Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism Kindle Edition

The thesis of this book is that the putative conflict between science and faith is a will of the wisp. The real conflict is not between science and faith but between science and a ‘naturalistic’, materialist view of the world. Scientists are not permitted to include theistic beliefs in their accounts of reality; they must adhere to the tenets of what is, in many cases, itself a quasi-religion—a worldview and method which limits the utilization of specific material.

When we look more closely we find that faith is quite commensurate with science. Science, like faith, assumes that there are continuities in our experience. We do not live in a chaotic, haphazard, unpredictable world. The conclusions of Galileo’s falling body experiments would be the same if he conducted them a week earlier or a month later. This divine underwriting of experience was assumed by nearly all of the great scientists of the renaissance and enlightenment.

With Darwin comes an alteration, but only when Darwin is misread. Evolutionary science is fully commensurate with faith. Unguided evolution is not, but unguided evolution is not a part of evolutionary science. It is a metaphysical add-on, something introduced by contemporary atheists.

Real evolutionary science actually conflicts with naturalism. How? A non-teleological evolutionary science fails to account for (and support) human beliefs. Selection may confer an evolutionary advantage but it does not reinforce belief. It simply contributes to the persistence of our gene pool. We may evolve in such a way that we become more ‘fit’ but that does not also mean that we are more ‘right’, that our beliefs are undergirded, confirmed and extended. Science depends upon belief and the confirmability and falsifiability of our beliefs. Unguided evolution cannot account for systematic belief, but theism can.

In the course of examining these issues Plantinga looks at other aspects of contemporary apologetics, e.g. the ‘fine tuning’ argument and the possibility for explaining divine intervention without the disruption of continuity via the use of quantum mechanics. He is very direct and honest in his assessments of these various arguments, even when the chapters end on a limp note. ‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘I would like to be more dramatic and decisive and definitive but I have an obligation to tell what I believe to be the truth.’ His writing ‘voice’ is attractive, engaging and quite entertaining. He utilizes superb examples and interjects comic sidebars and asides.

One of the interesting aspects of the book is its graphic design. The text appears in two founts with the main thrust of the argument in larger type than the detailed arguments which support it. Those arguments can become quite technical. While the overall thrusts of the book will be accessible to all interested readers, the formal demonstrations are complex, with lengthy equations and the application of logic that goes beyond simple syllogisms.

Fundamentally this is an important book on an important subject by an important philosopher of religion. It will repay attention as it summarizes many contemporary issues and arguments.

Alvin Carl Plantinga (born 1932) is a Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, who formerly taught philosophy at Calvin College. He has written many books such as God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God,God, Freedom, and Evil,Warranted Christian Belief,Warrant: The Current Debate,Warrant and Proper Function,Knowledge and Christian Belief, etc. A collection of his writings is found in The Analytic Theist: An Alvin Plantinga Reader.

He wrote in the Preface of this 2011 book, “My overall claim in this book: there is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism… If my thesis is right, therefore… then there is a science/religion (or science/quasi-religion) conflict, all right, but it isn’t between science and theistic religion: it’s between science and naturalism.” (Pg. ix-x)

He adds, “What there is, instead, is conflict between theistic religion and a philosophical gloss or add-on to the scientific doctrine of evolution: the claim that evolution is UNDIRECTED, unguided, unorchestrated by God… I argue that it is improbable, given naturalism and evolution, that tour cognitive faculties are reliable. It is improbable that they provide us with a suitable preponderance of true belief over false. But then [for] a naturalist who accepts current evolutionary theory … ALL of her beliefs have been produced by her faculties---including, naturally enough, her belief in naturalism and evolution. That belief, therefore---the conjunction of naturalism and evolution---is one that she can’t rationally accept.” (Pg. xii, xiv)

He points out, “A… source of conflict has to do with the … claim that God has created human beings IN HIS IMAGE. This requires that god INTENDED to create creatures of a certain kind---rational creatures with a moral sense and the capacity to know and love him---and then acted in such a way as to accomplish this intention. This claim is clearly consistent with evolution… as conservative theologians have pointed out as far back as 1871. Thus, for example, Charles Hodge, the distinguished Princeton theologian… For example, God could have caused the right mutations to arise at the right time; he could have preserved populations from perils of various sorts, and so on; and in this way he could have seen to it that there come to be creatures of the kind he intends… What is NOT consistent with Christian belief, however, is the claim that this process of evolution is UNGUIDED… yet precisely this claim is made by a large number of contemporary scientists and philosophers who write on this topic.” (Pg. 11-12)

He goes on: “God would have achieved the results he wanted by causing the right mutations to arise at the right times, letting natural selection do the rest. Another possibility: Thomas Huxley… suggested that God could have arranged initial conditions in such a way that the results he wanted would be forthcoming…. [Richard] Dawkins’s claim, of course, is that there is no such intelligent agent guiding the process; ‘the evidence of evolution,’ he says, ‘reveals a universe without design.’ What makes him think this is true? How does he propose to argue for this claim? Not, naturally enough, by … even arguing that the processes involved in those transitions were not in fact overseen or guided by such an agent… Instead, he tries to show that is it POSSIBLE that unguided natural selection should have produced all these wonders; it COULD BE that they have all come to be just by virtue of unguided natural selection.” (Pg. 16-17)

He critiques Daniel Dennett’s book Darwin's Dangerous Idea: “I’m sorry to say this is about as bad as philosophy … gets; … Dennett’s way of carrying on is an insulting expression of disdain for those who do serious work in this area… (Or perhaps it shows where blind allegiance to ideology can lead.) The question is whether there is a source of rational religious belief going beyond perception, memory, a priori intuition, induction, et cetera. This question has been widely discussed and debated for the last forty years, ever since Dennett was in graduate school. He airily ignores this lively and long lasting research project; instead he just tells absurd stories… whatever the reason, Dennett’s ventures into the epistemology of religious belief do not inspire confidence. First of all… contemporary philosophers HAVE come up with perfectly sensible defenses of the idea that there can be sources of knowledge in addition to reason… Naturally these defenses might be mistaken; but to show that they are requires more than a silly story and an airy wave of the hand.” (Pg. 45-46)

He says, “[Philip] Kitcher ] apparently thinks that given evolution, Christians and other theists would have to suppose that the point of the entire process was the production of our species; but why think a thing like that? According to the Bible (Gen 1:20-26), when God created the living world, he declared it to be good; he did not add that it was good because it would lead to human beings. There is nothing in Christian thought to suggest that God created animals in order that human beings might come to be, or that the only value of nonhuman animal creation lies in their relation to humans.” (Pg. 57

He argues, “classical science doesn’t assert or include Laplacean determinism. The laws don’t tell us how things always go; they tell us how they go when the relevant system is causally closed, subject to no outside causal influence. In classical science, therefore, there is no objection to special divine action… to get such an objection, we must add that the universe is causally closed, which is not itself part of classical science. Accordingly classical science is perfectly consistent with special divine action, including miracles… we have only conflict between religion… and a particular metaphysics according to which the universe is causally closed.” (Pg. 90)

He suggests, “if Christian belief is true, the warrant for belief in special divine action doesn’t come from … current science or indeed any science at all; these beliefs have their own independent source of warrant. This means that in case of conflict between Christian belief and current science, it isn’t automatically current science that has more warrant or positive epistemic status; perhaps the warrant enjoyed by Christian belief is great than that enjoyed by the conflicting scientific belief.” (Pg. 120)

Commenting on David Sloan Wilson’s Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society, he says, “This sounds a bit as if he thinks of Calvinism as a project or activity that people undertake in order to achieve a common set of goals… In fact it is doubtful that Calvinism, or Roman Catholicism, or Christianity or for that matter Judaism or Islam are (wholly) intentional activities in that way at all… What is the purpose or aim of being a Calvinist? What is the purpose or aim of believing in God?... believing in God… typically doesn’t have any purpose at all. It isn’t that you believe in God… in order to achieve some end or other. You might as well ask me what my purpose or aim is in believing that I live in Michigan or that 7+5=12… they are not undertaken in order to achieve some end of other.” (Pg. 146)

After discussing the suggested “fine-tuning” of the universe, he notes, “it doesn’t seem at all improbable that God would want to create life, both human life and life of other sorts; and if he wanted to create human life in a universe at all like ours, he would have been obliged to fine-tune the constants. On the other hand, on the atheistic hypothesis according to which these constants have their values by chance… it is exceedingly improbable that they would have been fine-tuned for life… given theism, fine-tuning is not at all improbable; given atheism, it is; therefore theism is to be preferred to atheism.” (Pg. 199) He adds, “The right conclusion, I think is that the FTA [fine-tuning argument] offers some slight support for theism… but only mild support. Granted: this is not a very exciting conclusion… It does, however, have the virtue of being correct.” (Pg. 224)

He admits that “[Michael] Behe’s argument ] … is by no means airtight. Behe has not demonstrated that there are irreducibly complex systems such that it is impossible or even monumentally improbable that they have evolved in a Darwinian fashion---although he has certainly provided Darwinians with a highly significant challenge. We have some of the same problems as with the fine-tuning argument… we don’t have a good way to ascertain the probability of these irreducibly complex systems, given the Chance hypothesis, and we also don’t have a good way to evaluate the probability of these phenomena, given an intelligent designer.” (Pg. 231-232) Nevertheless, he states, “Behe’s design discourses are in fact rather successful: his account of the structures he describes certainly do produce the impression of design.” (Pg. 259) He concludes, “Behe’s design discourses do support theism, although it isn’t easy to say how much support they offer.” (Pg. 264)

He asserts, “bare LOGICAL POSSIBILITY is not enough: it is logically possible that the horse, say, sprang into being from the unicellular level… in one magnificent leap. What the Darwinian has to show… is an unguided evolutionary path which is not PROHIBITIVELY IMPROBABLE. Have the Darwinians actually accomplished this? Have they shown, for example, that it is not prohibitively improbable that the mammalian eye has developed in this way from a light sensitive spot? They have NOT shown this. The typical procedure… is to point to the various sorts of eyes displayed by living things, lining them up in a series of apparently increasing adaptive complexity, with the mammalian eye at the top of the series. But that of course doesn’t actually show that it is biologically possible… that later members of the series developed by Darwinian means from earlier members.” (Pg. 254-255)

He points out, “The scientific theory of evolution … is entirely compatible with the thought that God has guided and orchestrated the course of evolution… in such a way as to achieve the ends he intends… On the other hand… there is the claim that the course of evolution is not directed or guided or orchestrated by anyone; it displays no teleology; it is blind and unforeseeing… This claim, however, despite its strident proclamation, is no part of the scientific theory as such; it is instead a metaphysical or theological add-on… the scientific theory … deserves the respect properly accorded to a pillar of science… And the confusion of the two… deserves not respect, but disdain.” (Pg. 308-309)

He suggests, “Now it is not clear that naturalism, as it stands, is a religion… But naturalism does serve one of the main functions of a religion: it offers a master narrative, it answers deep and important human questions… Naturalism [says] … there is no God, there is no immortality, and the case for genuine freedom is at best dicey. Naturalism tells us what reality is ultimately like, where we fit into the universe, how we are related to other creatures, and how it happens that we came to be. Naturalism is therefore in competition with the great theistic religions… Suppose we call it a ‘quasi-religion.’ … the truth is that there is a science-religion conflict, all right, but it is between science and naturalism, not science and theistic religion.” (Pg. 310-311)

He argues, “The basic idea of my argument could be put (a bit crudely) as follows: … the probability of our cognitive faculties being reliable, given naturalism and evolution, is low… if naturalism and evolution were both true, our cognitive faculties would very likely not be reliable… So my belief that naturalism and evolution are true… shoots itself in the foot and is self-referentially incoherent; therefore I cannot rationally accept it.” (Pg. 314) But he presents the obvious counter-argument using zebras as an example: “If this structure isn’t properly correlated with the presence of predators, the zebra won’t be long for this world… And don’t those mechanisms have to be accurate, reliable, if the zebra is to survive?” He replies, “We can include these indicators under the rubric ‘cognitive faculties.’ The important point to see here, however, is that indication of this sort does not require BELIEF. In particular, it does not require belief having to do with the state of affairs indicated; indeed it is entirely compatible with belief INCONSISTENT with state of affairs.” (Pg. 328)

There are many critiques of evolutionary theory by Christians (of various sorts) out there; Plantinga’s is perhaps distinguished by his greater level of philosophical argumentation in his analysis of the arguments. His book will interest most studying evolutionary theory and its critiques.

Alvin Plantinga, himself a Christian, argues with a combination of humor, intellectual rigor, and respect that the epistemological effects of accepting Evolutionary theory and naturalism are dire indeed.

Plantinga lays out a unique and compelling view that science and belief in God are deeply compatible while science and the belief that the universe is entirely the result of natural processes are in deep conflict. Delightfully written with great intelligence at play. I especially like his discussion of atheist Richard Dawkins' arguments against belief, demolishing Dawkins' reasoning with the precision of a laser guided missile through the window, making Dawkins look pretty silly in the end. The only word of caution is that Plantinga is a philosophy professor and it shows. At times he engages in long exercises of symbolic logic that are hard for us civilians to follow and which seem a bit more, well, philosophical, than one might hope.

Does a person who has faith have any justification for their beliefs? Well, yes, though there may be things that would defeat their beliefs. Some try to define faith in such a way that inference to the best explanation doesn't exist, because that is more practical in making atheistic converts, but (wouldn't there be no defeaters since theists then, at least respectable theists don't define faith that way) that is just crafty salesmanship. Do you believe in other minds, the past, etc...prove it?

Plantinga goes into an explanation for why everything from Critical Bible Scholarship to evolution does not threaten faith and he lays out the why quite well.

He aims at modest goals versus complete dogmatics in explaining the existence of evil or other weighty subjects... Highly recommend...