MandM: Faith and Reason

Showing posts with label Faith and Reason. Show all posts

Friday, 28 August 2009

Darwinian Evolution, Chance and Design

In a previous post, God, Darwinian Evolution and The Teleological Argument, I argued that evolution does not refute the teleological argument. Also, even if it did, a lot more significant philosophical work over and above any appeal to natural selection would be needed to infer from this that theism is rationally untenable. There is, however, a second concern lurking in this area; it is that Darwinian evolution shows that evolution occurs by chance. Chance is incompatible with design; hence, Darwinian evolution shows that biological organisms were not created by God. Del Ratzsch summarises the argument succinctly,

[I]f it is genuine evolution, then the theory itself demands that the processes be governed by natural law and random chance … On the other hand, if its genuinely guided [by God], then the process must involve not chance but deliberately designed intervention.[1]

The argument has two premises,

[1] If evolution is guided [by God] then the processes must not involve random chance;

[2] Genuine evolutionary theory demands that the processes be governed by natural law and random chance.

I think this argument is mistaken. To be a valid argument, the word “chance” would need to be used the same way in both premises. The kind of chance that is incompatible with creation in [1] would have to be the kind of chance that is part of genuine evolutionary theory in [2].

Alvin Plantinga has argued that when one examines how the word “chance” is being used in this kind of argument it is evident that the word is not being used the same way in both premises and that when the ambiguity is cleared up the kind of chance that is involved in contemporary evolutionary theory is compatible with the idea that God created human beings.[2]

Let us turn to the first premise; [1] the claim that if evolution is guided [by God] then the processes must not involve random chance. This statement is true only if chance is defined a certain way, both that its existence is incompatible with the idea that God caused the event to happen (either immediately or indirectly via normal secondary causation) and that God did so intentionally and with purpose. To say then that an event occurs by random chance, on this definition, is to say the event was not caused, intended or planned by God.

The problem is that if chance is defined this way premise [2] is false; genuine evolutionary theory does not demand that mutations are not caused by chance, when chance is defined in this way. According to Eliot Sober, when the word chance is used in the context of evolutionary theory it means, “there is no physical mechanism (either inside organisms or outside of them) that detects which mutations would be beneficial and causes those mutations to occur.” Ernest Mayr makes a similar point, “When it is said that mutation or variation is random, the statement simply means that there is no correlation between the production of new genotypes and the adaptational needs of an organism in a given environment.”

Defined in the manner of Mayr and Sober, chance is entirely compatible with the idea that evolution is caused, intended or planned by God. The fact that there is, “no correlation between the production of new genotypes and the adaptational needs of an organism in a given environment” and “no physical mechanism (either inside organisms or outside of them) that detects which mutations would be beneficial and causes those mutations to occur,” does not mean that the events had no cause and it certainly does not mean that they were not intentionally caused by God.

To show that evolution occurred by chance, where chance is incompatible with divine design, contemporary biologists would need to show not just that no physical mechanism detects which mutations are beneficial and causes them and it would have to do much more than fail to produce a correlation between the “production of new genotypes and the adaptational needs of an organism in a given environment.” It would have to show that there was ultimately no supernatural cause to the process that intended evolution of human life to occur. Contemporary biology has not done this and it is certainly very difficult to see how it could do so without stepping outside the bounds of science, as currently practised, and venturing into controversial areas of philosophy and theology.

[1] Del Ratzch Battle for Beginnings: Why Neither Side is Winning the Creation Evolution Debate (Downers Grove IL: Intervarsity Press, 1996).
[2] Alvin Plantinga "Evolution and Design" in For Faith and Clarity: Philosophical Contributions to Christian Theology ed. James Beilby (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006) 201-217.

This post draws from parts of my paper "Does Evolution Make Belief in God Untenable?" given at the recent TANSA conference, Faithful Science? – Just How Well Do Science and Faith Get Along?

RELATED POSTS:
God, Darwinian Evolution and The Teleological Argument

Saturday, 8 August 2009

God, Darwinian Evolution and The Teleological Argument

Does Evolution make belief in God untenable? At the recent conference, Faithful Science? – Just How Well Do Science and Faith Get Along? I presented a paper examining this question.[1] This blog series has grown from that paper and the discussions I had with the theologians and scientists in attendance at the conference.

It is commonly argued that darwinian evolution renders belief in God rationally untenable because it refutes the teleological argument, commonly referred to as the argument from design. Darwin himself suggested this in his autobiography;

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection had been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.[2]

John Dupre adds, “Darwinism undermines the only remotely plausible reason for believing in God.”[3]

However, this purported refutation of theism is far too quick for several reasons. First, the claim that darwinian evolution refutes the teleological argument is false. There are several different versions of teleological arguments. What is arguably true is that it undercuts one particular version, that proposed by William Paley in Natural Theology. Although, in a recent study Del Ratzsch has suggested Paley’s argument has in fact been misunderstood and when these misunderstandings are stripped away it is not clear that discovery of the laws of natural selection do refute it.[4] Nevertheless, to rebut one particular teleological argument is not to undercut them all.

To justify the inference that darwinian evolution refutes teleological arguments one would need to show that darwinian evolution provides grounds for rejecting all such arguments. It does not. If one focuses on the contemporary literature, it is evident that there are currently several teleological arguments from design that are untouched by darwinism which are being seriously defended in the literature. These arguments may or may not be sound but whether they are or not has nothing to with darwinian evolution.

Two examples will suffice to illustrate this; the first is the teleological argument proposed and defended by Richard Swinburne in The Existence of God. Swinburne proposed an inductive teleological argument based on “The orderliness of the universe.” Swinburne elaborates what he means by this;

The temporal order of the universe is, to the man who bothers to give it a moment’s thought, an overwhelmingly striking fact about it. Regularities of succession are all pervasive. For simple laws govern almost all successions of events. In books of physics, chemistry, and biology we can learn how almost everything in the world behaves. The laws of their behavior can be set out by relatively simple formulae which men can understand and by means of which they can successfully predict the future. The orderliness of the universe to which I draw attention here is its conformity to formula, to simple, for mutable, scientific laws. The orderliness of the universe in this respect is a very striking fact about it. The universe might so naturally have been chaotic, but it is not—it is very orderly.

Swinburne argues that theism explains this order and that its existence increases theism’s probability. Regardless of the merits of Swinburne’s argument, it is evident that darwinian evolution does not refute it. This is because darwinism, far from explaining away such laws, actually assumes their existence;

Evolution can only have taken place, given certain special natural laws. These are first, the chemical laws stating how under certain circumstances inorganic molecules combine to make organic ones, and organic ones combine to make organisms. And secondly, there are the biological laws of evolution stating how organisms have very many offspring, some of which vary in one or more characteristics from their parents, and how some of these characteristics are passed on to most offspring, from which it follows that, given shortage of food and other environmental needs, there will be competition for survival, in which the fittest will survive.

The second example is the teleological argument defended more recently by Robin Collins. Robin Collins appeals to the existence of what has been dubbed cosmic fine-tuning, the contention that, “Almost everything about the basic structure of the universe--for example, the fundamental laws and parameters of physics and the initial distribution of matter and energy--is balanced on a razor’s edge for life to occur.”[5] Frances Collins explains that for life to evolve there are around 15 constants necessary, each must have precise values and if they were off by a million or one in a million, life could not evolve.[6] Robin Collins argues that this fine-tuning is significantly more probable if theism is true than if atheism is true and hence confirms theism over atheism.

I do not here wish to go defend (or criticise) this argument in any depth, my point is simply that darwinian evolution does not refute it. This is because the cosmic fine-tuning argument appeals to the conditions needed for life to evolve. The fine-tuning both Collins’ refer to are preconditions for the evolution of life to occur. As they are preconditions, evolution can hardly provide an explanation for this at all; even if it could, it is not clear that this would show that the probability of such fine-tuning occurring if atheism were true is as probable as it occurring on the background hypothesis of theism’s truth.

Hence, darwinian evolution does not undercut teleological arguments. It is worth noting that even it did then the conclusion that Dupre and Darwin draw, that theism is rationally unwarranted, does not follow. Even if all versions of teleological arguments were refuted by Darwin, it does not follow that all the other arguments for God’s existence are undercut; even if they were, it could be the case that belief in God is justified independently of any argument. Let me briefly elaborate on both these ideas.

The first, Dupre’s suggestion that the argument from design is the only plausible ground for believing in God, is simply false. In Two Dozen or So Theistic Arguments Alvin Plantinga sketched 26 arguments for God’s existence currently being defended in the literature. Earlier this year, Blackwell published the Blackwell Encyclopaedia to Natural Theology which contains current versions of 11 arguments used to defend the existence of God in the literature today. While the cogency of these arguments remains, like most philosophical claims, a subject of substantive debate it is undisputed that they exist and have been give serious and sophisticated advocacy from competent philosophers. To rebut them then requires serious philosophical argument not assertion.

The suggestion then that a refutation of all teleological arguments dismantles the case for theism is false. A true refutation of the plausible grounds for theism would involve a detailed rebuttal of all of the arguments for theism, not just commentary on one type.

Even if it were the case that teleological arguments were the only arguments for the existence of God, it does not follow that their failure would undercut the rational acceptability of theism. Such an assertion assumes that theism is rationally justified only if there is a good argument for it. It is widely acknowledged in epistemology that not all beliefs need to be demonstrated by argument to be rational. To claim they do creates a regress problem;

If everything needs to be proven then the premises of every proof would need to be proven. But if you need a proof for every proof, you need a proof for your proof, and a proof for your proof of a proof and so on-forever. Thus it makes no sense to demand that everything be proven because an infinite regress of proofs is impossible.[7]

To avoid this problem an influential movement in epistemology known as foundationalism maintains that at the base or foundation of one’s noetic structure are beliefs that one is justified in believing independently of any argument. These are called properly basic beliefs. Since the late 1970’s an extremely important movement within Philosophy of Religion, known as the reformed epistemology movement, has offered detailed and rigorous defences of the contention that for theists, belief in God can be a properly-basic belief. The most important defender of this position is Alvin Plantinga, though many others such as William Alston and Nicholas Wolterstorff have defended similar views. Plantinga notes the implication of this movement, “The demise of the teleological argument, if indeed evolution has compromised it, is little more of a threat to rational belief in God than the demise of the argument from analogy for other minds is to rational belief in other minds.”[8]

It seems then that the claim that evolution undercuts teleological arguments is a non starter. Even if it were true, this conclusion only has significance if all other arguments for God’s existence are also refuted and an argument can be provided that shows that belief in God is not properly-basic. This would require significant philosophical work, over and above, any appeal to natural selection. It is evident then that by itself, darwinian evolution would prove very little except, at best, that one 19th century argument by Paley might be unsuccessful.

[1] I am grateful to Alvin Plantinga who sent me a copy of his unpublished paper, “Science and Religion: Where Does the Conflict Really Lie?” which was extremely helpful in formulating my thoughts.
[2] Charles Darwin Life and Letters of Charles Darwin ed Francis Darwin (NY: D. Appleton, 1887) Vol. 1 279.
[3] John Dupre Darwin’s Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) 56.
[4] Del Ratzsch Teleological Arguments for God's Existence Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
[5] Robin Collins “God, Design, and Fine-Tuning” originally published in God Matters: Readings in the Philosophy of Religion eds Raymond Martin and Christopher Bernard (New York: Longman Press, 2002).
[6] Frances Collins The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for the Existence of God (Free Press, 2006) 75.
[7] Roy Clouser Knowing With the Heart (IVP, Downers Grove, 1999) 69.
[8] Alvin Plantinga “Science and Religion: Where Does the Conflict Really Lie?” (unpublished).

RELATED POSTS:
Darwinian Evolution, Chance and Design

Saturday, 4 July 2009

The Theology of the Declaration of Independence

As I write this it is probably just beginning to be the 4th of July in the United States now, though its been 4th July for some time here in New Zealand.

The 4th of July is, of course, Independence Day. Typically in New Zealand, those members of the secular blogosphere, who consider themselves to be classical liberals, have an annual rave on the 4th of July about the Declaration of Independence, praising the philosophy expounded in this document.

Not PC, for example, states that it is “With the exception of just a few words, the words could hardly be bettered today;” the declaration is, “A wonderful, wonderful anthem to freedom that rings down through the years. If only the real meaning of those words could be heard and understood.” A few years ago David Farrar made similar claims, he stated he would often “marvel at those marvellous words, written in the heat of oppression…Marvellous, absolutely marvellous.” I agree. I would simply point out to my secular, liberal, country-men what the words in this document actually say, and some of the philosophical ideas they expound.

First, the declaration refers to God; it does so four times. Maverick Philosopher has an excellent analysis of the theological content;

In the initial paragraph, we find the phrase “...Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God....” This phrase rules out pantheism: God is distinct from Nature. In the second paragraph, there is the phrase, “...endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights....” Putting these two references together, we may infer that the God being referred to is not merely a deistic initiator of the temporally first segment of the physical universe, but a being involved in the creation of the human race. For if God endowed human beings with rights, this endowment had to occur at the time of the creation of human beings, which of course occurred later than the beginning of the physical universe. In traditional jargon, God is a creator continuans rather than a mere creator originans. He is not a mere cosmic starter-upper, but a being who is continuously involved in maintaining the universe in existence.
…
The other two references are in the final paragraph. There we find the phrase, “...Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions....” near the beginning of the paragraph, and near the end, “...a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence....” Now if God is the Supreme Judge, then he is more than a mere metaphysical cause responsible for the universe’s beginning to exist; he is also the supreme moral arbiter. And since he endows human beings with rights, as opposed to being merely a judge of rights antecedently possessed, then it seems we may infer that God is the source of moral distinctions (as opposed to a mere judge of them).

The reference to divine providence is further evidence that the conception of God in the Declaration is non-deistic. For if God provides and protects, then God has an ongoing involvement with the world and its inhabitants such as would be ruled out by a deistic view. It should also be obvious that talk of providence (from the Latin, pro-videre) implies divine foreknowledge which implies intelligence and perhaps omniscience on the part of the deity. The God of the Declaration is not a blind metaphysical cause posited to explain why the universe began to exist, but a being with such attributes as moral goodness and intelligence…. So if by 'deism' is meant the doctrine that God is a mere metaphysical cause of the universe's beginning to exist who is thereafter uninvolved in its continuing to exist, then the God of the Declaration is non-deistic.

Second, the declaration claims that belief in a creator is self-evident; that is, it is a properly basic belief, which is rationally acceptable to hold in the absence of any proof.

Third, the declaration makes political pronouncements about public policy on the basis of these theological claims and expects these pronouncements to be taken seriously.

Fourth, the declaration says that various rights, such as the right to life and liberty, are unalienable. That is, a person cannot alienate one’s life or freedom as they can legally alienate a piece of property. You can’t take my property if I do not consent to you having it but if I do consent, you can take it; property is alienable, life and liberty are not. The argument of the declaration reflects John Locke’s argument in the Second Treatise of Civil Government;

TO understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.[1]

…

But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence: though man in that state have an uncontroulable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another's pleasure[2]

...

This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely joined with a man's preservation, that he cannot part with it, but by what forfeits his preservation and life together: for a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot, by compact, or his own consent, enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another, to take away his life, when he pleases. No body can give more power than he has himself; and he that cannot take away his own life, cannot give another power over it.[3]

The point here is that because your right to life and liberty are from God, no one can legitimately enslave or kill you, even if you consent to it. This was not a mere incidental addendum idea, it was central to Lockean political philosophy, which maintained (as the declaration does) that the government derives its powers from the consent of the governed. If a person can consent to be killed or enslaved then they can consent to the government enslaving them also to having the arbitrary power to kill them and hence tyranny can be legitimate. The reason tyranny is illegitimate is because, “No body can give more power than he has himself; and he that cannot take away his own life, cannot give another power over it.”

The declaration then makes a metaphysical claim: God exists. It makes an epistemological claim about faith and reason: that belief in God is rational independent of proof. It makes an implicit claim of political philosophy: religion is not a private thing that should not influence public life but rather, theological claims should influence public life. Finally it makes a moral claim; that consenting adults do not have a right to do whatever they like with their own bodies, rather there are “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” that bind all human beings, that they are compelled to follow even if all parties consent otherwise. Governments are legitimate to the extent in which they respect these laws.

I agree with PC, it is hard to improve on this philosophy; I have defended it in several places on this blog.

Ironically, however, the militant secular liberals in NZ who parrot the declaration seem committed to attacking these ideas and rejecting them on every point. They argue that belief in God is irrational because it cannot be empirically proven, they claim that the public square should be secular, that religion should be private and not influence public policy and they argue that liberty means consenting adults can do whatever they like with their own bodies and lives. Far from being unalienable, a person’s life and freedom is his property to alienate as that person sees fit.

It is also hard to disagree with PC’s sentiments that the declaration is “A wonderful, wonderful anthem to freedom that rings down through the years. If only the real meaning of those words could be heard and understood.” Indeed, if only.

[1] John Locke Second Treatise of Civil Government Section II 4.
[2] Ibid II6.
[3] Ibid IV 23.

Friday, 17 April 2009

Guest Post: The Virtue of Christian Dogma

The following is authored by Dominic Bnonn Tennant, of the blog Dominic Bnonn Tennant - Developing the Mind of Christ. Please support Bnonn by clicking through to his site. Bnonn writes:

Damian over at 'And Slaters Go Plop' has recently written on Dogma, arguing against its intellectual legitimacy, and asking how we can avoid it. He says,

By ‘dogmatic’ I am describing an absolutist kind of belief that, if I could summarise in my own words, boils down to the fact that you would really rather hold to what you believe than accept an alternative even if the alternative is true. Dogma is the belief you refuse to interrogate.

Dogma in Christianity
"I consider my dogmatism an intellectual virtue"I'd like to note, for the record, that this is not how dogmatism is typically perceived in Christianity. Dogma is a mainstay of biblical Christianity, and where it is rejected the religion crumbles. Dogma is there whenever a doctrine is taken as authoritative, or presupposed as true—such as when we treat the Bible as the word of God. So, for the sake of avoiding confusion, let it be noted that Christians do not define dogma in such a negative way. That is not the primary meaning of the word, as most dictionaries reflect. William Shedd's Dogmatic Theology, for instance, is a seminal and highly positive dissertation on the theoretical truths of faith concerning God and his works.

Why is dogmatism bad anyway?
As regards this colloquial, negative view of dogmatism, however, some questions need to be asked. Damian seems to be taking absolutism in one's beliefs as inherently undesirable, assuming we do want truth. But this doesn't seem a very sustainable attitude if he wishes to be consistent and avoid special pleading.

A dogma, he says, is the belief you refuse to interrogate. But what of beliefs which are not readily interrogatable? Presumably, for instance, we all believe that our sense perception correlates accurately to a real, external world. Is that belief undesirable or unlikely merely because it cannot be readily interrogated? In fact, since we resist attempts to interrogate that belief, and don't take them seriously, are we acting in a poor or intellectually shoddy manner? It certainly doesn't seem so. Thus, there look to be at least some beliefs we may hold quite rightly and properly as being basically unquestionable, without shirking our philosophical responsibilities. Why is it, then, that Christians should not take the divine inspiration of Scripture as such a belief? Damian needs to make a better case as regards the negative nature of dogmatism, spell out just when it does and does not apply, and why.

"should he jump up in dismay and hire a private detective to find me and stake out my home to verify that, indeed, I am a real person who makes real blog posts?"Similarly, what of beliefs which are held on good grounds? Damian presumably thinks he has good grounds for believing that I am a real person and not, say, an advanced computer program writing posts in a convincingly human way. Should he be condemned for resisting the compulsion to interrogate his belief in my existence as a real person on every possible occasion? Were someone to say to him: Your belief in that chap Bnonn Tennant is dogmatic because you refuse to interrogate it! should he jump up in dismay and hire a private detective to find me and stake out my home to verify that, indeed, I am a real person who makes real blog posts? In fact, is he not being entirely rational to refuse to interrogate this belief, in the absence of any good evidence that it is false? If so, why should a Christian be criticized for refusing to interrogate his belief in God, when he has no good reasons to think that it's false?

Good reasons
And what, indeed, would constitute a good reason for thinking that God doesn't exist? No doubt Damian believes there are many. But on the other hand, a delusional out-patient from the halfway house down the road might think that there are good reasons for believing I don't exist and am in fact a complicated artificial intelligence. He could probably find all sorts of evidences which, if looked at the right way and with the right mindset, seem quite compelling; and he might produce all sorts of arguments showing that Damian really has the burden of proof. Should Damian be persuaded—should he even look at these evidences or accept this burden of proof—if he already knows that the fellow is a schizophrenic who reverts to believing that Christian bloggers are really internet-capable AIs whenever he's off his meds? If not, why should a Christian act differently when he knows from Scripture that atheists are self-deceiving fools who deny the existence of God because of their sin?

The skeptic's false humility
The last point I'd like to make is as regards Damian's assertion that if we refuse to honestly put our beliefs to the test then we ought to show a little more humility when telling others what we 'know' to be true. As I've already suggested above, this is a perfectly silly attitude to knowledge—its implication being that a belief which is not tested cannot constitute knowledge in any proper sense.

Even ignoring his obvious imposition of a scientific method of knowledge-acquisition onto religious or philosophical matters, where it doesn't belong, is this reasonable? Does Damian need to verify my existence, for example, before he can say that he knows I'm not an artificial intelligence? Is this the way he really operates in terms of making knowledge claims? Or take another example: say he sees an acquaintance, Roger, at the supermarket. He doesn't speak to Roger for whatever reason, and no one else at the supermarket knows him, so Damian is the only one to recognize him. Say Roger is arrested the next day on some charge. Damian thinks Roger can't be guilty, because he saw him at the supermarket at the time the crime was committed. Is Damian really going to say that he does not know Roger was there, since he did not (and no longer can) test that belief? Is it reasonable for me to get up before the jury when he is testifying in Roger's defense, and say that he ought to show a little more humility when telling them that he 'knows' Roger is innocent? Or imagine the situation is reversed, and Damian 'knows' Roger is guilty on a similar basis. Is this sort of stringent view of things really sensible? How would it cash out in the real world?

Maybe Damian means to confine this constraint on knowledge to religious claims. This seems arbitrary, but it doesn't get him anything in any case, since Christian beliefs enjoy far better attestation than the trivial amount of support in the example above. In fact, Christians have excellent grounds for saying that they know certain things—so why should they shuffle and slink and pretend false humility, as if they really aren't certain when they are? A Christian grounds his beliefs in God's word—does he then need to interrogate these beliefs, or find ways to test them, in order for them to constitute knowledge? Of course not.

The plain fact that they are God's own testimony is all the justification required. Thus, rather than being commendable, this "humility" of which Damian speaks is despicable. Imagine a Christian who knows the gospel witnessing to someone as follows:

I don't presume to say I know this, but, well, I believe you're under God's wrath and liable to judgment if you don't repent and trust in the work of Jesus. And...well, I don't know that Jesus really existed...but I'm sure you should believe anyway!

This is certainly an ignoble way of witnessing. If we, in fact, have good reasons for believing the gospel—if we indeed know the gospel to be true—and then do not urgently entreat others to heed it, attempting to persuade them of its truth as well, we aren't being "humble". We are being cads. It doesn't matter if we have tested our knowledge, or if we can defend it against attack. Speaking for myself, I can—but some Christians can't for whatever reason. That doesn't invalidate what they know. Christians don't accept Damian's views on epistemology, and neither should they.

So let's not throw around the "dogmatism" charge too hastily. I am proud to be a dogmatic Christian, and I consider my dogmatism an intellectual virtue. Saying that I am dogmatic is essentially the same as saying that I am a presuppositionalist in my Christian philosophy—a position which I've defended on many occasions. If Damian or other atheists would like to dogmatically oppose that, let them start by showing that it even makes sense to do so.

If you are interested in guest posting on MandM see our guest posting policy.

Tuesday, 7 April 2009

Belief without Proof: Is Belief in God Rational if there is no Evidence? Part III

In Part I of this series, I criticised the rationalist objection to belief in God. In Part II I set out an alternative view of faith and reason defended by Alvin Plantinga. In this final post, I want to address two common objections to the view of faith and reason I have been sketching.

Argument is irrelevant
One argument Martin suggests is more of a statement. He claims that by classing certain theological beliefs as basic one puts those beliefs beyond rational appraisal. Once a belief is declared basic, one cannot rationally evaluate it.

This objection is incorrect. As noted above, a belief is properly basic only if no defeaters are forthcoming for it. Consequently, the belief is not immune to argument. Sceptics could offer rebutting defeaters of theological beliefs, give arguments to the claim that theism is false or they could argue that the concept of God is incoherent or inconsistent. Further, sceptics could offer undercutting defeaters that the grounds that produce theological beliefs are questionable. The assessment of such objections would be vital to determining the rationality of belief in God.

There are further ways sceptics and believers can engage in dialogue. One could point out inconsistencies or incoherence in a person’s belief set, even if one does not accept the beliefs in question. One can grant a proposition held by one’s opponents for the sake of argument and then point out its implications, show that these implications or the beliefs themselves entail things that the person themself rejects or considers absurd. Further, one can show that the views one person holds follow from beliefs his opponent holds and so his opponent has good reasons for accepting these beliefs and so on.

Finally, as I noted above properly basic beliefs are foundational beliefs. A foundation needs to be able to support the structure which is built upon it. One important question, then, is to ask what happens if you take a belief as basic, can one reason from it to find plausible, coherent and defensible answers to the various existential and philosophical questions that we use basic beliefs to assist us in answering. C S Lewis put the point well when he stated, “I believe the sun has risen, not because I can see the sun, but because with it I can see everything else.”[1]

The Great Pumpkin
Perhaps the most common objection to Christians taking belief in God as properly basic belief is what is called “the Great Pumpkin objection.” Plantinga himself cites this argument,

If belief in God is properly basic, why cannot just any belief be properly basic? Could we not say the same for any bizarre aberration we think of? What about voodoo or astrology? What about the belief that the Great Pumpkin returns every Halloween? Could I properly take that as basic? Suppose I believe that if I flap my arms with sufficient vigour, I can take off and fly around the room; could I defend myself against the charge of irrationality by claiming this belief is basic? If we say belief in God is properly basic, will we not be committed to holding that just anything, or nearly anything, can be properly taken as basic, thus throwing wide the gates to irrationalism and superstition?[2][Emphasis added]

A particularly succinct articulation of this objection is made by Keith Parsons, who offers the following reductio ad absurdum of Plantinga’s position,[3]

(1) “God exists” is a properly basic belief for Christians. (assumption for reductio)
(2) If “God exists” is a properly basic belief for Christians, then innumerable patently irrational beliefs are properly basic for the groups that endorse them.
(3) Innumerable patently irrational beliefs are properly basic for the groups that endorse them. (from 1 and 2 by modus ponens)
(4) But this is absurd.
(5) Therefore: The assumption “God exists’ is a properly basic belief for Christians” must be rejected.

Parsons notes, correctly, that this argument hinges on (2) and (4). I agree; however, unlike Parsons, I think these premises are not as well established as he thinks.

Turning to (2), Parsons suggests that for any argument used by a Christian to justify the claim that belief in God is properly basic there exists an analogous argument for patently irrational beliefs. This, however, is mistaken. I noted above that basic beliefs, even ones that entail the existence of God, are properly basic in certain circumstances. First, they were typically based on grounds, either perceptual or doxastic. Second, they were justified only if there exists no defeaters for them.

Patently irrational beliefs do not meet these criteria. The reason Parsons’ appeals to patently irrational beliefs is because anyone can see on reflection that they are absurd. But if one can see that a belief is absurd then it is unlikely that it will be a belief that seems true to that person. Moreover, if it is obviously absurd then there exists a defeater for it. One will see that it entails an obviously absurd conclusion; itself.

If we turn to premise (4) another problem arises. Parsons takes it as absurd that a “patently irrational belief” can be rational. This is true if the word “rational” is used in the same sense both times it occurs in this statement. It is not true if the word “rational” is used in different senses. It is not absurd for a belief to be irrational in one sense and yet rational in another sense.

We need to ask, then, what sense of rational Parsons has in mind. Now in order for his argument to follow from (1), the word “rational” must be used in an internalist sense. This is because that is how the term is used by Plantinga when he argues that, in specific circumstances, belief in God can be properly basic.

The problem is that in this sense it is not clear that the claim that the kind of beliefs Parsons refers to are always irrational. Take an example Parsons himself cites, Voodoo. Suppose that a person suffers from some mental disorder which causes her to hallucinate and have a vivid experience, such that, it seems obvious to her that Voodoo is true. Moreover, suppose further, that she has no reason to doubt this experience. She is not aware it is a hallucination and is not aware of an argument against the truth of what she perceives. It seems clear that such a person is rational in the internalist sense, she is not acting irresponsibly given the information available to her. Of course her belief is irrational in an externalist sense, it is caused by brain disorder; and hence, is based on an unreliable process. But this externalist sense is not the sense Plantinga uses when he argues that belief in God is rational in the absence of evidence.

Perhaps Parsons means to use rational in the externalist sense and his position is that it is absurd to claim that Voodoo could ever be rational in this sense; only a person suffering from a hallucination or mental impairment could actually have experiences such that Voodoo was obvious and fail to see the force of argument. If this is what Parsons means then (4) may well be true, the problem now is that it is false to suggest that an analogue of Plantinga’s argument shows that Voodoo is rational. Plantinga argued that a basic belief in God is externally rational only if it is based on reliable ground and a hallucination is not a reliable ground.

Conclusion
I have argued that the rationalist position, that belief in God is irrational in the absence of proof, is incoherent. I have sketched a way of looking at faith and reason under which one is rational in believing in God independently of proof and have defended it against two objections.

Let me finish by citing from Alvin Plantinga's famous advice to Christian philosophers,

We come to philosophy with a range of opinions about the world and humankind and the place of the latter in the former; and in philosophy we think about these matters, systematically articulate our views, put together and relate our views on diverse topics, and deepen our views by finding unexpected interconnections and by discovering and answering unanticipated questions. Of course we may come to change our minds by virtue of philosophical endeavor; we may discover incompatibilities or other infelicities. But we come to philosophy with prephilosophical opinions; we can do no other. And the point is: the Christian has as much right to his prephilosophical opinions, as others have to theirs. He needn't try first to 'prove' them from propositions accepted by, say, the bulk of the non-Christian philosophical community; and if they are widely rejected as naive, or pre-scientific, or primitive, or unworthy of "man come of age," that is nothing whatever against them. Of course if there were genuine and substantial arguments against them from premises that have some legitimate claim on the Christian philosopher, then he would have a problem; he would have to make some kind of change somewhere. But in the absence of such arguments-and the absence of such arguments is evident-the Christian philosophical community, quite properly starts, in philosophy, from what it believes.[4]

[1] C S Lewis “Is Theology Poetry?” The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Harper Collins, 1980) 140.
[2] Plantinga “Reason and Belief in God” 74.
[3] Keith Parsons “Some Contemporary Theistic Arguments” The Cambridge Companion to Atheism ed Michael Martin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 108.
[4] Alvin Plantinga “Advice to Christian Philosophers” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers vol. 1:3, 253-271 available online http://www.faithandphilosophy.com/article_advice.php

RELATED POSTS:
Belief without Proof: Is Belief in God Rational if there is no Evidence? Part I
Belief without Proof: Is Belief in God Rational if there is no Evidence? Part II

Monday, 6 April 2009

Belief without Proof: Is Belief in God Rational if there is no Evidence? Part II

In my previous post I criticised the rationalist objection to belief in God. In this post I want to sketch an alternative view of faith and reason defended by Alvin Plantinga. In my next post I will address two common objections to this conception.

Belief in God as Properly Basic
In several of his works Alvin Plantinga has suggested that the best way for Christians to proceed is to take belief in God as properly basic. Let me explain what this statement means. In Part I, I quoted Roy Clouser to the effect that if everything needs to be proven we get an infinite regress of proofs and can never know or rationally believe anything. One obvious way of avoiding this problem is to get to a point where proof is no longer needed, to have a set of beliefs which are rationally believed independent of proof. Plantinga refers to these beliefs as properly basic beliefs. It is important to elucidate carefully how such beliefs function.

First and very importantly, properly basic beliefs are not arbitrary or groundless. While one does not believe a basic belief based on an inference or proof, basic beliefs are often based on some form of experience. Plantinga discerns two types of experience; sensory evidence, such things as appearing to see, hear or feel a given object and doxastic evidence, which he describes as “the belief feels right, acceptable, natural,”[1] “the belief seems true, appropriate, the right thing to believe.”[2]

An example of sensory evidence would be the grounds for perceptual beliefs; I have an experience of a certain shape, colour and sound and so I form the belief that a car has driven past. I do not infer the belief from the experience by way of argument yet the belief is nevertheless grounded upon this experience.

An example of doxastic evidence is belief in basic axioms of logic; when one entertains the conditional of modus ponens it just seems to be correct, modus ponens feels obviously true in a way that an overtly-fallacious inference does not. Similarly, with memory beliefs; for me the claim that I used to live in Hamilton seems true. I have a strong experiential pull towards it. It feels right in a way that the belief that I used to live in Iran does not. I seem to remember one being the case and not the other.

The second thing to note is that while properly basic beliefs are rational in the absence of proof for their truth, it does not follow that they remain rational when one is aware of good arguments against them.

If I see John screwing his face up in a particular way and grasping his leg, I might form the belief that John is in pain. However, if later John tells me that he was not in pain but rather rehearsing his death scene in the coming dramatic play he is acting in. I take his word for it and believe he was not in pain.

The initial belief was properly-basic; however, because of what I later discovered its rational status was defeated. Sometimes we form other beliefs that lead us to question or deny our basic beliefs. Plantinga refers to these types of beliefs as defeaters.[3]

There are two types of defeaters, undercutting defeaters and rebutting defeaters. The former are beliefs that cause you to question the grounds on which the original belief was held. The latter are beliefs that are inconsistent with the original belief so that accepting the defeater entails rejection of the original belief.[4]

Finally, properly basic beliefs are foundational beliefs. Beliefs that we believe on the basis of proof are inferred from other beliefs which themselves must be rational if the proof is to stand. These further beliefs will need proofs and so on. Eventually the demand for proof will terminate in a set of beliefs that do not need proof. This is what I have referred to as a properly basic belief. What needs to be noted is that these beliefs will be the starting points that one reasons from to prove and assess everything else. Everything else one accepts or believes will be justified on the basis of whether or not it is supported by basic beliefs.

In a short treatment like this a full examination of Plantinga’s work is impossible. Instead I will simply spell out briefly a summary of his position. Plantinga notes that when rationalists argue that belief in God is irrational independent of proof they typically use the word ‘rational’ in what is called an internalist sense.

[W]hether for all I can tell from the inside, so to speak, my beliefs meet the appropriate internal standards ... whether I have properly taken account of other things I know, whether I have paid proper attention to objections and to what others say. [5]

The basic idea here is that of “epistemic responsibility,”[6] “believing responsibly given ones evidence … being formed responsibly in light of the available evidence.”[7] He notes that in this sense of rationality a belief can be totally deluded, even false but still formed responsibly given the evidence. “My memory unbeknown to me starts malfunctioning; I remember things that never happened. If I see no reason to think my memory is malfunctioning, and no reason to think those things didn’t happen.”[8]

Plantinga suggests that in this sense of the word ‘rational’ belief in God can be justified in the absence of proof. He notes that “for many people the doxastic evidence for belief in God is very strong.”[9] In Reason and Belief in God he gives a series of examples,

Upon reading the Bible, one may be impressed with a deep sense that God is speaking to him. Upon doing what I know is cheap, or wrong, or wicked, I may feel guilty in God’s sight and form the belief God disapproves of what I have done. Upon confession and repentance I may feel forgiven, forming the belief God forgives me for what I have done. A person in grave danger may turn to God asking him for help; and then of course he or she has the belief that God is indeed able to hear and to help if he sees fit.[10]

Plantinga suggests that if a Christian has some doxastic or perceptual experience that makes it seem to them that God exists then provided that they have no defeaters for this belief and they have done things such as “carefully considered the objections”[11] they have encountered and “considered how it [theism] fits with other beliefs they hold”[12] then they are rational in continuing to believe. If one finds oneself in certain situations with a strong sense that God exists and on reflection finds no defeaters for this claim then one is internally rational in believing God exists. One may be deluded but one is not acting irresponsibly in believing what seems to oneself to be true and for which, one has no reason for doubting.

This internalist sense is contrasted with a more externalist sense, a conception of rationality “that is more attuned to truth or falsehood or probably of truth or falsehood,”[13] An externalist sense of rationality implies “not just that, that a justified belief has been formed in relation appropriately in response to doxastic evidence but, also that the doxastic evidence is not seriously misleading.”[14] The basic idea is that the belief “is produced by a cognitive faculty or process that is reliable, one that produces a preponderance of true over false beliefs.”[15]

With regards to external rationality, Plantinga’s position is more nuanced. Plantinga argues that if Christian beliefs are in fact true then one is externally rational in believing in God in the absence of proof. This is because if Christian beliefs are true then the kinds of process mentioned above are reliable processes. On the other hand if God does not exist then it is not reliable. Hence any argument that Theism belief is externally irrational will have presupposed from the outset that it’s false.

Of course the Christian cannot demonstrate that these processes are reliable in a non-circular fashion. This, however, is not as significant as one might think because one cannot provide a non-circular argument for the claim that reason or our perceptual faculties, are reliable either; nor can I provide a non-circular argument to the conclusion that my memory is reliable. To do so I would need good reasons for thinking my memory is reliable. Clearly, such reasons are not forthcoming as any argument I use to try to demonstrate my memory would be circular. I could attempt to show that most of the times I used my memory in the past it was correct but then I would need to remember how I had used my memory in the past and remember whether or not it was accurate. However, as I am not permitted to utilise memory in this way until I have reason for trusting it, any such argument could not get off the ground.

Nor would any other argument be forthcoming. Reasoning is a temporal process; one begins with the first premise and follows an inference through to a conclusion. One does not hold every step of an argument in one’s mind at the same time. Rather one relies on one’s memory to remember the first steps while the second is assessed and then remembers this step while the third is examined and so on. Hence, without first assuming the reliability of memory, one cannot reason at all.

With basic beliefs we simply trust the grounds upon which they are based are reliable and proceed on the assumption that they are and that what they deliver us is true. We cannot prove any of this by a non-circular argument; nevertheless we continue to trust them in the absence of evidence that the beliefs they deliver are false or that they are unreliable.[16] There is no reason why Christians should treat their basic beliefs any differently.

In my next post I will address two common objections to Plantinga's position.

[1] Alvin Plantinga Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000) 110-111.
[2] Alvin Plantinga “Reply to Tooley’s Opening Statement” Knowledge of God ed. Alvin Plantinga and Michael Tooley (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008) 175.
[3] For further elaboration of Plantinga’s understanding of defeaters see Alvin Plantinga “Naturalism Defeated” (1994) http://philofreligion.homestead.com/files/alspaper.htm.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Alvin Plantinga “On Being Evidentially Challenged” in The Evidential Argument from Evil ed. D Howard-Snyder (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996) 259.
[6] Plantinga “Reply to Tooley’s Opening Statement” 174.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid, 175.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Alvin Plantinga “Reason and Belief in God,” in Faith and Rationality ed. Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff (Notre Dame, ID: Notre Dame University Press, 1983) 80.
[11] Alvin Plantinga Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000) 225.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Plantinga “Reply to Tooley’s Opening Statement” 176.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] For a good discussion of this point see William Alston Perceiving God: An Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991) Ch 3-5.

RELATED POSTS:
Belief without Proof: Is Belief in God Rational if there is no Evidence? Part I
Belief without Proof: Is Belief in God Rational if there is no Evidence? Part III

Saturday, 4 April 2009

Belief without Proof: Is Belief in God Rational if there is no Evidence? Part I

This series is effectively the talk I gave to Thinking Matters Auckland on Belief without Proof; It will be split into three posts.

First, I will examine a common objection to belief in God, the objection that it is irrational to believe in God without proof; I will unpack this objection and argue that it fails. Second, I will propose an alternative view of faith and reason, that defended by Alvin Plantinga. Third, I will address two common objections to this view of faith and reason.

The Rationalist Objection
Since the 17th century, one of the most common objections to the Christian faith is the claim that Christianity is irrational because its central tenets cannot be proven to be true.[1] John Mackie raises this argument,

If it is agreed that the central assertions of theism are literally meaningful, it must also be admitted that they are not directly verified or directly verifiable. It follows that any rational consideration of whether they are true or not will involve arguments . . . it [whether or not God exists] must be examined either by deductive or inductive reasoning or, if that yields no decision, by arguments to the best explanation; for in such a context nothing else can have any coherent bearing on the issue.[2]

Mackie claims that the “rationality consideration” of theism (by which he means belief in God) depends on the arguments that can be mustered in support of theism; if belief in God cannot be proven then it is irrational.

Mackie’s method here is not unusual. In the 19th century Clifford wrote a famous article about the rationality of Theism entitled The Ethics of Belief.[3] Clifford writes, “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence.”[4] The same thesis can be seen in the writings of prominent atheists such as Michael Scriven,[5] Bertrand Russell,[6] Antony Flew,[7] Gordon Stein,[8] Michael Tooley[9] and Michael Martin.[10] A particularly lucid example of the same approach is seen in the writings of Antony Flew,

[T]he debate about the existence of God should properly begin from the presumption of atheism, that the onus of proof must lie upon the theist…What the protagonist of my presumption of atheism wants to show is that the debate about the existence of God ought to be conducted in a particular way, and that the issue should be seen in a certain perspective. His thesis about the onus of proof involves that it is up to the theist: first to introduce and to defend his proposed concept of God; and second, to provide sufficient reason for believing that this concept of his does in fact have an application.[11]

Central to these writers is an important contention. It is contended that Theism is rationally acceptable only if there is good evidence for it. In this context it is clear that the word evidence is being used synonymously with the idea of an argument or proof. Mackie states, “[whether or not God exists] must be examined either by deductive or inductive reasoning or, if that yields no decision, by arguments to the best explanation;” Flew talks of a “burden of proof” their contention is that if theism cannot be proven in the manner laid down, it is irrational. This contention is often known as “Rationalism.”

Why Accept Rationalism?
The initial question to ask is why assume this? It is important to note that not everything one believes needs to be proven to be rational for at least two reasons. First the claim that everything must be proven to be rationally believed leads to a regress problem. Roy Clouser notes,

If everything needs to be proven then the premises of every proof would need to be proven. But if you need a proof for every proof, you need a proof for your proof, and a proof for your proof of a proof and so on-forever. Thus it makes no sense to demand that everything be proven because an infinite regress of proofs is impossible.[12]

A second problem is that there are many things that we believe quite rationally which cannot be proved. Such things as there is a chair in front of me or that other people have thoughts and feelings.

Consider my belief that I was in Newmarket yesterday. I reflect on what I did yesterday and automatically find myself strongly inclined to accept the belief ‘I was in Newmarket.’ In this instance, I believe ‘I was in Newmarket’ because I remember being there. Yet I am unable to provide any argument or proof for this claim.

Nevertheless, my belief that I was in Newmarket yesterday and numerous other beliefs about the mental states of other people and the existence of various objects are obviously rational. So if not everything needs to be proven, why does Theism need to be proven to be rational? This question was put to a conference by Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga; the answer he received from a leading sceptic is interesting;

All of us can agree, at least for a large range of cases, whether somebody is in pain, whether he’s thinking, feeling anxious or the like. We do in general agree about these things. Only a madman would claim that no one is ever in pain or that no one ever knows that another person is in pain. The same is true for thinking, feeling anxious or sad and the like… Now the situation is very different in religion.[13]

Others have offered similar answers;

Part of the justification for believing that our perception or memory is not faulty is that in general it agrees with the perception or memory of our epistemological peers … one knows that one’s memory is reliable by determining whether it coheres with the memory reports of other people whose memory is normal and with one’s other experiences. As we have already seen, lack of agreement is commonplace in religious contexts.[14]

Richard Grigg argues in response to Plantinga,

[T]here is a universality about the genesis of the paradigm beliefs that does not attach to the genesis of belief in God. For example, nearly all persons upon having the perceptual experience X, will automatically form the belief that they are seeing a tree.[15]

Ernan McMullin has made a similar suggestion as to why belief in God cannot be utilised as a premise, as opposed to a conclusion, in an argument in scientific theorising. This is because, “It appeals to a specifically Christian belief, one that lays no claim to assent from a Hindu or an agnostic.”[16]

The basic idea, then, is that religious beliefs are private beliefs that not all people (at least all sane people educated people) believe; whereas the belief that other people have thoughts and feelings are public beliefs that all people accept and no sane person would doubt. Once we see this, then, I think we can make sense of the objection here.

[1] A belief is rational if it is either:
(a) acknowledged to be true by all sane people; or,
(b) can be proven from premises that are acknowledged to be true by all sane people;

[2] Religious beliefs are not acknowledged by all sane people nor can they be proven to be true from beliefs acknowledged by all sane people.

Critiquing Rationalism
Alvin Plantinga has levelled two powerful objections against Rationalism.

The first is to note that if it is true then almost every philosophical position of any significance is irrational. This is because, as Marilyn Adams points out,

[D]efense of any well formulated philosophical position will eventually involve premises that are fundamentally controversial and so unable to command the assent of all reasonable people.[17]

In a slightly different context Philip Quinn makes a similar point, “it would seem that the appeal to any comprehensive ethical theory, including all known secular ethical theories, should be disallowed on the grounds that every such theory can be reasonably rejected by some.”[18]

The second, more pertinent, response to this objection is to note that [1] is self-refuting. Take the claim explicitly articulated in [1] that if something is not acknowledged to be true by all sane people then it needs to be proven to be true. Now the truth of this claim itself is not acknowledged by all sane, educated people. Many theologians, philosophers and lay people don’t accept [1] so by [1] we are irrational in believing it unless someone offers a proof for its truth. However, to the best of my knowledge no one has done this; therefore, if [1] is true then the rational response is to reject [1].

Note also that any proof the proponent of this argument attempts to offer can only appeal to premises that are accepted by all sane people. If the proponent does not, we will be required to disbelieve the premises and hence the proof.

This, then, is the problem with this kind of critical rejection of theism; the sceptic rejects God’s existence out of allegiance to certain assumptions about what constitutes a rational belief. The problem is that these assumptions are in the same boat as theism is alleged to be; a person who rejects theism because he or she believes these assumptions is acting inconsistently.

In my next post I will sketch and defend an alternative view of faith and reason and in the post after that, I will address two common objections to this view.

[1] For an essay arguing that this objection has its origin in the 17th century, see Nicholas Wolterstorff “The Migration of Theistic Arguments: from Natural Theology to Evidentialist Apologetics” in Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment, ed. Robert Audi and William J. Wainwright (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986).
[2] John Mackie The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983) 4-6.
[3] William Kingdon Clifford “The Ethics of Belief” in Lecture and Essays ed. William Kingdon Clifford (London: Macmillan, 1879) 339-63.
[4] Ibid, 186.
[5] Michael Scriven Primary Philosophy (New York: McGraw Hill, 1966) 87.
[6] Bertrand Russell “Why I am not a Christian,” in Why I am not a Christian, ed. Bertrand Russell (London: Routledge Publishing, 2004) 3.
[7] Antony Flew The Presumption of Atheism (London: Pemberton Publishing, 1976).
[8] See his debate with Bahnsen www.geocities.com/jeremyandrobin/bahnsensteindebate.html.
[9] See his debate with Craig http://www.origins.org/articles/craig_tooley_2.html.
[10] Michael Martin Atheism: A Philosophical Justification (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990) particularly Chapter 1.
[11] Flew The Presumption of Atheism 14-15.
[12] Roy Clouser Knowing With the Heart 69.
[13] Kai Nielsen “The Skeptics Reply” in Faith and the Philosophers, ed. John Hick (London: Macmillan, 1964) 274.
[14] Martin Atheism 274.
[15] Richard Grigg “Theism and Proper Basicality: A Reply to Plantinga” The International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 14 (1983) 123-27; see also, “Crucial Disanalogies between Properly Basic Belief and Belief in God” Religious Studies 26 (October 1990) 389-401.
[16] Ernen McMullin “Plantinga’s Defense of Special Creation” Christian Scholars Review XXI:1 (1991) 55-79 http://www.asa3.org/ASA/dialogues/Faith-reason/CRS9-91McMullin.html
[17] Marilyn McCord Adams Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999) 180.
[18] Phillip Quinn, “Political Liberalism and their Exclusion of the Religious,” in Religion and Contemporary Liberalism, ed. Paul Weithman (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 144.

RELATED POSTS:
Belief without Proof: Is Belief in God Rational if there is no Evidence? Part II
Belief without Proof: Is Belief in God Rational if there is no Evidence? Part III

Thursday, 23 October 2008

Some Autobiographical Remarks: How I Discovered Christian Philosophy

Increasingly so of late, I find myself in conversations, in the receipt of email requests or blog comments asking where to begin and how to expand one’s Christian philosophical understanding. I have been asked to recommend books and places to study and to share my own journey in this area.

I started my studies at Waikato University in 1993. I was advised by the leadership at the church I attended, a church with some 300 student members I might add, to not study philosophy. I was told that this subject was one Christians should avoid or risk being led astray. However, for the reasons of timetabling, I was left with no option but to study Introduction to Philosophy.

At that time the only apologists I was familiar with were Josh McDowell and Steve Kumar, who had spoken to our youth group. In Kumar’s book, Christian Apologetics: Think Why You Believe, there was a bibliography and for some reason I decided to go to the University library and follow these books up. I did not end up following the bibliography exactly as the first book that stood out on the shelf when I went into philosophy of religion section of the library was a book called God, Freedom and Evil by Alvin Plantinga and something prompted me to pick it up. I had never heard of Alvin Plantinga and had no idea that I had just picked up the definitive discussion of the logical problem of evil. As a first year student, with no background in philosophy, I actually managed to read it from cover to cover.

This is not where I recommend people to start, as Plantinga is hard going, but it did give me one advantage. I had not been captivated by a superficial treatment of the issue but by arguably the best treatment of that issue in the literature. Plantinga opened my eyes to the possibilities of Christian theorising.

I began devouring other authors. I stumbled on Richard Swinburne’s The Existence of God, one of the most rigorous arguments for the existence of God written in the last century. I read Paul Helm’s discussion Eternal God: A Study of God Without Time and Reichenbach’s defence of the cosmological argument in Cosmological Argument: A Reassessment. Following up a footnote in Helm’s book, I came across another author I had never heard of, William Lane Craig and read his book The Kalam Cosmological Argument. I discovered Thomas Morris’s The Logic of the God Incarnate (I don't know why more theologians don't read Morris) and began reading various anthologies on Philosophy of Religion.

At the same time I was studying religious studies under Doug Pratt, someone very sympathetic to Lloyd Geering, and we covered the rationality of theism in our Introduction to Philosophy course. I can honestly say the sceptical focus of these courses had absolutely no effect except to teach me how superficial the scepticism I was being subjected to was. To be told by Geering that no intelligent person can believe in God with only brief justification and then be informed that Christianity must be completely re-worked alongside contrasted by the detailed point by point rebuttal of arguments for atheism in my extra-curricula reading by Plantinga and Swinburne meant there was no contest.

By my second year, I had read Plantinga’s God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God. This book was absolutely brilliant. Plantinga demolished several common arguments for atheism; however, he also made some astutely critical points against the standard Christian arguments for God’s existence. Two thirds through the book he concluded that the arguments for and the arguments against were inconclusive, he the made what seemed to be a bizarre move and turned to the problem of other minds, he pointed out that the arguments for and against the existence of other people were equally inconclusive and in some cases the arguments failed for reasons very similar to the arguments for the existence of God. Yet, belief in other minds was clearly rational, so why wasn’t belief in God?

This struck me as odd. Surely belief in God was totally different to belief in other minds. Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God edited by Plantinga and Wolterstorff changed my stance. Until then I had been devouring books by Craig and Swinburne arguing for the existence of God. Plantinga, however, suggested that there was a flawed method behind the demand for evidence. Many discussions on the existence of God tacitly assumed that there was a neutral body of propositions assented to by believer and non-believer alike. All other propositions were rational only if they followed from this original body by evidence. Plantinga’s radical suggestion was that Christians and non-Christians started with a different body of evidence to each other. The idea of a neutral agreed upon starting point was a fiction and usually incoherent. Frequently assumptions that made sense only from a naturalistic viewpoint were smuggled in to the ‘neutral’ starting point, subtly rigging the debate.

This opened my eyes, particularly in the area of ethics. I started seeing why people came to the conclusions they did and Christians seemed unable to combat them despite perceiving that there was something wrong with their argument. The idea that religion had no place in public life or scholarship and people had to bracket their faith commitments when answering normative questions meant that the fundamental premises Christians relied on for their conclusions were discounted from the outset. Christians were being forced to justify their conclusions from a perspective that was really hostilely secular but was taken for granted as the neutral starting point that nobody could question.

I went on to write my Masters thesis in Philosophy on Plantinga’s ideas on faith and reason. I took the lessons I learned into my PhD in Theology and extended them into ethics. At no point, at any institution I studied in, was I ever taught these things in class. The textbooks used contained superficial treatments of Christian ethics that had been shredded by Christian Philosophers. The lecturers hadn’t read Christian Philosophy or if they had, they had only dabbled in it and had a superficial understanding or were unaware of the extent it went focussing on minor players. I had no choice but to teach myself by reading widely.

So in summation, in New Zealand, there is nowhere (yet) where I could recommend people to study Christian Philosophy. If you want to become proficient in this field you are probably best to enrol in a secular philosophy degree program, and hunt down and read all the counter arguments from the high-level Christian philosophers as you progress.

As a starting point, accessible to anyone without a background in Philosophy, I would recommend the book Reason for the Hope Within: Alvin Plantinga edited by Michael Murray. This book is hands down, the best introduction to Christian Philosophy and Apologetics as it combines rigour with accessibility to the lay person. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Further, in conjunction with Thinking Matters Tauranga, we are developing a critical thinking course for lay people to teach the basics of logical analysis of arguments, some intro to Christian Philosophy and how to approach common objections to the faith. This will initially be launched in Tauranga early next year but we intend to bring it to Auckland and hopefully make it available more widely from there.

Monday, 20 October 2008

Does Pluralism Make Faith Arbitrary?

Recently I have been reading Timothy Keller's book The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. (This is not like me because I don't typically read popular apologetics books, and it is even more rare that I would lead a blog entry with one.)

One thing that interested me is that when Keller examines the objections to the Christian faith he addresses first, not the problem of evil, but rather the claim that it is arbitrary, dogmatic, irrational, bigoted, etc to claim that Christianity is true in the face of pervasive religious pluralism. The fact that affirming Christianity involves adopting an epistemic stance that contradicts the stance taken by so many people, is seen as arbitrary and dogmatic.

This is particularly so if one believes, as I do, that certain Christian beliefs are properly basic, that is, one can rationally assert them independently of any proof of their veracity. Doesn't the fact that so many other people do not hold these beliefs and often hold contrary beliefs, make faith of this sort some kind of arrogant bluster? Isn't it arbitrary for me to assume that my particular faith is true and everyone else is incorrect? I do not think so and in this blog I will sketch some of my reasons why.

The first thing to note about this objection is that it is based on a claim that it is arbitrary to believe a proposition in the absence of proof if numerous other people do not hold that proposition.

Now a little reflection should demonstrate the problem with this claim; the claim itself is one many people do not hold, hence, if the claim is true it is arbitrary to believe it without proof. As none has been offered, I am inclined to take the proponent of this view's word and reject it. Moreover, as the proponent himself has not offered a proof it must be irrational for him to accept this proposition. In fact, there is an obvious incoherence in this kind of objection; the objector proposes that I reject Christian belief on the basis of the above claim, however, I can only do that if I accept the above claim. But if I accept the above claim, I am in the very epistemic situation the claim says I should avoid. It is hard to see how any coherent or sensible objection of this sort can be raised.

There is another problem with this objection. Suppose, for the sake of example, I accept the objector's advice, presumably then I should cease to believe in the Christian faith. But if I do this, aren't I adopting an epistemic stance that is contrary to that held by many people? What about the many Christians, for example, who do not reject the Christian faith? By rejecting Christianity I am taking up an epistemic stance that differs from them and hence, am taking up a stance contrary to that held by many people.

One needs to bear in mind too that the pluralist mindset, the concern so pervasive in our culture today, that all religions are equal and it is wrong to say one is incorrect and another is right is a peculiar western phenomena. Many religions reject this mindset, most religions claim that they are true. People generally don't believe things that they think are false; to believe a proposition is to affirm it. Once this is realised it is clear that pluralism itself is one religious perspective, one that is contrary to most, if not all others. Until the pluralist can provide compelling proof of his position, it would be silly and outright irrational, to become a pluralist on the grounds that one shouldn't adopt views widely rejected by others unless one can prove them.

[At a later date I hope to review Keller's book for this blog. It is a very interesting book as although it is popular, it draws on some fairly high level Christian Philosophers such as Plantinga, Alston, Swinburne, etc and for that reason alone is worth reading. It is interesting to see how a pastor can take these writings and ideas and make them accessible to a lay congregation. I am not so impressed with the second half of the book but I have not finished it yet. Reason for the Hope Within is, I think, a better introduction to apologetics, for those who have never studied it but who want to find a starting point, but this is, so far, a good second.]

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