I agree with all of this so far. Kudos, good sir! And I did love Platinga's example that demonstrates that last point - a frog's false belief that catching the right fly will turn him into a prince does not matter to evolution, so long as this belief continues to encourage the beneficial behavior of, you know, feeding himself. So far so good?
Nope.
Plantinga launches into a hypothetical world consisting of an evolved race of cognitive creatures with their own beliefs. I will let him do the flopping on this next point:
So consider any particular belief on the part of one of those creatures: what is the probability that it is true? Well, what we know is that the belief in question was produced by adaptive neurophysiology, neurophysiology that produces adaptive behavior. But as we've seen, that gives us no reason to think the belief true (and none to think it false). We must suppose, therefore, that the belief in question is about as likely to be false as to be true; the probability of any particular belief's being true is in the neighborhood of 1/2. But then it is massively unlikely that the cognitive faculties of these creatures produce the preponderance of true beliefs over false required by reliability. If I have 1,000 independent beliefs, for example, and the probability of any particular belief's being true is 1/2, then the probability that 3/4 or more of these beliefs are true (certainly a modest enough requirement for reliability) will be less than 10-58. And even if I am running a modest epistemic establishment of only 100 beliefs, the probability that 3/4 of them are true, given that the probability of any one's being true is 1/2, is very low, something like .000001.7 So the chances that these creatures' true beliefs substantially outnumber their false beliefs (even in a particular area) are small. The conclusion to be drawn is that it is exceedingly unlikely that their cognitive faculties are reliable.
Whoa there! Wait just a second! Since when was the split between a belief's likelihood of being true or false a perfect 50/50? Mr. Plantinga has some serious thinking to do about the nature of beliefs, because he completely ignored several odds-changing factors.
First of all, has Plantinga ever heard of Ockham's razor? Let's say I believe in the miraculous healing powers emanating from the love child of Rubius Haggrid and Chewbacca. I'd say the true/false chances skew
just a tiny bit from 50/50. Does he realize that if you pit a belief that violates the laws of physics against one that doesn't, then the belief that doesn't require postulating an entirely new paradigm beyond the physical and natural is going to be helluva lot more likely?
And what about beliefs that come from evidence collected by those before us? What if the frog snatching flies out of the air simply believed that they provided nourishment, based on the observation that when his cousin stopped eating them he (forgive me) croaked? Is Plantinga seriously asserting that this belief is 50/50, just like the belief that catching the right fly will turn you into a prince is 50/50? What if I told him, without providing evidence, that his job at Notre Dame was a sham and the reality was that Notre Dame's education was a front for the Keebler elves, who have recently relocated their factory of deliciousness inside the Golden Dome? Would he consider that with a flip of a coin?
The chances of a belief being true is not 50/50. And this is where Plantinga's argument completely falls apart. He goes on to address what he sees as the main objection to his argument - but this is a straw man, in my case, so whatever.
And of course, he can't conclude an essay without smugly declaring Christianity to be superior.
"
The obvious conclusion, so it seems to me, is that evolutionary naturalism can't sensibly be accepted. The high priests of evolutionary naturalism loudly proclaim that Christian and even theistic belief is bankrupt and foolish. The fact, however, is that the shoe is on the other foot. It is evolutionary naturalism, not Christian belief, that can't rationally be accepted."
Or in other words:
"
If you believe in evolution and naturalism, then chances are those beliefs are false. But if, like me, you believe in a god whose existence would force a complete overhaul on everything we know about the universe and all of its laws, then your belief is obviously superior!"
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