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Atheists would say that evolution is the cornerstone of the naturalistic worldview, wouldn't they?
Some might, others wouldn't. Richard Dawkins says that the theory of evolution makes it
possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. But then he's a biologist. And even
if the theory of evolution was falsified tomorrow, it's quite possible that some other natural
explanation would replace it. Anyway, some prominent evolutionists such as Francis Collins
or Theodosius Dobzhansky have been Christians. So evolution doesn't necessarily imply atheism
or vice versa.
What if I were to tell you that evolution is actually incompatible with naturalism?
How do you make that out?
It's an argument by Alvin Plantinga.
Oh boy. Okay, let's hear it.
Well, evolution doesn't select for true beliefs, only beliefs that have survival value.
Okay.
Which means that our cognitive faculties cannot be assumed to be reliable, ieE. to produce
mostly true beliefs.
For example, suppose there is a caveman called Paul. Whenever he sees a tiger, he runs away.
We assume it is because he is afraid of the tiger and wants to avoid being eaten by it.
That seems like a reasonable assumption.
But there are other possibilities. Perhaps Paul very much likes the idea of being eaten,
but when he sees a tiger, always runs off looking for a better prospect, because he
thinks it unlikely the tiger he sees will eat him. This will get his body parts in the
right place so far as survival is concerned, without involving much by way of true belief.
Or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a large, friendly, cuddly pussycat and wants to pet
it; but he also believes that the best way to pet it is to run away from it.
Or perhaps he confuses running toward it with running away from it, believing of the action
that is really running away from it, that it is running toward it; or perhaps he thinks
the tiger is a regularly recurring illusion, and, hoping to keep his weight down, has formed
the resolution to run a mile at top speed whenever presented with such an illusion;
or perhaps he thinks he is about to take part in a sixteen-hundred-meter race, wants to
win, and believes the appearance of the tiger is the starting signal; or perhaps...
Clearly there are any number of belief-***-desire systems that equally fit a given bit of behaviour
where the beliefs are mostly false.
Are you kidding me? That's Plantinga's argument?
It's called the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. Many philosophers think it presents
an unanswerable challenge to naturalism. If you have 100 beliefs, and each belief is as
likely to be true as false, then the probability that 75 or more of your beliefs are true is
microscopic.
I don't even see the point of all this. What is Plantinga trying to prove?
Well, if evolution and naturalism are both correct, then your beliefs are unreliable.
If you believe in evolution, you don't have a rational basis for that belief.
And by the same token, you don't have a rational basis for believing in God. However, god-belief
survives because it isn't actively harmful to the believer in most cases, unless of course
he gets killed by someone who believes in a different god.
But on theism, it makes sense that a loving god would provide us with reliable cognitive
faculties so that we could know and worship him.
Funny, I haven't heard of any biologists giving up their careers and going to live in a monastery
because of this argument. Right off the top of my head, I can think of several serious
problems with it.
First of all, the idea of false beliefs and perverse desires miraculously canceling each
other out and allowing the individual to survive is of purely academic interest. In practice
it would be an incredibly unstable state of affairs. The slightest change in the environment
would break the balance and make the individual's behavior maladaptive, so if his false beliefs
and perverse desires were passed on genetically, they would soon die out. By contrast, having
relatively reliable beliefs, and desires and behaviors that are more or less aligned with
your beliefs, is a much more robust situation.
Secondly, Plantinga's completely ignoring the empirical factor and the role of feedback
in forming our beliefs. If I start by thinking that a tiger is a cuddly pussycat, but see
my tribemates being eaten by the tiger, I'm not likely to persist very long in my false
belief.
Thirdly, Plantinga totally ignores the role of instinct. A lot of behavior is instinctual,
even in humans. If not for the fight or flight reflex, humans wouldn't be around today.
Fourthly, it's bizarre to imagine that each individual belief and behavior is a random
variable uncorrelated with any other belief or behavior in an individual's mind. Even
people with serious mental illness often have complexes of belief and behavior that are
internally consistent despite being detached from reality. So Plantinga's mathematical
calculations are meaningless.
Fifthly, Plantinga is obviously unaware that it's no great shock to biologists to learn
that human cognitive faculties are not perfectly reliable. If he had read Kluge by Gary Marcus,
or Uncommon Sense: The Heretical Nature of Science by Alan Cromer, we might all have
been spared this ridiculous argument. The scientific method exists precisely because
scientists are aware that human beliefs are unreliable unless guided by a rigorous framework.
Scientists don't just believe stuff at random, they test their hypotheses.
And sixth... oh, who cares. I've already spent far more time on this farrago than it deserves.