An attack on Lewis from Austin Cline

These comments are from Austin Cline, on his atheism website. He seems a little out of touch with the most recent scholarship on the Argument from Reason. Cline's comments are in bold, my responses are not.

AC: C.S. Lewis wanted to explain nature on the basis of his supernatural god; as a consequence, naturalistic explanations for nature represented a major threat — just as it does for contemporary apologists. Lewis argued against naturalism in a variety of contexts. It plays an important role not just in his discussions about morality, but also in his arguments about the nature of reason.

VR: No, Lewis did not think naturalistic explanations for nature constituted a threat. It is only when these explanations are claimed to excluded a theistic explanation that they become at threat. There is no problem with Christians believing in, say, the law of gravity.

AC: In his book Miracles, Lewis argues against naturalism by saying “If Naturalism is true, every finite thing or event must be (in principle) explicable in terms of the Total System.” This isn’t necessarily true. Lewis was aware of advances in physics which revealed that events on the quantum level were probabilistic rather than deterministic, but he regarded this as a reason to think that there exists something more than “Nature” rather than as a reason to think that maybe nature isn’t quite what he (like others) assumed it to be. He rejected the findings of science because they conflicted with his assumptions.

VR: The difference between Quantum and Classical mechanics are irrelevant to the Argument from Reason, since on most interpretations quantum activity is pure blind chance and nothing more. If QM opens the door for ground-level teleology (which seems to be what Wiest was suggesting on this blog a few months back), then we have something that is not naturalism in the sense that Lewis was trying to criticize.

AC: Lewis appears not to have understood that some events and systems are, even in principle, not explainable despite being entirely natural. No one disputes that the weather is completely natural, but while weather events can be predicted to varying degrees of accuracy, it’s not possible even in principle to explain every facet of them because they are too complex, chaotic, and probabilistic.

VR: Meaning not explainable in principle, or beyond out powers of explanation? Cline seems not to understand the difference between inexplicability due to temporary human limitations, and inexplicability due to the absence of determining causes. In any event I see no reason to believe that Lewis was guilty of this lack of understanding, and if he did it is irrelevant to the argument.

AC: Part of the problem is that Lewis adopts a very limited, narrow understanding of naturalism. For Lewis, naturalism is the same as determinism. Thus, what we encounter is a tactic which Lewis uses continually: the construction of a false dilemma fallacy in which he presents the “wrong” option in an unfavorable and incorrectly defined way against the “right” option which, he hopes, will seem more reasonable against his straw man. The idea of a third option, like rejecting both extreme determinism and supernaturalism, is never entertained.

VR: Again the question is not determinism, it is the question of whether, at the most basic level of analysis, nature in non-purposive. Since believing something for a reason needs to be explained purposively in order for it to be regarded as reasoning, this is the basis for a prima facie incompatibility. Replacing blind determination with blind chaos does not help account for reason.

AC: From this inauspicious beginning, things only go down hill. Lewis argues that nature cannot explain the existence of Reason:

“A strict materialism refutes itself for the reason given long ago by Professor Haldane: ‘If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true...and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.’ (Possible Worlds, p. 209)”
In other words, because atoms are not themselves rational, then they alone cannot be responsible for rationality because such an irrational foundation cannot be a reliable basis for rational thinking. This absurd reasoning would preclude atoms being responsible for anything at all — atoms aren’t visible to the naked eye, so how could they produce anything visible? It’s known as the fallacy of composition and is just one more example of Lewis constructing fallacious arguments in the apparent hope that no one would notice.

VR: Lewis makes a distinction between "strict materialism," which can be refuted in one sentence, and naturalism, which requires a much longer treatment. Lewis was praised by his most famous opponent, Anscombe, for "honesty and seriousness" in his revised chapter. Shouldn't this tip anyone off that a "quick and dirty" refutation of Lewis is not in the cards? The real question is how logical relationships between proposition can play any role in some event in the physical world being caused. I'm really not sure what Lewis meant by "strict materialism;" however I would not give that simple of an argument against more contemporary kinds of materialism. But I think a some versions of Lewis's arguments against naturalism are telling arguments against contemporary materialism.

AC: On February 2, 1948, G.E.M. Anscombe read a paper to the Oxford Socratic Club criticizing this section of C.S Lewis’ book, identifying several serious weaknesses. According to George Sayer, a friend of Lewis, he recognized that his position was soundly refuted:

“He told me that he had been proved wrong, and that his argument for the existence of God had been demolished. ...The debate had been a humiliating experience, but perhaps it was ultimately good for him. In the past, he had been too proud of his logical ability. Now he was humbled ....’I can never write another book of that sort’ he said to me of Miracles. And he never did. He also never wrote another theological book. Reflections on the Psalms is really devotional and literary; Letters to Malcolm is also a devotional book, a series of reflections on prayer, without contentious arguments.”VR: Here we go again with the Anscombe Legend. Sayer was basically a high school English teacher, and he fails to draw the all-important distinction between thinking oneself really proved wrong, and thinking the someone has shown one's argument to be inadequately formulated. Lewis probably thought he had performed poorly in the exchange; he probably thought that there were problems with the formulation of his argument, but there is no reason to suppose that he thought his argument shown to be a bad one.

John Beversluis, on whom Cline seems to be relying for his critique of Lewis, had this to say in a subsequent paper:

First, the Anscombe debate was by no means Lewis's first exposure to a professional philosopher: he lived among them all his adult life, read the Greats, and even taught philosophy. Second, it is simply untrue that the post-Anscombe Lewis abandoned Christian apologetics. In 1960 he published a second edition of Miracles in which he revised the third chapter and thereby replied to Anscombe. Third, most printed discussions of the debate, mine included, fail to mention that Anscombe herself complimented Lewis's revised argument on the grounds that it is deeper and far more serious than the original version. Finally, the myth that Lewis abandoned Christian apologetics overlooks several post-Anscombe articles, among them "Is Theism Important?" (1952)—a discussion of Christianity and theism which touches on philosophical proofs for God's existence—and "On Obstinacy of Belief"—in which Lewis defends the rationality of belief in God in the face of apparently contrary evidence (the issue in philosophical theology during the late 1950s and early 60s). It is rhetorically effective to announce that the post-Anscombe Lewis wrote no further books on Christian apologetics, but it is pure fiction. Even if it were true, what would this Argument from Abandoned Subjects prove? He wrote no further books on Paradise Lost or courtly love either.1

AC: Lewis never publicly acknowledged his defeat, but he did respond. The relevant chapter was renamed from “Naturalism is Self-Refuting” to “The Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism.” Some statements were revised and he removed the egregious claim that “We may state it as a rule that no thought is valid if it can be fully explained as the result of irrational causes.”

These revisions are not enough to salvage his argument because its flaws are fundamental. Lewis relied, for example, on a bizarre epistemology, according to which knowledge can only be attained indirectly by inferring from sensory perception to the objects supposedly lying behind them. Because of this, he felt that reliable knowledge depends upon logical reasoning — that we cannot come to have true, justified beliefs about the world without it. This is a peculiar and extreme form of rationalism, but it’s not an epistemology which is compatible with modern science and thinking. It doesn’t enjoy wide currency today, even among Christians who ostensibly accept Lewis’ apologetics. If they do not accept the epistemological assumptions he uses, though, they cannot also accept his theological conclusions which they find so appealing.

VR: This is a criticism that Cline is borrowing from John Beversluis, whose book C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion, is taken by many in freethought circles to be the definitive refutation of Lewis, in spite of the fact that numerous articles effectively criticizing it have been published. Lewis did say that all possible knowledge, then, depends on the validity of reasoning. But depends in what way? Is he actually saying that what we are immediately aware of are "sense data" and that we recognize physical objects only by performing inferences? This is a philosophical theory that still exists, and it is probably more defensible than most people think it is, but it is true that today the mainstream position is a some kind of direct realism, according to which we perceive physical objects directly.

But would a good case for direct realism refute Lewis's argument? No. First, did Lewis really say we infer physical objects? What he said was:

"It is clear that everything we know, beyond out own sensations, in inferred from those sensations. I do not mean that we begin as children, by regarding out sensations as "evidence" and thence arguing consciously to the existence of space, matter and other people. I mean that if, after we are old enough to understand the question, our confidence in the existence of anything else (say, the solar system or the Spanish Armada) is questioned, our argument in defence of it will have to take the form of arguments from our immediate sensations."

So it is not that we perform inferences in order to know physical objects; it is that we use inferences to defend out beliefs in those objects that makes perceptual knowledge depend on inference. This I consider to be perfectly compatible with the claim that we perceive physical objects directly and noninferentially.

In any event, if Lewis exaggerated the role of inference in knowledge, so what? His argument is that if naturalism is true, then there are no inferences. Maybe my knowledge that the wall in front of me is purple can remain as knowledge under these circumstances, but if there are no inferences, then no one ever proved the Pythagorean theorem, Darwin didn't really provide arguments for evolution by natural selection, and no one ever inferred that e=mc squared, and no one ever inferred atheism from the existence of evil in the world.

In other words, whether or not Lewis used the "epistemological assumptions" in his argument, the argument does not need them, and will can do just fine without them. Whether one can explain the existence of rational inference naturalistically--well, I could write a book about that subject. In any event, if there is something wrong with Lewis's argument, Cline has failed to take the argument seriously enough to find out what it is.






1 John Beversluis, "Surprised by Freud: A Critical Appraisal of A. N. Wilson's Biography of C. S. Lewis," Christianity and Literature, Vol. 41, No. 2 (1992), pp. 179-95

A note from Matt Jordan

Matt Jordan wrote:

So we're not meeting for the philosophy group right now. But I can still pontificate at you, can't I? I'm TA-ing for a philosophy of religion class this quarter, and one of the issues that keeps coming up (or at least, one of the issues that I can't stop thinking about) concerns the highly speculative nature of much advanced physics these days. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm pro-science. But I find it a bit irritating that if someone in a white lab coat says something, it's taken as gospel truth by so many in our culture, even though some of it is far more contentious than some of what the philosophers (and, dare I suggest, theologians) say. The nature of theoretical science suggests that greater humility than is usually displayed would be appropriate.

My point may not be especially clear. The World Series is on behind me, and I'm having trouble focusing my thoughts. Basically, I just wanted an excuse to introduce the following quote from my favorite weekly sports column, Tuesday Morning Quarterback (on nfl.com):

Tuesday Morning Quarterback regularly notes the "dark energy" puzzle -- cosmologists believe the galaxies move as if acted upon by far more matter and energy than can be detected in the firmament. For the last decade or so, physicists have posited the explanation is mysterious "dark energy" that defies detection. Last year's common estimates used by astrophysicists was that 85 percent of the content of the cosmos is undetectable. As yours truly said in this space, "We can't find 85 percent of the universe. But trust us, we're experts." This year many researchers have endorsed the idea that an incredible 96 percent of the universe is exotic "dark" stuff that cannot be located.

Comes now these words from the frontiers of science. First, Edward Kolb, a researcher at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, declared the whole dark-energy concept may be nonsense . That still leaves the problem of explaining the movement of the galaxies. Kolb's proposal? The galaxies move as they do because they are following "perturbations" in space-time, extremely large-scale structures created during the Big Bang. Why can't we discover the perturbations? They, um, are undetectable, Kolb thinks. Back to Square One. But wait! Consider this recent paper by two researchers at the University of Victoria in Canada, pointed out by Bobby Schmidt of Bellevue, Washington. The paper posits the galaxies do, in fact, move as if acted upon solely by the matter and energy accounted for; it's just that scientists haven't realized the equations of general relativity already explain galactic motion. So we fell for the notion that 96 percent of the universe is concealed in mysterious forces, and now it turns everything was directly in front of our eyes the whole time. But trust us, we're experts!

A couple more references on the argument from desire

I'm going to be attending more to the Argument from Desire in the future. Also see this from John DePoe.

http://apologetics.johndepoe.com/longing.html

In Defense of Natural Theology

Doug Groothuis, one of the co-editors of the book, has a blog entry about the new book on natural theology. As you can see, I have an essay in there, on guess what argument.

I just received the book today and it looks really good. It is a response to the charge that Hume destroyed natural theology once and for all. But I was slightly disappointed that the book never mentioned the Dennett Lexicon entry for Hume:

hume, pron. (1) Indefinite personal and relative pronoun, presupposing no referent. Useful esp. in writing solipsistic treatises, sc. "to hume it may concern." v. (2) To commit to the flames, bury, or otherwise destroy a philosophical position, as in "That theory was humed in the 1920s." Hence, exhume, v. to revive a position generally believed to humed.

New book on Lewis's moral argument

This is a new book on Lewis's moral argument. It should be interesting.

A note from Don Jones on Bahnsen

This is rather belated, since I got this last September 21. However, I do have a thing or two to say in response:

Professor Reppert,

I really like your blog, however, I was somewhat curious as to your analysis of Michael Martin on TAG and that he showed serious problems with it (the blog on February 10, 2005).  Are you aware that he skipped out on the debate that he and Dr. Bahnsen had scheduled on the issue?  I know his excuse was that he didn't want it taped but I think that is somewhat lame given the fact that he loves to critique the Christian worldview in front of the entire world in his books.   Gary North pointed it out quite right when he said that now that Bahnsen's dead, everyone will be trying to debate him.  I also think it was after Bahnsen died that Martin finally did a critique of the argument, however, Scott Oliphint, John Frame, and Michael Butler (among others) have both pointed out the absolute absurdity of Dr. Martin's TANG (Transcendental Argument for the Nonexistence of God).  Dr. Martin does not even touch TAG much less the Christian worldview.  Dr. Bahnsen did a devasting critique of Dr. Martin in 12 lectures that can be found at www.cmfnow.com (mp3 or tape).  When Dr. Martin decided to skip the debate, Bahnsen showed up and critiqued Martin in two or three lecture series that can also be found at the same website.  

Reppert: What I really had in mind was the debate between Theodore Drange and Douglas Wilson on Internet Infidels. I thought Wilson got slaughtered in that one, and insofar as he was being faithful to presuppositionalism, the debate demonstrates the weaknesses of presuppositonalism. I probably should not have included Michael Martin. When it comes to debating presuppositionalism, I don't think anyone else is in the same league with Bahnsen, so maybe that is what happened in the Drange-Wilson debate (linked below). On the other hand, there never was a real collision between Bahnsen and a real atheist philosopher, and I think that's unfortunate.

By the way, I am getting your book on C.S. Lewis for my birthday and really look forward to reading it.  I've heard some really good things about it!  Do you also recommend Angus Menuge's book Agents Under Fire?  

Reppert: I strongly recommend Dr. Menuge's book, as you can see from my review of it on Amazon. If you want to "go deep," then my book should be read in tandem with Hasker's The Emergent Self and Menuge's Agents Under Fire.

Thanks,

Don  

A New York Times article on science and religion

Hat tip: amstar

Agreeing Only to Disagree on God's Place in Science

By GEORGE JOHNSON
Published: September 27, 2005

It was on the second day at Cambridge that enlightenment dawned in the form of a testy exchange between a zoologist and a paleontologist, Richard Dawkins and Simon Conway Morris. Their bone of contention was one that scholars have been gnawing on since the days of Aquinas: whether an understanding of the universe and its glories requires the hypothesis of a God.

The speakers had been invited, along with a dozen other scientists and theologians, to address the 10 recipients of the first Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowships in Science and Religion. Each morning for two weeks in June, we walked across the Mathematical Bridge, spanning the River Cam, and through the medieval courtyards of Queens College to the seminar room.

We were there courtesy of the John Templeton Foundation, whose mission is "to pursue new insights at the boundary between theology and science," overcoming what it calls "the flatness of a purely naturalistic, secularized view of reality."

On matters scientific, Dr. Dawkins, who came from Oxford, and Dr. Conway Morris, a Cambridge man, agreed: The richness of the biosphere, humanity included, could be explained through natural selection.

They also agreed, contrary to the writings of Stephen Jay Gould, that evolution is not a crapshoot. If earth's history could be replayed like a video cassette, the outcome would be somewhat different, but certain physical constraints would favor the eventual appearance of warm-blooded creatures something like us, with eyes, ears, noses and brains.

Then, just millimeters from complete accord, they forked in orthogonal directions. For Dr. Dawkins, an atheist, the creative power of evolution reinforced his conviction that we live in a purely material world. For Dr. Conway Morris, a Christian, nature's "uncanny ability" to converge on moral, loving creatures like ourselves testified that evolution itself was the handiwork of God.

Dr. Dawkins seemed as puzzled by this leap as he was exasperated. "We agree on almost everything," he said. Why insist on adding in a deity? When it came to science, Dr. Dawkins exclaimed, Dr. Conway Morris's God was "gratuitous."

Momentarily flummoxed, the paleontologist muttered to himself, and some of the fellows murmured their disapproval. But however abrupt Dr. Dawkins may have sounded, he had scored a crucial point.

Science is the name we give to the practice of finding physical explanations about the universe. Anything spiritual you bring to the table is extraneous, a matter of personal belief.

Scientists can study religion as a neurological or anthropological phenomenon, and religious leaders are free to offer opinions on the moral implications of new technologies. But the Templeton people are after something far more ambitious and volatile: "to join science with faith," as the philosopher Boethius put it. Fifteen centuries later, amid the gothic spires of Cambridge, the debate was smoldering on.

A Foundation With a Mission

There is a journalistic tradition of biting the hand that feeds you. A few days earlier, in the van from Heathrow Airport to Cambridge, several jet-lagged reporters spoke skeptically about our host and its well-publicized agenda. The creation of Sir John Marks Templeton, a 92-year-old Presbyterian investor and billionaire who lives in the Bahamas, the Templeton Foundation is said to earn so much from its endowment that it struggles to give it all away.

By financing programs like "Science, Theology and the Ontological Quest" and "The Origin of the Laws of Nature and the Existence of God," Templeton almost single-handedly sustains the modern movement to reconcile science and religion - or, as some see it, he is keeping it alive on its death bed with extraordinary means of support.

This is not about intelligent design. While the foundation assumes the existence of a deity, it rejects biblical literalism as much as it does New Age fuzziness; no "crystals and faeries," it admonishes grant seekers.

While the winner of the annual Templeton Prize "for progress in religion" has almost always been a Christian, the award has occasionally gone to a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Hindu or a Jew. The name of the honor, currently worth $1.5 million, was recently broadened to recognize research on "spiritual realities," a term that many scientists, Dr. Dawkins surely among them, would consider an oxymoron.

In its guidelines, the foundation says it is unlikely to sponsor projects that would bring together science and religion by letting one subsume the other. Nor is it interested in "approaches that erect walls between religion and science and begin with the assumption that they should never have anything to do with each other."

That, at least tacitly, is how many scientists approach the divide - by compartmentalizing, treating science and religion as what Dr. Gould called nonoverlapping magisteria ("noma" for short). Michael Faraday, a Christian and one of the premier scientists of the 19th century, put it like this: "I do not think it at all necessary to tie the study of the natural sciences and religion together, and in my intercourse with my fellow creatures that which is religious and that which is philosophical have ever been two distinct things."

Even Isaac Newton, whose obsession with alchemy and biblical prophecy bordered on fanaticism, called for a strict distinction between religion and "philosophy," as science was called in his day: "We are not to introduce divine revelations into philosophy, nor philosophical opinions into religion."

For the reconcilers, noma is considered a nonstarter. Accepting it would mean that the centuries-old divergence between these two domains would continue unopposed. It would also mean the end of the Templeton grants.

God, the Fine-Tuner

Modern science is sometimes said to have grown from the Christian belief in a single supreme being who created and sustains an orderly cosmos. Since he could have written the laws any way he wanted, it follows that they can only be discovered empirically, not deduced from first principles as Aristotle tried to do. The Book of Nature must be studied as assiduously as the Book of God.

Historians go on to describe how science shed its theological chrysalis and went its separate way. The result is what the Templeton people call "flat science." Early in the seminars, Denis Alexander, a Cambridge immunologist and Christian, made the radical suggestion that science reclaim its theistic roots, taking as its deepest premise the existence of God.

Another speaker, John Polkinghorne, a Cambridge physicist turned Anglican priest, saw profound significance in the fact that humans - rational, conscious creatures endowed with intentionality and free will - find themselves in a universe with laws they can understand. In "The Faith of a Physicist," he gives his take on the big bang theory with God stepping in to ensure a chemistry "fine tuned" to generate life.

Listening to the reconcilers and reading their books, even an agnostic could appreciate how the beauty of the cosmos might compel one to believe in something transcendent. But what writers like Dr. Alexander and Dr. Polkinghorne are talking about is not just the awe one feels hiking above the timberline or inhaling the ocean air. They are looking to science for something far more specific - the constant, hovering presence of the kind of God described in Sunday school, who watches over us and responds to our prayers.

This is not the God of deism, who cranked up the universe and let it run. In drafting the principles of physics he left trapdoors - what Dr. Polkinghorne calls "causal joints" - through which to intervene, placing the earth in a hospitable orbit or unleashing the cascade of mutations needed for a microbe to evolve into a man. The trick is to do this without appearing to violate his own laws.

Some theologians speculate that this happens on the subatomic level, when a particle appears to dart probabilistically, with a roll of the quantum dice. Maybe it is God doing the shuffling, and what appears to mortals as quantum indeterminacy is divine intervention in disguise.

Others propose that God acts through nonlinear dynamics, in which microscopic fluctuations give rise to potentially earthshaking results - chaos theory's "butterfly effect." Here too the influence would be undetectable. With or without the guiding hand of the creator, reality would appear the same.

An Elusive Common Ground

Dr. Dawkins has written that "a universe with a supernatural presence would be a fundamentally and qualitatively different kind of universe from one without." If the God hypothesis is meaningful, it should be subject to a test. But the theistic gloss Dr. Polkinghorne and others give to science is immune to this kind of scrutiny. It has, by design, no observable consequences.

The reconcilers insist that the same is true for the belief that there is nothing but matter and energy, that you can be either a materialist or a theist and still do good research. But for many scientists, entertaining supernatural explanations is a violation of the craft. A study reported in Nature in 1998 found that only 7 percent of the members of the elite National Academy of Sciences believed in God. For biologists the figure was just 5.5 percent.

"You clearly can be a scientist and have religious beliefs," Peter Atkins, an Oxford University chemist, has said. "But I don't think you can be a real scientist in the deepest sense of the word because they are such alien categories of knowledge."

Cloistered inside the walls of Cambridge, we listened as a theologian wondered whether Christ's powers of healing might be quantum mechanical, and a physicist considered whether Jesus would appear on other planets in extraterrestrial form. Trying their best to collide, Dr. Gould's nonoverlapping magisteria seemed farther apart than ever, two great ships passing in the night, pointed in opposite directions.

Plantinga's argument from evil for theism

This is also from the essay "A Christian Life Partly Lived," from IVP's Philosophers who Believe.
Second, it is indeed true that suffering and evil can occasion spiritual perplexity and discouragement; and of all the antitheistic arguments, only the argument from evil deserves to be taken really seriously. But I also believe, paradoxically enough, that there is a theistic argument from evil, and it is at least as strong as the atheistic argument. (Here I can only sketch the argument on an intuitive level). What is so deeply distrubing about horrifying kkinds of evil? The most appalling kinds of evil involve human cruelty and wickedness: Stalin and Pol Pot, Hitler and his henchmen, and the thousands of small vignettes of evil that make up sucha whole. What is genuinely abhorrent is the callousness and perversion and cruelty of the concentration camp guard taking pleasure in the sufferings of others; what is really odious is taking advantage of trust (a parent or a counselor, perhaps) in order to betray and corrupt someone. What is genuine appalling, in other words, is not really human suffering as such so much as human wickedness. The wickedness strikes us as deeply perverse, wholly wrong, warranting not just quarantine and the attempt to overcome it, but blame and punishment.

But could there be any such thing as horrifying wickedness if naturalism were true? i don't see how. A naturalistic way of looking at the world, so it seems to me, has not placce for genuine moral obligation of any sort; a fortiori, then it has not place for such a category as horrifying wickedness. It is hard enough, from a naturalistic perspective, to see how it could be that we human beings can be so related to propositions (contents) that we believe them, and harder yet, as I said above, to explain how that content could enter into a causal explanation of someone's actions. But these difficulties are as nothing compared to seeing how, in a naturalistic universe, there could be such a thing as genuine and appalling wickedness. There can be such a things only if there is a way raitonal creatures are supposed to live; and the force of that normativity--its strength, so to speak--is such that the appalling and horrifying nature of its its inverse. But naturalism cannot make room for that kind of normativity; that requires a divine lawgiver, one whose very nature it is to abhor wickedness. Naturalism can perhaps accomodate foolishness and irrationality, acting contrary to what you take to be your own interests; it can't accomdate appalling wickedness. Accordingly, if you think there really is such a thing as horrifying wickedness (that our sense that there is, is not a mere illusion of some sort), and if you also think the main options are theism and naturalism, then you have a powerful theistic argument from evil.

Robert Price's critique of Craig

This is Robert Price's critique of Craig on the resurrection. Ad hominem perhaps?

Aristotle, Bush, Rational Inference, and Richard Carrier

This is an old post that I am bringing up to the present.

Jason in his comment on a previous entry says that Carrier is making a mistake when he claims that our current political dialogue shows that we do a lot of things without making rational inferences. I think Jason is right, and I think I can illustrate his point by explaining one of the great intellectual discoveries that philosophy has ever produced, and that is the Aristotle's distintion between the form and the content of rational arguments.

Consider the following argument:

1. If Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, the we ought to invade Iraq.
2. Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.
3.Therefore, we should invade Iraq.

The argument is valid, and even Michael Moore ought to recognize that if the premises are true the conclusion must be true. Anyone who recognizes that the conclusion follows from the premises performs a rational inference. If we couldn't perform inferences like these, we couldn't have political dialogue at all. An argument is valid just in case, if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true. It has nothing to do with whether or not the premises are true, or whether or not we are rational in believing the premises.

Now we can ask whether the premises were true (in 2003), or whether people were rational in believing them. Maybe the people who not only drew this inference but also accepted the premises and hence the conclusion are guilty of various kinds of irrationality, perhaps suffering from Halliburton bias, or Bush bias. And we can ask how rational people really are in the way in which they make their political choices. I happen to think, with Carrier, there's plenty of irrationality in political belief-formation. Nevertheless they do draw inferences. The argument from reason says that if naturalism is true, we will not find people performing rational inferences at all.

Fundamentalism as an intellectual vice

Frank Walton wrote:

With all due respect, Victor, I think you're exhibiting an attitude that comes close to fundamentalism itself:

Lewis agrees with them on several important points and has numerous valuable apologetical and spiritucal insights, but, because he doesn't fully agree with them, he is to be denounced. Intellectual opponents aren't just mistaken, there is something really wrong with them, they are enemies, intellectual frauds to be demolished at all costs.

"Intellectual frauds?" "Demolished at all costs?" I think words like this are apt at use with fundamentalists. I don't think being a fundamentalist is equivalent to being a Christian either. Having read a score of apologetical and philosophical works by would be "conservatives" or "fundamentalists" I can tell you that the majority of them look highly upon C. S. Lewis. I have only read but a few who think Lewis should not be elicited as a great apologist. But that's a very very very very few. You'll definitely have a harder time finding C. S. Lewis bashers than C. S. Lewis praisers within the Christian community. Also, JP Holding is politically mixed; so, by definition I don't think it would be fair to call him an ideologue or fundamentalist. Anyway, that's how I see it.


I think there is some confusion going on here. I wrote that there are a couple of uses of the term fundamentalist. One is as a term of abuse directed at people theologically more conservative than oneself. See Plantinga's hilarious discussion in Warrented Christian belief. Second, one can be an adherent of the Five Fundamentals: the verbal inspiration of the Bible, the virgin birth of Christ, the substitutionary atonement of Christ, the bodily resurrection of Christ, and the return of Christ. Lewis, as I noted defended three of these claims in the course of his apologetics. But there is a third way in which the concept can be used, and that is to define some kind of ideologue who looks at everything through a "are you for us or against us" lens. Some people who did refer to themselves as "Fundamental Baptists" have attacked C. S. Lewis for his theological deviances. I've even seen an article by someone arguing that C. S. Lewis almost certainly did not go to heaven. This kind of ideological attitude is, I maintained, an intellectual vice, but it is not an intellectual vice that can be found only among conservative Protestant Christians. The Scribes and Pharisees in their response to Jesus seem to exhibit it in spades. And, the Holding list saying "You might be a fundamentalist atheist if..." suggests that it is possible to be a fundamentalist atheist or a fundmentalist evolutionist. Even though I don't completely agree with everything on that list, I think he does show that it is very possible to be possess the vice of fundamentalism as an atheist. In fact, so long as we understand clearly that we are talking abotu this kind of intellectual vice, it seems to me that at least some former fundamentalists have merely changed their brand of fundamentalism.

Reductio ad absurdum versions of the argument from evil

Earlier I posed the question of whether a naturalist could use the argument from evil, if that naturalist was not a moral realist. Some commentators have pointed out that the argument could be advanced by someone who rejected moral realism used moral realism as a reductio ad absurdum argument against theism.

Let's look at the argument from evil again.

1) Gratuitous evils probably exist.
(2) Gratuitous evils are incompatible with the God of theism (omnipotent, omniscient, all-good).
(3) Therefore, the God of theism probably does not exist.

If the defender of the argument from evil is unwilling to argue that 2 is true, she must at least argue that 2 is entailed by theism. In other words the defender of the reductio must do more than show that theism entails moral realism. I am personally inclined to think that that is true. A theist who believes that God gives commandments cannot maintain that one person's opinion is just as good as another's where conduct is concerned, if one of the persons is God.

But all you need to be a moral realist is to hold that there are at least some moral truths. It's perfectly possible to be a moral realist and to deny 2. An atheist using this version of the problem of evil must show that someone who is a theist and a moral realist but denies to is contradicting herself. That's a tall order.

Moreland's review of Kim

Bill Vallicella has a link to J. P. Moreland's review of Jaegwon's Kim's Physicalism or something near enough.

A little fun at my own expense

A long time ago I came up with an entry to the philosopher's lexicon on myself.

reppert v. To enhance the reputation of a popular apologist by "finding" sophisticated arguments in his writings. "Who are they going to reppert next, Francis Schaeffer, or Josh McDowell?"

Moral Realism and the Problem of Evil

Here is that version of the problem of evil again:

(1) Gratuitous evils probably exist.
(2) Gratuitous evils are incompatible with the God of theism (omnipotent, omniscient, all-good).
(3) Therefore, the God of theism probably does not exist.

Now it seems on its face that only atheists who are moral realists can use this argument. Without believing that there are some truths about what is right and wrong, and therefore some non-relative truths about what act a good being should be expected not to do, premise 2 cannot be affirmed. But even one of the naturalist commentators on this blog accepted the conclusion that if naturalism is true, then a non-realist ethical philosophy follows. So if it can be argued that naturalism entails non-realism about ethics, then it follows that naturalists can't use the argument from evil against theism, because they cannot affirm (2).

No true Scotsman

Antony Flew used to be fond of this example:

A: No true Scotsman puts sugar in his porridge.
B. But what about Mr. Campbell here. He's as Scottish as can be, surely.
A: He's not a true Scotsman.
B: Why not?
A. He puts sugar in his porridge.

Sometimes I could swear that I hear this line of argument:

A: No true scientist accepts intelligent design.

You fill in the rest of the dialogue.

Tell me this isn't so.

I made it into the Wikipedia

See the entry on naturalism in the Wikipedia.

Peter S Williams' blog

This is Peter S. Williams blog on ID.

Victor

A Catholic Cardinal on Darwin and design

Op-Ed Contributor
Finding Design in Nature
E-Mail This
Printer-Friendly
Save Article
By CHRISTOPH SCHÖNBORN
Published: July 7, 2005
Vienna

EVER since 1996, when Pope John Paul II said that evolution (a term he did not define) was "more than just a hypothesis," defenders of neo-Darwinian dogma have often invoked the supposed acceptance - or at least acquiescence - of the Roman Catholic Church when they defend their theory as somehow compatible with Christian faith.

Skip to next paragraph

Forum: Op-Ed Contributors
But this is not true. The Catholic Church, while leaving to science many details about the history of life on earth, proclaims that by the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world, including the world of living things.

Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.

Consider the real teaching of our beloved John Paul. While his rather vague and unimportant 1996 letter about evolution is always and everywhere cited, we see no one discussing these comments from a 1985 general audience that represents his robust teaching on nature:

"All the observations concerning the development of life lead to a similar conclusion. The evolution of living beings, of which science seeks to determine the stages and to discern the mechanism, presents an internal finality which arouses admiration. This finality which directs beings in a direction for which they are not responsible or in charge, obliges one to suppose a Mind which is its inventor, its creator."

He went on: "To all these indications of the existence of God the Creator, some oppose the power of chance or of the proper mechanisms of matter. To speak of chance for a universe which presents such a complex organization in its elements and such marvelous finality in its life would be equivalent to giving up the search for an explanation of the world as it appears to us. In fact, this would be equivalent to admitting effects without a cause. It would be to abdicate human intelligence, which would thus refuse to think and to seek a solution for its problems."

Note that in this quotation the word "finality" is a philosophical term synonymous with final cause, purpose or design. In comments at another general audience a year later, John Paul concludes, "It is clear that the truth of faith about creation is radically opposed to the theories of materialistic philosophy. These view the cosmos as the result of an evolution of matter reducible to pure chance and necessity."

Naturally, the authoritative Catechism of the Catholic Church agrees: "Human intelligence is surely already capable of finding a response to the question of origins. The existence of God the Creator can be known with certainty through his works, by the light of human reason." It adds: "We believe that God created the world according to his wisdom. It is not the product of any necessity whatever, nor of blind fate or chance."

In an unfortunate new twist on this old controversy, neo-Darwinists recently have sought to portray our new pope, Benedict XVI, as a satisfied evolutionist. They have quoted a sentence about common ancestry from a 2004 document of the International Theological Commission, pointed out that Benedict was at the time head of the commission, and concluded that the Catholic Church has no problem with the notion of "evolution" as used by mainstream biologists - that is, synonymous with neo-Darwinism.

The commission's document, however, reaffirms the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church about the reality of design in nature. Commenting on the widespread abuse of John Paul's 1996 letter on evolution, the commission cautions that "the letter cannot be read as a blanket approbation of all theories of evolution, including those of a neo-Darwinian provenance which explicitly deny to divine providence any truly causal role in the development of life in the universe."

Furthermore, according to the commission, "An unguided evolutionary process - one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence - simply cannot exist."

Indeed, in the homily at his installation just a few weeks ago, Benedict proclaimed: "We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."

Throughout history the church has defended the truths of faith given by Jesus Christ. But in the modern era, the Catholic Church is in the odd position of standing in firm defense of reason as well. In the 19th century, the First Vatican Council taught a world newly enthralled by the "death of God" that by the use of reason alone mankind could come to know the reality of the Uncaused Cause, the First Mover, the God of the philosophers.

Now at the beginning of the 21st century, faced with scientific claims like neo-Darwinism and the multiverse hypothesis in cosmology invented to avoid the overwhelming evidence for purpose and design found in modern science, the Catholic Church will again defend human reason by proclaiming that the immanent design evident in nature is real. Scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of "chance and necessity" are not scientific at all, but, as John Paul put it, an abdication of human intelligence.

Christoph Schönborn, the Roman Catholic cardinal archbishop of Vienna, was the lead editor of the official 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church.

A paper Russell Howell presented at the Lewis conference

This is an interesting offshoot of the argument from reason.

William Lane Craig's defense of the moral argument

This is Bill Craig's defense of the moral argument for God's existence.

Out of the e-mail archives: some comments by Steve Thomas on Parsons's critique of my argument

This is some comments by Steve Thomas in response to Keith Parsons' Philosophia Christi response to my presentation of the argument from Reason. He wrote this in 2003, but I think the points are still interesting.


Dear Victor,

I just received my copy of the latest Philosophia Christi with the symposium on the Argument from Reason.  Congratulations!  Its great to see the issues you raise get this sort of attention in print.

I haven't read the whole thing yet -- I've only skimmed over some of it at this point -- but I wanted to comment on something Parsons said, to complement your response.  He writes

    "Consider the interaction problem... Descartes took this criticism very seriously, and he should have.  Surely dualists owe the rest of us some sort of account.  After all, they posit an entity that has no physical properties..."

First, I would like to see Parsons (or any naturalist, for that matter) give an account of *physical causation*.  For example, what does it mean to say that one billard ball "made contact with" another billard ball and caused the second to move?  Perhaps the initial response would cite the molecular structure of billard balls.  Eventually, I think, it would turn to descriptions of *forces* at the atomic or subatomic level, employing terms like "push", "repel", and so on.  Now, just what are those forces?  How do they do what they do?  Do physicalists owe some account of the "what"s and "how"s here, or are we just supposed to buy into the idea that they understand what is going on at fundamental levels of causation?  For Parsons to suggest that dualists "owe the rest of us some sort of account" suggests to me that he has an overly inflated view of scientific knowledge, and perhaps "the rest of us" (non-dualists?) do as well.

Second, from the fact that dualism posits "an entity that has no physical properties", it does not follow that there are no properties in common between material and immaterial substances -- unless by "no physical properties" Parson means that immaterial substances have no properties whatsoever.  Material and immaterial objects may share a host of properties on the one hand, and still differ from one another qualitatively in ways that justify a different classification of substances on the other.

Just a couple of thoughts.  I welcome your reflections, as you have time.

Take care,

Who moved the stone

At 1:49 PM, Giordano Sagredo said…

The post said:
You think questions like, "Can God create a rock so big that He cannot lift it?" and, "Can God will Himself out of existence?" are perfect examples of how to disprove God's omnipotence and ultimately how to disprove God. When someone proves to you the false logic behind the questions (i.e. pitting God's omnipotence against itself), you desperately try to defend the questions, but then give up and go to a different Christian site to ask them.
Saying it is 'false logic' to pit omnipotence against itself does nothing to dispel the logical problems. Why is this false logic? What definition of omnipotence is being used from which it follows that the logic of the question is wrong?
This person is angrily dismissing a beautiful question, one a child can ask and understand, about an omnipotent being. The question leads to a host of interesting philosophical issues about the meaning of 'all powerful'. Could God not make the law of noncontradiction false? Could God make immoral things moral? What are the limits of God's power? They clearly exist, and hence the logical conclusion seems to be that God is not omnipotent. There are moral and logical constraints on God's powers.

Giordano:

As I indicated, the "fundy atheist" list is full of misfires, but I'm not sure this is one. There is nothing wrong with the question, surely, but I think what Holding is parodying here is the use of the argument to refute the concept of omnipotence. It looks like a slam dunk against theism at first, but most philosophers, including atheists, do not regard it as a serious objection. It's kind of like going on talkorigins and arguing that evolution can't be true because it conflicts with the second law of thermodynamics.

The problem is that this paradox has a standard solution in the philosophical literature. It involves defining omnipotence as not involving contradictions. God has, according to the standard definition, the power to do everything that constitutes a coherent possibility. It does not imply that every statement of the form "God can X" is true. So we can say that God cannot bring it about that Floyd the barber shaves everyone who does not shave himself in Mayberry, because this is logically impossible. A stone that an omnipotent being can't lift is not a possible object, and therefore the statement "God cannot make a stone he can't lift" and "God is omnipotent" are perfectly compatible, once you understand the standard definition of omnipotence.

The chapter on Omnipotence in C. S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain is helpful in this regard. See also this from the Stanford Encyclopeda of Philosophy:

BonJour's argument from intentionality

Bill Vallicella has linked to an argument from intentionality against materialism by Lawrence BonJour.

Jason Pratt on Lewis and getting high

Hey, Victor!

I don't know if anyone ever bothered to look up the fundy anti-Lewis
reference to Sheldon Vanauken's _A Severe Mercy_; but I finally got around
to doing so last night.

The phrase _is_ there. ("We must have some good, long talks together [if
you come to England], and perhaps we shall both get high.")

There is no specific contextual reference to what Lewis meant, either in
the letter, or in Van's text preceding it for several pages (back through
another letter from Lewis.) The only certain inference that can be drawn,
is that Lewis is responding to something Van had written in the
(unpublished) letter to which Lewis is here replying.

Taking the actual _story_ (and _history_) of the situation into account,
however, there are two explanations which would fit to a lesser or greater
degree (respectively).

a.) Neither Lewis nor Vanauken was much for 'high church', though both were
very much fond of the sort of intense aesthetic experiences which 'high
church' rituals tend to communicate. They just both preferred to receive
such aesthetic experiences from a different route. Studying the overt
history of both of them (the positive evidence actually available,
including in ASM itself), it's obvious that they sought this aesthetic
experience in a mystical appreciation of Nature (especially if that
experience could be shared with a friend), and also in intellectual
contemplation of principles of truth. At the same time, Lewis certainly
believed (and so did Van in his own way) that they were being priggish
about not appreciating high church, especially in such a way; and
considered a certain amount of submission to this to be a healthy
mortification of their natural tastes. So,

a1.) Lewis could be referring to the possibility that, between the two of
them, they might finally be able to come to a better acceptance of 'high
church' ritual (i.e. _perhaps_ they shall both "get high");

a2.) Lewis could be referring to the shared aesthetic experiences both of
them actually did treasure (appreciation of Nature and intellectual
contemplation).

If one wonders why two men so strongly inclined to appreciate such things
would _perhaps_ "get high" on such a visit, instead of it being an expected
given, then we only need look at Van's current emotional situation to
understand that at _that_ time such a result would _not_ be such a given;
leading to:

b.) Van was, at that time, grieving horribly for the death of his beloved
wife (with whom he had spent some years previously in sharing the sort of
aesthetic experiences they both appreciated along with Lewis, btw.) This is
what the story in his book has been leading up to (in his authorship of
hindsight), and would soon be recognized by him (thanks to Lewis' help) as
being "a severe mercy" (thus the title he chose for the book): because
before Jean's ("Davy's") death, she had become a considerably more devoted
Christian than Van in some ways, and Van had become somewhat jealous of God
about this--enough so that he had developed an infatuation with a mutual
friend of theirs (named Jane) who reminded him of how Davy _used_ to be.

Not long before writing the letter to which Lewis was replying in the quote
excerpted by the anti-Lewis fundamentalists, Van had (in his grief)
attempted to renounce his Christianity in vengeance against God--and had
failed. (Not many years later, Lewis would do something almost as strong in
his grief over the death of _his_ wife, too.) It is this attempt and
failure and its implications which Lewis spends most of his letter (printed
by Van in the book) addressing; obviously, Lewis would now have an even
clearer idea than before how horribly depressed Vanauken must be.

I expect, then, that Lewis was most probably hoping (by means of a2 above)
to help Van get over his _depression_; the "get high" being a slang
shorthand for this.


Admittedly, none of this logically excludes the possibility that Lewis
would be offering to do drugs of some sort with Van during their trip (one
could even tease a path of temptation toward that from a2); but... well,
damn... {snorf!} What the hell kind of people would imagine, given all this
situation, that Lewis and/or Vanauken would _mean_ that??? It would
actually make more sense (as little as _that_ would nevertheless be) to
imagine them having a tacit homosexual relationship with each other. (There
_is_ at least overt correspondence between them on the topic of
homosexuality--though not in _that_ regard.)

There are some 'Christians' whom I wish I could backhand into eternity.

Then I recall that God is the one Who will certainly be doing that.

(And _then_ I recall that _I_ had better watch out, not to be such a
'Christian' myself... {self-critical grimace} And that if God has to do it,
it's _for_ their sakes, not against them. Whereas I, the sinner, would
honestly prefer to flush and forget them. It's a good thing God is better
than I am. {s})


Jason

An exercise for participants in the ID debate

This is a 1982 book defending evolution against ICR-style creationism. I read a lot of this literature back when I was in graduate school and this was the book on the evolutionist side that I thought didn't use bad arguments against creationism. He doesn't seem to imply that no non-naturalistic theory could be scientific, (Creationists of the last century did real science), but the ICR people escape problems by appealing to the mysterious nature of God, and creationism becomes pseudoscientific at that point. It also exposes misrepresentations of evolution by Morris, Gish, etc. It also gives a lot of good Darwinian theory, in language that we nonspecialists can understand.

Whether you think the case against ICR works or not, (I'm pretty convinced, myself) this provides the reader with a lot of pitfalls to avoid on both sides of the issue. What I like is that it isn't aimed at the ID issue at all, yet its arguments are clearly relevant to the ID debate.

The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy

Open Court's book, on The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy, is being advertised on Amazon, though it should hit the stores next month. I have an essay in it entitled "The Green Witch and the Great Debate: Freeing Narnia from the Spell of the Lewis-Anscombe Legend.

Evolution and Certainty

Is there any area in science other than evolutionary biology where people are so fond of certainty claims? It seems like in every other discipline certainty claims are actively discouraged by the leading scientists; here there is a hankering after it. Or do I just not understand because I don't know enough science? I used to be told that the need for certainty is something religious people hang onto but scientific types learn to get over.

OTOH, I once heard a geologist call Darwin's theory of evolution the Greatest Story Ever Told.

Menuge clarifies

Victor,
I don't understand the context regarding the age of the Earth issue. If this concerns my remarks in Kansas then they were as I maintain now, that I do not KNOW the age of the eartth. This does not mean that there is no good evidence for an ancient Earth, but that I have little respect for the view that the Earth's antiquity is obvious when all dating techinques depend on many layers of assumptions and inferences that could be mistaken. My brother, Julian Menuge is a geo-chronoligist, and this is the case where knowing more about the issues does NOT make it more certain. Too many people confess far too much certainty about a very difficult issue. Remember that in the 19th century materialist dogma led to the majority position that the univers was INFINITELY old, which no-one now believes.
 

3 points:
(1) Do not be decieved by the appearance that typical Darwinists are experts on the age of the Earth---they are not. Geo-chronology, my brother's discipline, is a highly specialized technical discipline, and most biologists know no more about it than a typical bank-manager, however much they may accept on authority.
(2) I testified as a mere philosopher and so of course did not claim scientific knowledge in the area. My reservations arise because geo-chronology inevitably depends on extrapolating presently observable processes into the past in ways that might be wrong. IF you make certain assumptions, then conventional assumptions of the age of the Earth and universe are perfectly reasonable and intellectually honest--but the assumptions could still be wrong.
(3) NONE of our case in Kansas depended on the age of the Earth, [not a single sentence in our report] so focusing on this is a disingenuous Red Herring which avoids our actual testimony. Beware of the "it's always something else tactic."

The Evidential Argument from Evil

This anthology, edited by Daniel Howard-Snyder, is pretty much required reading when it comes to present-day discussions of the problem of evil. It contains an important essay by Plantinga and some critical dialogue on both sides.

On the credibility of ID

I think my interest in the question of the icons has gotten obscured. I'm not trying to get people to accept ID. In my present state of knowledge I don't consider myself competent to determine whether ID is correct or not.

The question at hand is whether the textbooks present an overblown case for evolution based on the "icons." When I went to the DI website, I didn't see them claiming that we should teach ID and evolution, didn't see them even use the phrase "teach the controversy," all I saw was an insistence that evolution not be supported by faulty evidence. If that's what they're asking, then isn't that kind of a fair request? If the evolutionists are right, then why should they even want their position defended by bad arguments in textbooks?

The scientific consensus on evolution seems to me to be less than absolute; I take it Michael Behe's scientific credentials are superior to everyone posting on this blog, with maybe the exception of Meyers. In my view, it's going to take years before ID is developed in its strongest form.

At one time the climate in philosophy in favor of atheism was one of almost total domination. There were few Christian philosophers working, and it was thought to be commonplace that intelligent philosophers rejected theism as a matter of course. Now, since the Society of Christian Philosophers was founded, we know that this picture of academic philosophy is false.

Evolution is the paradigm people work with. So even if it suffers from a all sorts of anomalies, there's plenty of normal science to be done within that paradigm, and I don't blame anyone for not taking a serious look at ID. Academic inertia is understandable.

There are certifiable cases of academic hardball that have been played. Can some good evolutionists please remonstrate with the people who play this kind of hardball and let them know that it doesn't help Darwin's cause any? Darwinist Michael Ruse is doing it, bless his heart. He also wrote the preface to Menuge's Agents Under Fire. Now whatever you think of his Kansas testimony, AUF is a tremendous challenge to philosophical naturalism, in many ways better developed than my own book, containing serious arguments which cannot be dismissed as quackery even if you disagree with them. This I can say based on my own expertise in the same field.

I never said that the academic hardball cases prove that there is a conspiracy of silence. What I said is that these cases make it harder to make the case based on academic consensus. If I had a lot at stake on the naturalistic evolutionist side I would be telling my own side "Please, if it's really wrong we don't need to declare academic war on it."

What I think I do know how to do is separate issues and keep confusions from getting in our way. If a defender of ID (or an opponent of ID) thinks that evolution entails atheism, then we need to point out that that confuses issues. Conflating ID with creationism is, I think, a big mistake even if ID advocates really believe in Young Earth Creationism.

The central claim of ID is not simply that intelligent design exists. You can believe, as many Christians working in the field believe, that there the universe was intelligently designed, but at the same time believe that the design is invisible to science and its methods. That's the real issue. We don't even need to say that the designer has to be God. Perhaps what science has to say is that there was a designer, but that we do not know who or what the designer is.

SETI seems to assume that we can discover design without observing the designers, although the kinds of design they look for give us a high antecedent probability that the designers are finite, evolved beings, but at least we don't have to have the evolved beings on hand to make the design inferences, and they could turn out not to be evolved beings.

ID theory, as I understand it, helps me, at least identify some important questions. I have always thought of myself as pretty evolution-friendly, but I have always wondered "Couldn't science figure out that that there was design behind speciation, if the design was there?" I've never wanted to defend a young earth or even attack common ancestry. (I'm just not going to get dismissive of people who do).

If you have an established paradigm, the question is how much tension is it working under. How many anomalies are underneath the surface of the theory. I think attacks on the part of YEC advocates have caused a problem, because it used to be that frank admissions of difficulties with the theory, (which go all the way to Darwin's own chapter of Origin by that very title), are often used to argue that the evolutionists themselves don't really believe in evolution. So I get the impression that evolutionary biologists sometimes engage in more triumphalistic descriptions of their work than is really warranted.

When Jason made a statement in an exchange with BDK that evolutionists were exercising faith at a certain point, I think he was misunderstood. Faith, as Jason was using the term, isn't an irrational leap in the dark, it is facing up to a difficulty with one's own overall convictions without abandoning ship, because of one's overall confidence in the strength of the belief system. I'm sure evolutionists do it, Christians do it, anyone who has a world-view has to engage in faith in just this sense.

I'm thoroughly convinced that ID theory will eventually make a very significant and interesting contribution to our understanding of the world. And they can do this even if there is no designer, or that designer is scientifically invisible.

Angus Menuge on Wells and Ncse

Victor,
Wells himself has responded to Gishlick at:
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1320

There are other relevant papers at Wells' personal site:

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=submitSearchQu
ery&query=Jonathan%20Wells&orderBy=date&orderDir=DESC&searchBy=author&se
archType=all

What NCSE does not admit is the horrible job the textbooks have done of
mentioning the limitations of the examples they cite, thus giving the
student the impression of far greater certainty than is warranted by the
evidence.

Angus

NCSE on Wells

This is the response from the National Center on Science Education to Wells' Icons of Evolution. It looks reasonable on the face of things. Can anyone provide a response on Wells' behalf?

A debate on Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism on iidb

This is a debate on the Internet Infidels discussion forum on Plantinga's anti-naturalism argument.

Plantinga on evolution

This is Plantinga's discussion of the issues concerning evolution; he clearly does not think that theism rules out evolution; he just thinks that if you are a theist you ought to consider other possibilities.

Judgements here, of course, may differ widely between believer in God and non-believers in God. What for the former is at best a methodological restriction is for the latter the sober metaphysical truth: her naturalism is not merely provisional and methodological, but, as she sees it, settled and fundamental. But believers in God see the matter differently. The believer in God, unlike her naturalistic counterpart, is free to look at the evidence for the Grand Evolutionary Scheme and follows it where it leads, revising that scheme if the evidence is insufficient. She has a freedom not available to the naturalist. The latter accepts the Grand Evolutionary Scheme because from a naturalistic point of view this scheme is the only visible answer to the question what is the explanation of the presence of all these marvelously multifarious forms of life? The Christian, on the other hand, knows that creation is the Lord's; and she isn't blinkered by a priori dogmas as to how the Lord must have accomplished it. Perhaps it was by broadly evolutionary means, but then again perhaps not. At the moment, 'perhaps not' seems the better answer.

The Lippard blog

This is a link to Jim Lippard's blog. Jim is an atheist and responded to my original Argument from Reason paper in Philo a few years back. He has an MA in philosophy but works on internet security for a internet service provider.

On the intellectual vice of fundamentalism

Originally, a fundamentalist was someone who believed in the "five fundamentals" which I indicated earlier. Such Christians were reacting against modernism or liberal theology's tendency to deny what they thought were the essentials of Christian doctrine. In more recent parlance, it has simply become a term of abuse for those more theologically conservative than oneself, as Plantinga points out. But I think fundmantalism also can be a term for a kind of intellectual vice: the vice of being controlled by, and locked into, a system of beliefs, such that anything from outside that system has to be rejected, however insightful it may be. The "fundamentalist" critics of C. S. Lewis are guilty of this; Lewis agrees with them on several important points and has numerous valuable apologetical and spiritucal insights, but, because he doesn't fully agree with them, he is to be denounced. Intellectual opponents aren't just mistaken, there is something really wrong with them, they are enemies, intellectual frauds to be demolished at all costs. When you encounter someone guilty of the vice of fundamentalism, what they want to know from you is "Are you for us or against us. Do you believe all of the Bible (or evolution) or do you believe none of it."

This is a link to "You might be a fundamentalist atheist if" from the Tektonics website. I don't endorse all the content here, and I find Holding to be too much of an ideologue for my taste. All I am saying is that it is possible to be guilty of the intellectual vice of fundamentalism without being a Christian or even a theist.

More on Warfield and Evolution from an ID defender

Who are you calling an evolutionist? Babinski on fundamentalist history

Here is a nice bit of history from Ed Babinski from the talkorigins archive on this history of fundamentalism and the evolution controversy. I would just add the caveat that without further explication, the terms "creationist" and "evolutionist" don't really mean much of anything.

The History of Creationism

A review of Ronald Numbers' book on the history of creationism, detailing how the early fundamentalists did not endorse the Gish-Morris brand of creationism, and how that tradition comes to a very large extent from Seventh-Day Adventists, thought of in many Christian circles as being cultists.

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9304/reviews/noll.html

Wells response to criticisms

Wells has responded to several of his critics here:

Hugh Chandler on the Lewis-Anscombe exchange

I mentioned after returning from Cambridge the fact that at the Oxford half of the meeting (which I did not personally attend), they had an actors' re-enactment of the Lewis-Anscombe exchange, incorporating material from Lewis's original argument, Anscombe's criticisms, Lewis's revision(s), and Anscombe's final comments in the book of her papers. I also pointed out that Anscombe's husband, Peter Geach, was concerned about how his wife would be portrayed. Now in one respect I really do think the dramatization did realize what Geach feared. The presentation ended with a spotlight on Anscombe taking a cigar out of her mouth and saying "I won." I remember expressing some concerns about this to the people who wrote the re-enactment (who for the most part did an outstanding job) because I think philosophy is not mainly about winning and losing. I told my dissertation advisor Hugh Chandler, with whom I spent a long time talking about Lewis v. Anscombe while I was a graduate student at the University of Illinois, and he shared my concerns about it.

I don't think that "I won" ending is fair to Anscombe, or to the discussion.
It is true that she thought that her criticisms of that first version had been just. Presumably Lewis himself took at least some of her objections to heart. His re-working of the first edition argument shows awareness of "the depth and difficulty of the questions being discussed" (Anscombe's generous words).

Both of them, presumably, showed 'honesty and seriousness' in the exchange and afterwards. It wasn't a game. Winning or losing wasn't the point.


The cigar incident was reported by Walter Hooper, and I think is one of the things that has led to a deep misunderstanding of the exchange between the two. It does not reflect Anscombe's mature, reflective understanding of what really happened. I suppose, however, that it did make good drama, but I for one wish it had been omitted.

Has philosophy told us nothing about how we think?

Ahab wrote:

After centuries of theorizing, philosophy has told us virtually zilch about how the mind operates. In fact, much of what it claimed to tell us is now being shown wrong through neuroscientific studies. And as neuroscience advances, the study of mind is going to incrasingly become a scientific matter, just like evolution and gravity are now.

Beg to differ. Philosophy has told us how to distinguish between questions of formal validity and the truths of the premises, and has the familiar list of fallacies was invented by philosophers long before the Scientific Revolution.

Vallicella on God of the Gaps reasoning

This is a a discussion from Vallicella on God of the Gaps reasoning. Check out his critique of Dawkins as well.

http://maverickphilosopher.powerblogs.com/posts/1126044454.shtml

C . S. Lewis and marijuana

The following passage, from one of the fundamentalist essays on Lewis, is hilarous.

"In the book A Severe Mercy by Sheldon VanAuken a personal letter is reproduced on page 191 in which Lewis suggests to VanAuken that upon his next visit to England that the two of them “must have some good, long talks together and perhaps we shall both get high.” In light of this, it is interesting that in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis’s fantasy children’s tale, a hero named Edmund meets a magical witch who conjures up for him a box of Turkish Delight, which Edmund devours and begs for more. Turkish Delight is a name for hashish."

Of course the Turkish Delight was a candy used by the evil White Witch to entice Edmund to betray his brother and sisters. But let's not allow facts to get in the way of a really good piece of slander.

"I tried it but I didn't inhale." - Bill Clinton

C S Lewis and fundamentalism

We have to be clear on how we're going to use the word fundamentalist. These guys are calling theselves fundamentalists; the term is frequently just a term of abuse applied to people whose religious views are more conservative than one's own, as Alvin Plantinga famously and hilariously points out in Warranted Christian Belief:

"I fully realize that the dreaded f-word will be trotted out to stigmatize [my view]. Before responding, however, we must first look into the use of this term 'fundamentalist'. On the most common contemporary academic use of the term, it is a term of abuse or disapprobation, rather like 'son of a bitch', more exactly 'sonovabitch', or perhaps still more exactly (at least according to those authorities who look to the Old West as normative on matters of pronunciation) 'sumbitch'...

"In addition to its emotive force, it does have some cognitive content, and ordinarily denotes relatively conservative theological views. That makes it more like 'stupid sumbitch' (or maybe 'fascist sumbitch'?) than 'sumbitch' simpliciter. It isn't exactly like that term either, however, because its cognitive content can expand and contract on demand; its content seems to depend on who is using it. In the mouths of certain liberal theologians, for example, it tends to denote any who accept traditional Christianity, including Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and Barth; in the mouths of devout secularists like Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett, it tends to denote anyone who believes there is such a person as God...[The term's] cognitive content is given by the phrase 'considerably to the right, theologically speaking, of me and my enlightened friends.' The full meaning of the term, therefore (in this use), can be given by something like 'stupid sumbitch whose theological opinions are considerably to the right of mine'" (Warranted Christian Belief, pp. 244-245).


However, Fundamentalism was originally the defense of five fundamental claims which were defended in a set of pamphlets called The Fundamentals. The Five Fundamentals were initially:

1. The Verbal Inspiration of Scripture
2. The Virgin Birth of Christ
3. The Substitutionary Atonement of Christ
4. The Bodily Resurrection of Christ
5. The Second Coming of Christ.

Lewis staunchly defended 2, 4, and 5. He did not defend 1 or 3. So I guess Lewis is a three-point fundamentalist.

Interestingly there is nothing about denying evolution in the fundamentals, and some of the Fundamentals pamphlets were actually evolution-friendly. So initially, you didn't have to oppose evolution in order to be a fundamentalist!

The Icons of Evolution

Going to the arn.org page to find out what they said about the teaching of evolution in schools, I find that some of the complaints have to do with the fact that the textbooks teach myths of "icons" of evolution which have been provide incorrect. Are the claims made about these icons by arn.org incorrect?

A poem about Katrina

This is a poem written by a college student from the University of New Orleans that someone sent me.

Hello my name is Kalli,

And for the time I am 19,

And this may sound alarming,

But I am a refugee.



I lived in Katrina's path.

New Orleans, LA.

And while I've got the world's attention.

I have something I'd like to say.



Let's stop the pointing fingers.

Let's stop saying who's to blame.

Because half my city's under water

And parts are up in flames.



My home maybe crumbling

And some possessions I have lost.

But I do not reproach anyone,

For it is no one's fault.



Now's the time to band together;

To help those who are in need.

Please just stop all this bickering,

And help us refugees.


Now, it's quite true that no human caused the hurricane. Bill Clinton, for example, said that while he had some very strong opinions about how FEMA should be organized, that he would reserve them until the relief efforts were further along.

However, we do elect political leaders, and when we elect them we have to ask who is sufficiently in touch with "the least of our brethren" to preside over those who have been victimized. We also have to ask whether the wind and rain have not the mask of the ugly face of racism in America. We have to ask if we were battling against the last tragedy when we were fighting this one (Bush made FEMA a sub-department of Homeland Security, even though there is an obvious difference between securing oursevles against an enemy and helping those suffering from a natural catastrophe). And did it also tear the mask off of condescending attitutes toward the poorest classes that we have been carrying around? My family and I are involved in the relief effort, but it's not an either-or between helping out on the one hand and asking how we can make our culture and government better able to assist when these situations arise in the future.

C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Theology

Apparently some Fundamental Baptists are warning people about C. S. Lewis.

http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/bewareof-cslewis.html

Is methodological naturalism relevant to intelligent design?

If an earlier post about this is on target, the answer may very well be no. It looks as if if we develop a scientific method for detecting design, then there is no reason based on methodological naturalism not to use the method and accept the claim that a designer is responsible. The identification of the designer as outside of space and time, or in space and time, can be done independently from the detection of design itself, and will probably have to be based on the antecedent credence function of the individual scientist. That is, the scientist who says that speciation on earth is the result of intelligent design may believe that the designer is the Abrahamic God, but perhaps should not include that as a part of the actual scientific theory.

Apparently the scientists responsible for SETI are prepared to determine what messages were designed without knowing (but only surmising) that they are products of extraterrestrial evolution. It would take an implausibly strong version of methodological naturalism to claim that we cannot infer design unless we are now in a position to explain the existence of the designers natuarlistically. But you need a version of methodolgical naturalism that strong to rule out intelligent design.

By the way, wouldn't it greatly help the intelligent design debate if people would refrain from using terms like "supernatural," "God", "religion," and "creationism". The central theses of ID can be states without reference to any of these, and using them invariably confuses the issue. Design inferences can establish a designer, they need not necessarily establish God. You can believe that the designer is God without making that a part of your theory.

Let them eat cake

A fundamental problem for Christians who are also political conservatives is reconciling the biblical requirements to be compassionate toward the poor with conservative reluctance to involve the government in social welfare. The standard conservative response is to say that conservatives can be as compassionate as liberals, they just don't want the federal government leading the charge to help the poor. It is true that liberals and conservatives alike are giving of themselves to help the displaced citizens of New Orleans who, for the most part, were to impoverished to leave town. However if when the head of FEMA says he was surprised at how many people stayed behind, we get a sense that the leaders of the administration are out of touch. And this comment, by "Queen Mother" Barbara Bush, reinforces that impression:

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this (she chuckled slightly)--this is working very well for them."

Hurricane Katrina

I've said nothing so far about Hurricane Katrina. I am simply stunned that the infrastucture of one of America's great cities has collapsed. The winds and the sea have done what bin Laden could not do.

The response on the part of our leaders seems to be underwhelming. FEMA in particular seems to be hung up on bureaucracy when people are dying. Although I share his Christian faith, I have never been a fan of George W. Bush, and I've seen nothing in the past few days that inspires confidence in his administration. I can't help remembering that he responded well to the four hurricanes in his brother's home state of Florida, which was a swing state in the upcoming election. Am I being cynical in thinking that the response would have been better if there were presidential votes at stake?

Rather than being a tragedy that unites us as Americans, like 9/11, this is a tragedy that accentuates the differences between rich and poor, black and white. There is no outisde enemy who did this to us, there is no one to whom we can sing, "We'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way."

I do not know if this will shake faith in God, or strengthen it. If we have been sustaining our faith in God by believing that whatever is wrong in the rest of the world, it can't happen here, then our faith has been a faith worth shaking.

This column, by George Will, is worth reading.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9014028/#storyContinued

ID and SETI

One claim we often hear from advocates of ID is that scientists do seem willing to make inferences to designers when it is thought that the existence of those designers can be explained naturalistically. For example, thoroughgoing naturalists such as the late Carl Sagan was a leader in the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, checking messages from outer space for signs of intelligence, and using the criteria we ordinarily use to figure out whether something was designed to determine the possible presence of intelligence in outer space.

Now admittedly we do frequently make design inference in human affairs when we human designers are available to explain the presence of design. Thus if I am playing poker, I ought to use the best reasoning I can to determine whether the dealer is dealing hands randomly, or whether those hands reflect an intelligent design to affect the outcome of the game and take home the lion's share of the cash. But in these cases the designers well known, and there is scientific work taking place which attempts to account for human action naturalistically.

Now I pointed out in chapter 6 of my book that these teleological explanations work, allow us to make predictions and form expectations, with or without either an actual naturalistic reduction of human action or even the potential for such a reduction. If someone says "Reppert goes to church on Sunday morning because he is a Christian who believes in public worship," and it turns out that this teleological explanation cannot be analysed in terms of the activities of more basic stuff that is explained in some mechanistic way, this in no way invalidates the explanation. In fact, if you want to know why I go to church, my beliefs and desires will go a lot further toward providing an adequate explanation than a comprehensive neurophysiological map. Denigrating such explanations as "skyhooks" does nothing to undermine their explanatory power.

Now, as I pointed out, naturalistic scientists are willing to accept "design" explanations for messages from space without any worry about their methodological naturalism because of the potential for a naturalistic analysis of the intelligence once its source is discovered. Evolution by random variation and natural selection could have take place on another planets, if there is life on other planets. To deny this would be to be either stupid, ignorant, insane or wicked.

But what if we get messages from outer space, and we use those messages to cure cancer, find peace in the Middle East, put an end to terrorism, etc. Suppose we then get a message from space that says "Here is how you build a spacecraft to get to where these message come from. I want you to know who I am." We build the ships, go to the source planet, and find the place to be lifeless. There is no evidence that there has ever been life on this planet. No signs of evolution whatsoever. However, there we find one stone tablet with one word: YHWH in Hebrew, I am who I am.

This scenario is a little different from the one I had discussed once with atheist philosopher Keith Parsons years ago. I had told Keith his views on miracles made it impossible for God to reasonably persuade him that He exists, and Keith said,"No, if the stars in the Virgo cluster were to spell out the words "Turn or Burn, This Means You Parsons," he would turn. This case is different in that we have been making inferences to a designer all along, thinking that the designer must no doubt be a naturalistically evolved designer. Then we discover that we were wrong, and that the designers are not natural entities.

Shouldn't naturalists and anti-naturalists be making the same design inferences, and pushing the dispute back to the question of who or what the designers are?

An answer to Ahab

To answer Ahab on the Lehigh statement affirming Darwinian theory and repudiating intelligent design, this is a clear case of avoiding the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. No one is challenging his credentials as a biologist, no one is denying that he has done genuine scientific work, they deny only that ID is science. Similarly, one could deny that Francis Crick's panspermia thesis is scientific while at the same time affirming that his DNA discoveries were prefectly scientific (which no one in their right ind would deny, of course).

It's one thing to say that ID isn't really science, (you'll notice that they don't even say that it could never be science, only that it is not now science), and it is another to say that no true scientists endorse it. It's that latter claim that I think can't be made without committing the NTS fallacy.

A post from ID the Future

Here is a post from ID the Future, about Daniel Dennett's op-ed piece. I would like to hear critical responses from opponents of ID. Can Dennett be defended?


http://www.idthefuture.com/index.php?p=700&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1#more700

More on Myers and ID

I deliberately included Myers' comments about translation and then neglected to comment upon it. You are right, he did say that, so he was not simply planning on leaving us to trust them. I do have some expertise in another field (Ph.D in Philosophy from University of Illinois at Urbana), and sometimes I think I can see some things based on my own background that might be missed by people inside a discipline. The disciplines don't categorize as neatly as one would like, and while a distinction between science and metaphysics can be drawn in principle; very often there is an overlap.

An example is the conflation of ID with creationism. Immanuel Kant pointed out in the 18th Century that even a successful design argument would prove the existence of an artificer but not a creator. One can believe that the artificer is the creator, but the argument itself establishes only the artificer. So a defender of ID would have to admit that their scientific arguments do not establish the Judeo-Christian God, even if they work. And of course ID advocates seem to have dropped any attempt to defend a literal reading of Genesis. The question "Can we detect design in nature" is a different question from the question "Is Genesis 1 literally true," or even "Is there a God?" And that's a distinct question from the question "Has there been significant microevolution?" It may be that the motives of ID advocates are similar to those of creationists, but the questions they pose are different, and these questions desperately need to be distinguished.

Arguments from design are traditionally in the domain of philosophy; Swinburne defended design arguments but distinguished between scientific and personal explanations. Has evolutionary biology discovered, or merely presupposed, a lack of design in nature? It seems to me that is not strictly a scientific question, though it is addressed by science. I don't think I'm completely at the mercy of the experts on at least some of the relevant issues.

I think there are a number of things that evolutionists are doing that harms their position with the general public. As a Christian, for example, I am embarrassed by Pat Robertson's incredibly stupid and immoral comments about assassination. I try hard to show by example that Christians can be rational and intelligent, and then this idiot pops off. Some of the anti-ID invective that I read on pro-evolution websites really hurts their cause in the long run, and I think sensible evolutionists should react to it in much the same way I react to Robertson. Unless the e-mail evidence put forward by the Office of Special Counsel was made up, then the issue at the Smithsonian is a problem that evolutionists need to be concerned about. Evolutionists should learn to distinguish between quality control and a search-and-destroy mission. Even if Dawkins contadicted himself in a previous passage, he did say what he did about people who don't believe in evolution, and this is results in bad public relations. Because to some extent we have to trust experts in biology, there are things that the scientific community can do to either enhance or undermine that trust.

I haven't forgotten some of the public school lobbying by creationists and ID advocates that I think has been misguided. That doesn't alter the fact that, at least as I see it, the ID people have asked good questions. I'm not going to argue that they have found the right answers.

P Z Myers on why evolution is accepted

Jim Lippard has called my attention to this passage from P. Z. Myers's weblog:

http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/tanj_and_science_webloggers/

Those kinds of papers are the real reason no serious scientist in
biology accepts creationism. They are dense with data, full of
observations that fully support evolution, and often push past it to
clue us in to the promising paths that evolutionary theory is leading
us down. Any one of those papers outweighs all the noise from the
Discovery Institute and the Institute for Creation Research and
Answers in Genesis…and those papers just keep pouring out of the
world's research institutions, week after week.

Unfortunately, those papers all assume a scary amount of background
knowledge, rattle off lots of dry technical points in abstruse
language, and are entirely unapproachable to even a well-educated
layman, let alone a creationist—and they're the ones who really
need to be made aware of this volume of work.

And that's where I think the science webloggers have to step in. We need to translate. That's also our role.


Now can someone please explain to me why this doesn't boil down to "We're the experts. Trust us." And given what I know of how the rationalistic vision of science has been undermined by books like the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, given the questionable objectivity of the peer-review process, given the clearly unjustified conflation of ID with Scientific Creationism, given the persistent attempt to portray evolution critics not merely as mistaken, but ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked, this is just not a sufficient answer. I'm not saying that a good enough answer couldn't be given, I just want an answer that doesn't require so much faith.

With Christians like these, who needs atheists

So Pat Robertson wants the US to perform a covert operation to "take out" Hugo Chavez, and he recommends this by announcing it on his nationally televized 700 Club????? Besides being highly un-Christian and un-biblical, this is just incredibly stupid.

Dialogue with Ahab on motivation

would argue that there potential motives of all kinds on all sides in this matter, than no one is immune from the influence of their passions when it comes to the decision as to whether to believe in God or not, and I am not inclined to disbelieve someone when they tell me they don't believe in God in virtue of their best efforts to evaluate the evidence pro and con. I do get somewhat offended when people like Russell imply that Christians are really engaged in wishful thinking when they claim that their beliefs are based on reasons.

Even for someone who is an atheist, who believes in a practices a moral code which is based on human considerations, there is probably something appealing about the idea that this moral code did not come from some supreme being.

Another factor that kind of works on all sides of this is that both believers and unbelievers come to be at home in their universes; they get used to thinking of things in theistic or non-theistic terms, and to change that, especially late in life, is emotionally taxing.

I think it is not unusual or strange for someone to not want there to be a God. The desire for humans to be autonomous, even if they are no constantly engaging in what Christians would call sin, is very powerful. "Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven," says Milton's Satan.

Do you think that a special burden of proof falls upon theists because they believe what most people really want to believe, whether they admit it or not, while atheists have less in the way of non-rational motivation preventing them from discovering the truth?

Maverick on God and Comfort

http://maverickphilosopher.powerblogs.com/posts/1124504161.html

A provocative post from Brandon on atheism

This reminds me of the time in grad school (though I wasn't in this particular class) when a tenured faculty member came into the classroom and saw a cross drawn on the blackboard. He lay his head down on the front desk until someone asked him why. Then he said "We can't start class until someone erases that.

http://branemrys.blogspot.com/2005/08/ramblings-on-state-of-modern-atheism.html

Lunch with Steve Lovell

One thing I forgot to mention in my report on Cambridge was meeting Steve Lovell in person, with whom I had e-mailed and who wrote his philosophy dissertation on C. S. Lewis. We are working on editing a philosophical Lewis anthology, but the project has been slowed by the ups and downs of human existence. Hopefully, we can get rolling toward the finish line.

This is Steve's Philosophical Themes from C. S. Lewis site.

http://www.csl-philosophy.co.uk/

The Office of Special counsel on the Sternberg case

The Office of Special Counsel has decided that Sternberg's complaints were justified. See http://www.rsternberg.net/OSC_ltr.htm

And this is a discussion of Michael Ruse's differences with some of his fellow Darwinists.

http://www.salon.com/books/int/2005/08/06/ruse/index_np.html

Apparently he is considered a traitor by some on his own side.

http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/michael_ruse_is_a_very_confused_fellow/

My point is this: regardless of what "side" you are on, you can and should be critical of misguided tactics on the part of your own side. Even if you think that ID is insane, you don't have to go on a crusade against it.

That said, it does not follow from the fact that some people are overzealous in their attacks on ID, that ID is good science.

I feel the same way about heresy-hunting Christians and their crusade against open theism, for example.

Carr on Plantinga

Steven Carr wrote:

Plantinga writes 'Furthermore, since an argument can be good even if it is not deductively valid, you can't refute it just by pointing out that it isn't deductively valid.'

There goes his defense to the logical problem of evil, condemned out of his own mouth.....

You have to admire Planting'a chutzpah, and his ability to contradict himself - *and keep going as though nothing had happened*.

VR: Of course an argument can be good even if it's not deductively valid, unless it attempts to prove the opponent's beliefs not only false, but contradictory. Then it's a bad argument unless it deductively proves precisely that. That is what the Logical Argument from Evil claims, and in accusing the theist of logical contradiction, it places upon itself the burden of showing that there really is a contradiction in which the theist believes. Most atheist philosophers, such as Keith M. Parsons in God and the Burden of Proof, acknowledge that Plantinga has shown that the Logical Argument fails to prove a contradiction in the theist's beliefs.

On the other hand, the Probabilistic of Evidential problem of evil can be good even though it's not deductively valid. It is an attempt to show that theism is unlikely given the existence of evil, and this argument is always given separate treatment in Plantinga's writings, going all the way back to God and Other Minds, The Nature of Necessity.

Plantinga may be wrong, but he's not stupid. Whenever you think someone of that stature is just plain contradicting himself, better take a second, a third, and a fourth look. It's like when Kasparov looks as if he's hanging a piece. He could be just blundering, but like as not it's mate in seven. I'd say the same thing about David Hume, with whom I disagree about nearly everything, and I'd say the same thing about C. S. Lewis.

Some Distinctions Concerning Methodological Naturalism

I think we need to distinguish between someone who says "We will be methodological naturalists in the way in which we do science," and someone who says "No one is doing science who does not observe MN." Also there is a difference between MN as a defeasible heuristic and MN as an absolute. when Lewontin says "Our commitment to materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door," I think we have the kind of dogmatic naturalism that concerns me. But not every version of MN is similarly open to objection.

A note from Rasmus EmilMoller on natural-born dualists

I was going through some old e-mail and found this item from Rasmus Emil-Moller. Is dualism a natural belief, like Hume would say that belief in cause and effect is a natural belief? Is it natural to believe in God?

Hello Mr. Reppert,

I have followed with great interest the apologetic debate a while ago in
alt.books.cs-lewis and followed the lead to the dangerousidea blog.

You might already have heard of this essay "Natural-born dualists" by Paul
Bloom, himself a materialist admirably facing the certain and permanent failure of
convincing the general populace of what he thinks is the truth.

I recommend it and find it relevant to your blog:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bloom04/bloom04_index.html

I am myself a traditional protestant (resurrection of flesh AND soul)
- I majored in science and engineering - though disagreeing with
Mr. Blooms materialistic views, I am pleasantly surprised with his
respect for and understanding of the reasons why people
in general will never accept those views.

I believe that C. S. Lewis would not at all be surprised to learn
that science would one day find evidence that dualism is deeply
and inextricably innate to us instead of being indoctrinated upon us :)

We did not invent "God(s)" and souls; on the contrary I (personally)
see those findings as evidence of our true origins.

godspeed

Rasmus Møller

Do we all worship the same God?

There is a post on http://theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/ on whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God reminded me of my favorite Bertrand Russell story. When Bertrand Russell was imprisoned for anti-war activities, he was checked into a jail cell by a man who asked him what his religion was. He answered "agnostic," to which the jailer replied, "We all worship the same God."

Benign methodological naturalism?

A passage from a paper I wrote on miracles suggest tome a way in which methodological naturalism can be formulated such that it can avoid the charge of dogmatism and still do some serious work. I wrote:

.....Someone who postulates a miraculous account of something may try to claim that by admitting a miracle in the background, we render a number of natural events more open to naturalistic explanation. If we find that someone refuses to recant his faith when threatened with death by torture, this occurrence is a natural event. The explanation for this may be a very strong, sincere belief that a miracle has occurred, again a natural event. But it may be that the least "forced" explanation for this sincere belief is that a miracle did occur.

It is a mistake to think that just because a theory involves commitment to the supernatural, that the supernatural content is all that there is to the theory. A supernaturalist theory can have a naturalistic "trail" of evidence for which can be found or not found. Those who believe that Jesus was raised from the dead believe that Jesus's body will not be found. If it is found (or if it had been found in the first century), traditional Christian belief will be faced with a devastating disconfirmation. If believers choose (or had chosen) to maintain their belief somehow in the face of this kind of counterevidence, this would perhaps show their irrationality, but would not show the untestability of their belief per se.

My modest proposal is this. In this essay I am suggesting that the apologist for the miraculous cmay suggest that in the case of certain chains of events postulating miracles will give us more, not fewer, naturalistic explanations. I think that if we assume that Jesus rose from the dead, we can provide better and more accurate naturalistic explanations than if we deny it. You may that I'm nuts about this; nevertheless it suggests a test that explanations that violate strict methodological naturalism must pass in order to be scientific.

BMN (Benign methodolgical naturalism) says this: In science, naturalistic explanations are the coin of the realm. We are in the business of coming up with as many and as accurate of naturalistic explanations as we possibly can find. Does this mean that all explanations have to be naturalistic? No, but if you are going to use a non-naturalistic explanation, it has to be helpful in producing the kinds of naturalistic explanations we're going after in science.

Could this suggestion help to improve the ID debate?