NOTE: this essay was written by Josh for Atheism is Dead (True Freethinker’s predecessor).
Alright, the Iowan floodwaters have receded and it’s time for me to add something of substance here. As some of you may have seen in my introduction, I like to talk about philosophy and how it relates religious belief (or the lack thereof). Most of my posts will be explorations of the arguments for or against God’s existence, and I do expect there to be formidable criticisms of my posts. As any veteran of this kind of fare will tell you, many times the content of criticisms tends to simply repeat itself. For example, if I argue for the existence of God based on the objective nature of morality, it would be common for someone to answer that the only thing we can take from the existence of objective morality is that morality is objective. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing- there are real objections that people on both sides need to confront. But in order to keep things flowing, I thought I’d offer a small rubric on methodology.
Not many in the world of philosophy of religion declare that there is a single argument that proves their entire worldview. In fact, most Christian apologists rely on some kind of cumulative case for their position. William Lane Craig, for example, usually offers nearly a half-dozen arguments for the reasonableness of Christianity. Further, pending your opinion of his work, Plantinga has shown that there are a bevy of beliefs for which we do not require evidence, of which God-belief may be one. Despite rumors, Plantinga has offered arguments of his own against what he calls naturalism, but he uses these arguments differently than your classical apologists.
What I’m trying to get at is a coherent way to think of these arguments. I’m already working on my first entry into the debate for this blog, and I’m consciously “neutering” the argument of overblown claims of victory. For example, I tend to think that the Argument from Reason (and its sister, the EAAN) is a generally successful argument. What does it mean for an argument to be successful? Whatever it means in another context or with another poster, I take a successful argument to be one that offers plausible premises and a conclusion that follows. Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? With this tame criteria for an argument, even Richard Dawkins can offer a successful argument:
1) A universe made by God would differ than one made by natural occurences.2) Our universe fits better with a naturalistic universe than with a theistic universe.
.: Therefore, our universe is more likely to be naturalistic than theistic.
(Adapted from Gregory E. Ganssle, “Dawkins’s Best Argument”, Philosophia Christi 10 (2008): 44.
(1) appears to be non-controversial, so I won’t comment on it.
The support for (2) comes from the idea that out of all the ways God could have brought His desired universe about, the big bang and evolution seem unlikely whereas they fit perfectly with a naturalistic universe. I think we all will grant this.
His conclusion, therefore, ought to be considered support for naturalism, and is a successful argument insofar as that goes. However, this argument does not appear to be very powerful, or at least persuasive. Since the existence of God is only challenged probabilistically and not logically, we can udercut this defeater by offering other arguments that we believe are successful (the moral, design or experiential arguments, for example) and avoid the conclusion of Dawkins’s argument.
In like manner, I hope that my future contributions to this blog will be understood thus: that we are able to separate the successfulness of an argument from the probability of a certain worldview being true.