Note: this was written by one of my fellow co-authors when I was posting to the Atheism is Dead blog:
Though I haven’t been writing much lately, I still like to visit my old pals over at Debunking Christianity from time-to-time.
Today, after perusing their blog, I noticed a post criticizing a personal hero of mine: Plantinga. The post is entitled, “Plantinga Propounds Invalid Argument”, and is filled with a lot of unflattering caricatures of Plantinga’s philosophy.
The entire article seems rather haughty considering that an amateur blogger (Evan) – who apparently has no experience in philosophy – is claiming to have bested a renowned epistemologist and all around respected thinker.
In fact, reading the comments to the article reveals that the atheists over at DC are unwilling to afford the respect that I think Plantinga rightly deserves.
Regardless, Evan’s arguments stand or fall on their own, and so without further ado, I’ll simply deconstruct his numerous misconceptions.
Firstly, Evan seems to find it incredible that Plantinga could “sympathize” with a young-Earth creationist, in the sense that Plantinga doesn’t think that we can outright declare YEC beliefs to be irrational or stupid.
Evan says:
Plantinga himself believes that the earth is old because multiple lines of evidence converge to show this to be the case. Yet he is willing to accept the sensiblity of someone who does not accept the evidence that he does, because they are using their faith in scriptures and praying about it. If this is an adequate epistemology for a philosopher one wonders if there will be much in the rest of his philosophy to dream of or wonder about.
Of course, if this childish caricature is the best Evan can do, one might wonder about the rest of the article.
Without getting too sidetracked from the main issue, I will simply note that Plantinga’s views are hardly this simplistic. If Evan really wants to criticize a scholar like Plantinga, I think he would do well to take the issue more seriously, and not misrepresent his opponent’s views.
However, I will note that as an epistemologist, Plantinga simply points out that there is nothing about the idea of a young Earth that can be declared outright irrational, and as such his charge still stands. Evan hasn’t outlined exactly what is irrational about belief in a young Earth from an epistemological viewpoint. Certainly a naturalist who thinks the Bible is nothing more than ancient mythology would find it ridiculous, but the presuppositions of naturalism aren’t necessarily axiomatic.
Regardless, I’ve already spent far too much time on such an important issue, so I’ll move along.
What Evan really takes exception to with his blog post is Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism. In simple terms, this states that if evolution and naturalism are both true, then we have no reason to think that ANY of our beliefs are true, or no way of knowing if they are true. Therefore, given the truth of naturalism and evolution, we have reason to believe that naturalism and/or evolution are false.
Since evolution is the more basic of these two beliefs, it would stand to reason that naturalism is an irrational philosophy in light of evolution.
As Plantinga so succinctly puts it:
I said naturalism is in philosophical hot water; this is true on several counts, but here I want to concentrate on just one—one connected with the thought that evolution supports or endorses or is in some way evidence for naturalism. As I see it, this is a whopping error: evolution and naturalism are not merely uneasy bedfellows; they are more like belligerent combatants. One can’t rationally accept both evolution and naturalism; one can’t rationally be an evolutionary naturalist. The problem, as several thinkers (C. S. Lewis, for example) have seen, is that naturalism, or evolutionary naturalism, seems to lead to a deep and pervasive skepticism. It leads to the conclusion that our cognitive or belief-producing faculties—memory, perception, logical insight, etc.—are unreliable and cannot be trusted to produce a preponderance of true beliefs over false. Darwin himself had worries along these lines: “With me,” says Darwin, “the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”
While this argument might certainly be unsound, I don’t think it’s as blatantly false as Evan paints it to be.
In response to this, Evan goes on at some length (and I might note needlessly) about how naturalists aren’t the only one’s who are skeptical and so on. What this has to do with the argument, I don’t know. It seems that Evan is confusing a “normal” level of skepticism with the radical form of skepticism evolution and naturalism combined would seem to lead us to. Regardless, Evan doesn’t really make a counterpoint to the argument when he speaks about skepticism, so I don’t know what else to say.
One must wonder exactly what mechanism Plantinga imagines allows him to have the correct apprehension of this particular fact when so many of his “sensible” coreligionists and theists in general disagree with him on this point vehemently. Does he believe that his brain is working better than theirs? Yet this could not be for Plantinga, because he believes that brains don’t detect true beliefs.
This paragraph contains two matters on which Evan is confused.
Firstly, Plantinga never claims that he is absolutely right on the issue of Old Earth v. Young Earth, since Evan has already pointed out that Plantinga has declared belief in a Young Earth to be rational. Certainly, then, I don’t see how Plantinga would claim his brain is “working better” – whatever that means – than a YECreationist. When it comes to epistemology, as best Plantinga might claim that he relies less on the absolute literal nature of the Bible than his YEC counterparts.
Secondly, we can see here that Evan has completely misunderstood the point of Plantinga’s argument. Plantinga is not arguing that humans don’t hold true beliefs about reality, only that given naturalism and evolution, we have no reason to believe that what we believe is true.
This is a rather important distinction, and missing this point doesn’t bode well for the rest of Evan’s post.
[Plantinga] believes that brains don’t detect true beliefs.
I know you think I’m kidding, but really, that is his position. He believes that brains by themselves are evolved organs and therefore can only be “adaptive” but that being adaptive does not entail the truth of a given conclusion arrived at by an adaptive organ.
Plantinga would only argue that this is true just in case evolution and naturalism are both true. Despite that Evan is a bit confused on Plantinga’s actual argument, poking fun at it and chuckling about it with your fellow atheists doesn’t disprove the point. Again, given Plantinga’s reputation, I think Evan would have been better off taking this issue more seriously.
Evan goes on to say (with Plantinga’s words in Italics):
Let’s look again at his position about what he calls “neurophysiology”:
Your beliefs may all be false, ridiculously false; if your behavior is adaptive, you will survive and reproduce. Consider a frog sitting on a lily pad. A fly passes by; the frog flicks out its tongue to capture it. Perhaps the neurophysiology that causes it to do so, also causes beliefs. As far as survival and reproduction is concerned, it won’t matter at all what these beliefs are: if that adaptive neurophysiology causes true belief (e.g., those little black things are good to eat), fine. But if it causes false belief (e.g., if I catch the right one, I’ll turn into a prince), that’s fine too. Indeed, the neurophysiology in question might cause beliefs that have nothing to do with the creature’s current circumstances (as in the case of our dreams); that’s also fine, as long as the neurophysiology causes adaptive behavior. All that really matters, as far as survival and reproduction is concerned, is that the neurophysiology cause the right kind of behavior; whether it also causes true belief (rather than false belief) is irrelevant.
The use of scare quotes around the word physiology is about the best response that Evan will muster with regards to this analogy. Evan has this to say in response:
But this metaphor is absurd and wrong on the face of it. For a frog to catch a fly he first needs to adequately apprehend that there is a fly to be caught. This belief MUST be true for a frog to catch it. The frog’s eye must accurately determine there is a fly in the field of vision. It must accurately gauge the speed and distance of the oncoming fly. It must accurately know the position of its tongue in its mouth and accurately direct its head and mouth at the correct angle to catch the fly. All of these things are things the frog’s brain must believe first, before it can create an overarching belief that drives it to catch and eat the fly. Therefore Plantinga must admit that at least some of the beliefs the frog needs to have must correspond accurately to the external world. And of course, even in his example, the simplest belief is the one that is most correct, namely that the fly will feel better if it eats.
I had a good chuckle at the fact that Evan actually thinks that frogs hold beliefs.
Anyway, the fact remains that the example of the frog is simply an illustration meant to distance the reader from the fact that what Plantinga is really talking about is the human mind.
However, Evan is employing a sort of circular reasoning here. Above, Plantinga rightly points out that the frog will still attempt to catch the fly if it thinks that catching the correct fly will turn it into a prince. Well, Evan claims that in actuality the frog must believe that eating the fly will make it feel good. But why? What is necessary about that belief over any other? Evan seems only to claim it by brute force. The fact is, the frog need only believe anything that will lead to adaptive behaviors. Again, Evan has missed a simple point, which is causing quite a bit of confusion, and ultimately all of his counter-examples fall prey to this same problem.
Then, Evan says:
Plantinga’s skepticism about neurophysiology assumes the accuracy of perception. Yet we all know that many perceptions themselves can be flawed. A few minutes with a magic-eyes book or even a glass of water and a pencil can show a child that. So if Plantinga’s main point is that perception, memory, the brain’s physics, working logic and apperception can be inherently flawed yet still adaptive, his point is one that neuroscientists have been making for several decades.
Again, Evan misunderstands the thrust of Plantinga’s argument. Plantinga is not claiming that our beliefs are absolutely false or at least indeterminably true, only that we would have reason to believe they are given evolution and naturalism (by now the perceptive reader will notice the self-destructing nature of the coupled beliefs of evolution and naturalism).
Furthermore, how is pointing out that neuroscientists have demonstrated that Plantinga’s argument is true detract from Plantinga’s argument. Pretending for a moment that Evan’s misunderstanding of the argument is actually correct, Evan would only be proving Plantinga’s point for him here. If I actually cared a little bit more, I might be flabbergasted by Evan’s supposed criticism of someone I respect so much.
Moving on…(Plantinga’s words are in italics)
Yet Plantinga wants to take healthy skepticism and reduce it to a ridiculous solipsism that would be destructive to all knowledge. His way out is obvious:
Clearly this doubt arises for naturalists or atheists, but not for those who believe in God. That is because if God has created us in his image, then even if he fashioned us by some evolutionary means, he would presumably want us to resemble him in being able to know; but then most of what we believe might be true even if our minds have developed from those of the lower animals.
As a side point, the use of the term “lower animals” is simply another example of his lack of understanding of biology. A high-school level understanding of biology as it is taught in the 21st century would teach Plantinga that all life forms on earth are equally evolved. They have all derived from a common ancestor and have been adapting to changing environments and ecologies since then and all lineages extant have survived to this point. There are no “lower animals” unless you already accept creationism. But back to his main point.
There is a disturbing amount of nitpicking on Evan’s part here. I doubt that Plantinga doesn’t understand this point, but this is so irrelevant that I don’t care to worry about it.
According to Plantinga, while brains cannot evolve a method for detecting truth, God can give them that ability through his creation. Yet of course there is simply no logical connection between the existence of a theistic deity and the belief systems of organisms evolved under such a deity. I will give some alternatives that Plantinga fails to even consider, much less address, that show how limited his “supernaturalism” really is.
Actually, Plantinga’s claim is a bit more cautious than that; Plantinga merely stated that our beliefs aren’t necessarily false if God exists and created us (even ‘indirectly’ through evolution), which is in contradistinction to naturalism.
Therefore, Evan’s “examples” are useless and don’t actually refute any point that Plantinga has made. As a point of fact, as far as Plantinga’s arguments are concerned, all of those examples are logically equivalent to naturalism. In other words, Evan just made Plantinga’s point for him, without realizing it.
I’m very close to being flabbergasted by the absolutely terrible job Evan is doing of refuting my hero here.
There is simply no logical or philosophical reason to select Christian theism as the only rational alternative to methodological naturalism.
Another misunderstanding – Plantinga wasn’t arguing for Christianity, but against naturalism.
Certainly there is no reason to assume the probability of one supernatural hypothesis over any other as there is simply no accepted supernatural data.
Whatever this statement means, it seems to be loaded with a lot of atheist bias. I don’t really know exactly what “accepted supernatural data” is, but I’m sure it has something to do with Evan’s acceptance of Scientific Naturalism which is a self-defeating philosophy.
Plantinga knows, however, that most of his readers are either Christian or former Christians and thus artificially limits his calculus to those two possibilities to make his outcome look superficially more plausible.
And therefore atheists can discard Plantinga’s words without a single ounce of real, critical thought.
How convenient.
At this point in the post, Evan moves on to Bayesian analysis, but to be fair to my readers I’ll refrain from commenting since I’m too ignorant on this subject. (Not that that stops fundy atheists like Evan, but…)
Most of the rest of Evan’s post is based on the myriad misunderstandings that I’ve pointed out so far, so there isn’t much that remains to be said.
An interesting point to note, however:
While [Plantinga] does believe that he has had some true beliefs, he has admitted in his review of Dawkins that some of his arguments in the past have been invalid. How is it possible for his God-given truth detector to have allowed this?
This statement inadvertently demonstrates one of the many reasons why the so-called New Atheism is in so much trouble. This sort of childish commentary is the bread and butter of modern atheists – it’s the rule rather than the exception. This sort of mindset of critiquing complex issues with misrepresentative one-liners should really be intellectually embarrassing for anyone who takes these issues seriously (theist or atheist).
At this point, I think I’ve successfully deflated Evan’s criticism so I’m not going to continue beating a dead horse.
I simply want to highlight some of the “rational” and “freethinking” commentary we find on Loftus’ blog in regards to this post.
One commentator wrote:
Once you have the supernatural, all of your beliefs at once become questionable, because supernatural agents can change the laws of nature at will.
Which is irrelevant to the issue, but I just wanted to point out that as far as this commentator knows, the universe is randomly acting ordered and rational, and might randomly break it’s own laws, and therefore all of his beliefs are questionable. So there!
Anyway, this more to say about that, but for the handful of you still reading at this point, I’ll wrap this up.
Another commentator says:
Great post, Evan. For the life of me, I don’t understand why Plantinga is so highly regarded.
Presumably this person thinks that Dawkins is a great philosopher? Either way, if you can’t understand why Plantinga is so highly regarded, then you’re clearly a fundy atheist. Clearly. 🙂
Another commentator says:
looking at beliefs as being “true” or “false” is misleading: only in systems of formal logic, such as mathematics, can things be, by definition, absolutely true or false: 2+2=4 is absolutely true in arithmetic, for instance. A frog’s “belief” about flying objects is a model which works to keep the frog well fed, but it is not absolutely “true” or “false”.
I had a good chuckle about this since, based on this person’s own logic, I have no reason to believe anything in this quote.
Another commentator says:
Surely believing that our cognitive faculties are reliable is properly basic?
Thus showing that fundy atheists can, in fact, get half way to understanding something outside their own little box.
Clearly the fact that at least some of our beliefs is true is…well…true. Therefore, Plantinga’s argument that any belief which leads us to believe that our beliefs are false or unknowably true is false, isn’t really that far fetched now, is it?
And I’ll wrap up my post with my favorite comment by the philosopher John W. Loftus.
Very nice job Evan!
I am by no means an actual philosopher (I’d like to call myself an amateur philosopher 🙂 ), but I can clearly see that Evan only did a good job if his job was to misunderstand all of the basic points of Plantinga’s argument.
John, as a philosopher with an actual education that dwarfs my own, should have recognized this fact. Though, to be fair to John, it’s much easier to critically analyze something with which you disagree.
That said, this concludes my post.