| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Hrafn
Joined: 22 Sep 2006
Posts: 587
|
 Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 3:00 am Post subject: The Plantinga Delusion |
 |
|
Jason Rosenhouse at Evolutionblog has come across this review by Creationist theologian Alvin Plantinga of Dawkins' The God Delusion. Rosenhouse was not impressed and means to write a multi-part response, the first part of which is here, in which he says:
| Quote: | As regular readers of this blog are aware, I find the central truth claims of Christianity to be rather implausible, to put it kindly. I am also aware, however, that rather a lot of people feel differently. I have no trouble with the idea that all of those people are mistaken, but I do find it difficult to dismiss them all as fools. So I keep reading religious literature, in the increasingly vain hope that I will someday find some germ of intellectual respectability underlying the whole thing.
For that reason I read Plantinga's review with great interest. To date I have been extremely unimpressed with the published criticisms of Dawkins' book, but if anyone could devise a cogent counterargument it would be Plantinga. Noting the considerable length of the review (just under 4500 words, not counting endnotes), I figured that Plantinga must have put considerable effort into his arguments. At last, I thought, I would find what serious, high-powered Christianity has to offer against Dawkins' assertions.
So you can imagine my disappointment when I discovered that Plantinga's proposed refutations are not merely wrong, but mostly stupid. His smug tone suggests that in his mind he has delivered some devastating answers indeed. In most cases, however, I do not think he has even understood the questions.
I plan to devote several posts to Plantinga's arguments. Here I will simply address Plantinga's closing shots, where he suggests that an adherence to a materialistic conception of evolution leaves us with no sound basis for trusting our perceptions of the world around us.
| Quote: | | Toward the end of the book, Dawkins endorses a certain limited skepticism. Since we have been cobbled together by (unguided) evolution, it is unlikely, he thinks, that our view of the world is overall accurate; natural selection is interested in adaptive behavior, not in true belief. But Dawkins fails to plumb the real depths of the skeptical implications of the view that we have come to be by way of unguided evolution. We can see this as follows. Like most naturalists, Dawkins is a materialist about human beings: human persons are material objects; they are not immaterial selves or souls or substances joined to a body, and they don't contain any immaterial substance as a part. From this point of view, our beliefs would be dependent on neurophysiology, and (no doubt) a belief would just be a neurological structure of some complex kind. Now the neurophysiology on which our beliefs depend will doubtless be adaptive; but why think for a moment that the beliefs dependent on or caused by that neurophysiology will be mostly true? Why think our cognitive faculties are reliable? |
Plantinga is rather fond of this argument; he has made it in a variety of venues. It has been refuted many times, but he does not seem to have received the memo. |
I've sliced 'n' diced this argument myself on occasion, and have to wonder why somebody who repeatedly employs such transparent nonsense retains a reputation as a theological heavyweight.
Could it be that his target audience, Fundamentalists and thus mostly Authoritarian followers, have minds that are simply too compartmentalised to allow them to place Plantinga's "reliable cognitive facilities" and all the optical illusions, faces-in-clouds (etc, etc, etc) next to one another to realise that they are directly contradictory? This is quite apart from Rosenhouse's reasons why one would expect cognitive facilities to evolve in at least an approximation of reliability (which I would expect most Fundamentalists to know too little about Evolution to understand).
This could explain why he is popular with the Fundamentalist masses, but would not explain why he (apparently) maintains a reasonable academic reputation.
Last edited by Hrafn on Sat Mar 03, 2007 3:33 am; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Hrafn
Joined: 22 Sep 2006
Posts: 587
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Josh Rosenau
Joined: 22 Sep 2006
Posts: 437
Location: Oakland, CA
|
| Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 7:38 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Plantinga wrote: | | Why think our cognitive faculties are reliable? |
I don't. Mind hacks abound, and common sense often misleads.
Did I just disprove God? Or just Plantinga's argument?
_________________
What's new at Thoughts from Kansas? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Diana
Joined: 04 Nov 2006
Posts: 487
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 7:27 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Josh Rosenau wrote: | | Plantinga wrote: | | Why think our cognitive faculties are reliable? |
I don't. Mind hacks abound, and common sense often misleads.
Did I just disprove God? Or just Plantinga's argument? |
Actually, you did not disprove either.
Plantinga argues that given an atheistic perspective, there is much doubt as to whether human beings are capabable of discerning the true nature of reality, even approximately.
However, he argues that given the theistic perspective, that human beings have been given minds capable of doing so.
_________________
"Scientists will understand more and more about the universe, until there is NOTHING LEFT to understand." |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Jack Krebs
Joined: 22 Sep 2006
Posts: 796
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 7:59 am Post subject: |
|
|
The problem is this: how does one know the theistic perspective is right? If one follows Plantinga and Diana's reasoning, we run into the following dilemma:
If the theistic perspective is right, then our minds can know the real truth, and therefore our belief that the theistic perspective is right is the real truth.
But if the theistic perspective is wrong, then our belief that the theistic perspective is right is is not the real truth.
So Plantinga's argument gets us no place. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Hrafn
Joined: 22 Sep 2006
Posts: 587
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 8:13 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Diana wrote: | | Plantinga argues that given an atheistic perspective, there is much doubt as to whether human beings are capabable of discerning the true nature of reality, even approximately. |
Are you claiming that there is not a selectable evolutionary advantage in discerning a reasonable approximation of reality? That creatures that are able to tell the difference between deer and trees, edible berries and poisonous ones, boulders and sabre-toothed tigers, etc, etc, are not more likely to survive to have offspring than those that are not?
In any case, Plantinga is not arguing that human cognitive facilities are merely the "approximately" accurate ones that one might expect from haphazard, kit-bashed evolution, but rather that they are a superlative could-only-be-divinely-created, 'in God's image' affair, for which we would expect a far higher standard. This is patently contradicted by known flaws in human cognition. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Jack Krebs
Joined: 22 Sep 2006
Posts: 796
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 8:20 am Post subject: |
|
|
Actually, the flip side of the coin is this: if Plantinga is right, and we do have the God-given tools for accurately discerning the truth, then the mainstream scientific consensus about the world, including evolutionary science, is most likely the truth.
You just can't have your cake and eat it, too. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Hrafn
Joined: 22 Sep 2006
Posts: 587
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 8:37 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Jack, I agree with you on the circularity element of the argument. However the problem goes beyond that, to elements of human cognition that are clearly faulty regardless of whether theism is "the real truth" or not. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Hrafn
Joined: 22 Sep 2006
Posts: 587
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 8:47 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Jack Krebs wrote: | Actually, the flip side of the coin is this: if Plantinga is right, and we do have the God-given tools for accurately discerning the truth, then the mainstream scientific consensus about the world, including evolutionary science, is most likely the truth.
You just can't have your cake and eat it, too. |
Actually, I think I can see an at least reasonably coherent argument around that, at least from the Plantinga/ID perspective:
| Quote: | | Scientists are methodologically naturalistic, thus materialistic, thus atheistic. They thus lack "real truthiness" and have fallen short of God's intended perfection of cognitive facilities. It is therefore unsurprising that these 'flawed' facilities come up with ideas like Evolution. |
(I have placed this argument within a quote-box because I don't actually believe several of the assumptions underlying it. But then I'm not a conservative Christian apologist.) |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Greg Myers
Joined: 21 Sep 2006
Posts: 1210
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 9:08 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Hrafn wrote: | | Jack Krebs wrote: | Actually, the flip side of the coin is this: if Plantinga is right, and we do have the God-given tools for accurately discerning the truth, then the mainstream scientific consensus about the world, including evolutionary science, is most likely the truth.
You just can't have your cake and eat it, too. |
Actually, I think I can see an at least reasonably coherent argument around that, at least from the Plantinga/ID perspective:
| Quote: | | Scientists are methodologically naturalistic, thus materialistic, thus atheistic. They thus lack "real truthiness" and have fallen short of God's intended perfection of cognitive facilities. It is therefore unsurprising that these 'flawed' facilities come up with ideas like Evolution. |
(I have placed this argument within a quote-box because I don't actually believe several of the assumptions underlying it. But then I'm not a conservative Christian apologist.) |
This is at least part of the explanation I was looking in the Dialogue thread (unless I am mis-understanding).
Hafrn, I think it would develop more along the lines of scientists being part of a spiritual order opposed to God and true knowledge. NOT because they are uniquely wicked, but because they have not been redeemed into the Kingdom of God.
Eph 6:12
| Quote: | | For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. |
And Col 2:8
| Quote: | | See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. |
1 Cor 1:20
| Quote: | | Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? |
Science then becomes a "deceptive philosophy."
So yes, to your point, Christians would have their eyes opened spiritually to see the truth in a way that others cannot.
This does raise the problem of Christians who are scientists. Is science a gift from God to help us understand the world, or a "deceptive philosophy" based on "human tradition and the basic principles of this world...?"
Inevitably this spirals down to various groups claiming they have the "right truth" and that the others are deceived. In fairness, the above quotes are taken a bit out of context. They are speaking of the nature of the messiah, and not a scientific understanding of the world. Though you can also see that there is a strong thread here of “trust me.”
Proverbs 3:5
| Quote: | Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding; |
I do not think that this argument actually addresses Plantinga’s point, however. Hfran’s argument (I think) is that our understanding changes in real time, at conversion, due to the work of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Plantinga argues about the differences between a brain that is the result of special creation versus evolution. In Plantinga’s case, I think Jack’s point stands.
(expanded in edit)
_________________
The sleep of reason produces monsters.
Francisco de Goya, Los Caprichos, 1799 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Hrafn
Joined: 22 Sep 2006
Posts: 587
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 9:23 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Greg Myers wrote: | | Hafrn, I think it would develop more along the lines of scientists being part of a spiritual order opposed to God and true knowledge. NOT because they are uniquely wicked, but because they have not been redeemed into the Kingdom of God. |
I was not claiming that the argument would go that they were "uniquely wicked" but rather less overtly 'blessed' (or tainted, depending on your viewpoint) by theism in their worldview.
| Quote: | | Inevitably this spirals down to various groups claiming they have the "right truth" and that the others are deceived. |
I would tend to agree. This means that this thread of Plantinga's argument devolves into a form of Presuppositional Apologetics, which tends to be highly convincing to the true believer, but wholly unconvincing to the fence-sitter and unbeliever. This in turn leads to my suspicion, voiced in my original post, that Plantinga is 'preaching to the [Fundamentalist] choir.' |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Jack Krebs
Joined: 22 Sep 2006
Posts: 796
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 9:42 am Post subject: |
|
|
Hrafn writes,
| Quote: | | This means that this thread of Plantinga's argument devolves into a form of Presuppositional Apologetics, which tends to be highly convincing to the true believer, but wholly unconvincing to the fence-sitter and unbeliever. |
If you believe, then you believe. Otherwise, you are unconvinced. There is no force of logic behind Plantinga's argument, other than that which results from embedding your conclusion in your premises. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Hrafn
Joined: 22 Sep 2006
Posts: 587
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 9:48 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Greg Myers wrote: | | Hfran’s argument (I think) is that our understanding changes in real time, at conversion, due to the work of the indwelling Holy Spirit. |
I actually didn't go into whether the Scientists' lack of 'real truthiness' was innate and static or dynamic and subject to change, why they lack it, etc, etc. These issues lead into some of the messier, more controversial and more obtuse elements of Christian theology (free will, predestination, election, etc), and as a non-Christian I really have no interest in going there.
I am thus simply stating the lack of 'real truthiness' baldly as a likely opinion of somebody of a conservative Christian perspective (give or take the fact that they would most likely phrase it differently). Any conservative Christian apologist who stumbles upon Jack's argument & my own can flesh it out according to their own theological persuasion.
Regardless of the source and/or mechanics of this lack, it is reasonable to assume that it is associated with a lack of the "reliable cognitive facilities" that was associated with the 'real truth' in the argument.
"Theism => reliable cognitive facilities => theism"
&
"Atheism => faulty cognitive facilities => atheism"
...are both consistent with a hypothesis of divine origin of reliable cognitive facilities, as long as you insert some form of sub-hypothesis as to why the reliability=belief-in-theism is not ubiquitous. Various forms of this sub-hypothesis exist, but (as I have already said) I don't want to argue them. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Hrafn
Joined: 22 Sep 2006
Posts: 587
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 9:58 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Jack Krebs wrote: | Hrafn writes,
| Quote: | | This means that this thread of Plantinga's argument devolves into a form of Presuppositional Apologetics, which tends to be highly convincing to the true believer, but wholly unconvincing to the fence-sitter and unbeliever. |
If you believe, then you believe. Otherwise, you are unconvinced. There is no force of logic behind Plantinga's argument, other than that which results from embedding your conclusion in your premises. |
Yes. I think you, Greg & myself are in agreement on the circularity issue.
This would be a fairly large stumbling block if Plantinga were merely billed as a Theologian/Apologist, but in a prominent Philosopher of Religion, it is damning. Philosophers are not meant to employ obvious philosophical fallacies. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Diana
Joined: 04 Nov 2006
Posts: 487
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 4:37 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Jack Krebs wrote: | Actually, the flip side of the coin is this: if Plantinga is right, and we do have the God-given tools for accurately discerning the truth, then the mainstream scientific consensus about the world, including evolutionary science, is most likely the truth.
You just can't have your cake and eat it, too. |
Actually, I can about agree with that Jack. Provisionally speaking, of course.
If we have the God-given tools for accurately discerning the truth, then it will come out.
If we don't, it might never come out, assuming it even exists.
You just can't have your cake and eat it, too.
_________________
"Scientists will understand more and more about the universe, until there is NOTHING LEFT to understand." |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
