The Dawkins Confusion

October 16, 2007 By Tom

While researching ideas for a potential little section called “Atheists with Attitude” for the next issue of WIE, I came across this awesome deconstruction of Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. It’s called, fittingly, “The Dawkins Confusion” and was written by Alvin Plantinga, a philosophy professor at Notre Dame. His ripping conclusion beautifully dovetails off the point I made in my last post, about the self-defeating nature of materialism (a.k.a. scientific materialism, naturalism, positivism, extreme empiricism, etc.). He says:

From a theistic point of view, we’d expect that our cognitive faculties would be (for the most part, and given certain qualifications and caveats) reliable. God has created us in his image, and an important part of our image bearing is our resembling him in being able to form true beliefs and achieve knowledge. But from a naturalist point of view the thought that our cognitive faculties are reliable (produce a preponderance of true beliefs) would be at best a naïve hope. The naturalist can be reasonably sure that the neurophysiology underlying belief formation is adaptive, but nothing follows about the truth of the beliefs depending on that neurophysiology. In fact he’d have to hold that it is unlikely, given unguided evolution, that our cognitive faculties are reliable. It’s as likely, given unguided evolution, that we live in a sort of dream world as that we actually know something about ourselves and our world.

If this is so, the naturalist has a defeater for the natural assumption that his cognitive faculties are reliable—a reason for rejecting that belief, for no longer holding it. (Example of a defeater: suppose someone once told me that you were born in Michigan and I believed her; but now I ask you, and you tell me you were born in Brazil. That gives me a defeater for my belief that you were born in Michigan.) And if he has a defeater for that belief, he also has a defeater for any belief that is a product of his cognitive faculties. But of course that would be all of his beliefs—including naturalism itself. So the naturalist has a defeater for naturalism; naturalism, therefore, is self-defeating and cannot be rationally believed.

The real problem here, obviously, is Dawkins’ naturalism, his belief that there is no such person as God or anyone like God. That is because naturalism implies that evolution is unguided. So a broader conclusion is that one can’t rationally accept both naturalism and evolution; naturalism, therefore, is in conflict with a premier doctrine of contemporary science. People like Dawkins hold that there is a conflict between science and religion because they think there is a conflict between evolution and theism; the truth of the matter, however, is that the conflict is between science and naturalism, not between science and belief in God.

How cool is that? Plantinga thwarts Dawkins’ radar-lock on God and transmogrifies the hapless fighting atheist back into the philosophical uroboros that he really is!

BTW, tonight I’m going to Boston to experience a Smashing Pumpkins concert for the first time in seven years! Thus, God does exist.


Comments

5 Comments so far

  1. Lovena on October 17, 2007 3:48 am

    Hey Tom,

    I just read your post, it’s very interesting … but a lot of it I didn’t understand (I’m not very intelligent you see!)

    Oh! How was the concert last night, no doubt you must have had a fabulous time!

    Lovena

  2. Tom on October 18, 2007 3:13 pm

    Thanks! And, no, you’re actually extremely intelligent, but you’re right, it isn’t totally clear for someone not already familiar with the arguments going on there. I’ll probably go into it more deeply…someday. :)

    The concert was AWESOME. I posted a brief bit about it here (under name “Soulplex”): http://www.smashingpumpkins.com/tour_67

  3. Don Dixon on October 20, 2007 1:58 pm

    “…In fact he’d have to hold that it is unlikely, given unguided evolution, that our cognitive faculties are reliable. It’s as likely, given unguided evolution, that we live in a sort of dream world as that we actually know something about ourselves and our world.”

    Although I share Tom’s skeptical view of reductionism, the notion expressed above hardly represents the views of reductionists, most of whom would assert that evolution WILL tend to produce creatures who accurately apprehend reality. Mistaking a grizzly bear for a chipmunk is not conducive to survival. We may indeed be wandering in a dream state, but our model must match God’s well enough to let us survive. Schizophrenia has little adaptive value.

  4. Tom on October 20, 2007 5:08 pm

    Good point, Don. I think Plantinga may be overstepping a bit. He could have stopped here:

    “The naturalist can be reasonably sure that the neurophysiology underlying belief formation is adaptive, but nothing follows about the _truth of the beliefs_ depending on that neurophysiology.”

    Chipmunks and grizzly bears and other gross, sensory perceptions are one thing; one should hope that the gross brain would give an accurate representation of those, for the sake of its own survival. But the brain generating metaphysical conclusions about the ultimate nature of reality, quite apart from one-to-one interpretations of sense data, is another matter entirely.

    As David Sloan Wilson and other popular Neo-Darwinians contend (see http://evolution.binghamton.edu/religion/), traditional religious beliefs may be evolutionarily adaptive–ensuring that believers fare over nonbelievers in the long run of sociocultural evolution–but that doesn’t mean that Jehovah is really out to smite us. And that’s just one example of how _beliefs_ can be evolutionary adaptive, no matter how objectively “true” or “false” they are. Scientific materialists presume that their own belief system is somehow exempt from this process, but it ain’t necessarily so… Indeed, I think both traditional religious myths and modern scientific materialism are more or less equally dreamlike interpretations of reality, schizo to the core. :)

    (Disclaimer: I’ve spoken with David Sloan Wilson, and he assured me he’s a “true blue materialist.” His attempts to reduce traditional religious beliefs to _nothing but_ evolutionary adaptations is an act of reductionism of the worst kind, no matter how relatively true it is. But I’m using that relative truth to make a point, even though I totally disagree with the extremity to which Wilson takes his case.)

  5. ned on November 24, 2007 7:16 pm

    Tom, a person you might want to feature in “Atheists with Attitude” would be Philip Kitcher, who is the author of “Living With Darwin”. I heard his podcast on Point of Inquiry with DJ Grothe — a very soft-spoken, humble man, who in his book recognizes the possibility of the transcendent even as he dismisses organized religion.

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