Abstract
Evolutionary debunking arguments (EDAs) against religious beliefs move from the claim that religious beliefs are caused by off-track processes to the conclusion that said religious beliefs are unjustified and/or false. Prima facie, EDAs commit the genetic fallacy, unduly conflating the context of discovery and the context of justification. In this paper, we first consider whether EDAs necessarily commit the genetic fallacy, and if not, whether modified EDAs (e.g., those that posit falsehood-tracking or perniciously deceptive belief-forming mechanisms) provide successful arguments against theism. Then, we critically evaluate more recent attempts to argue that a more promiscuous evolutionary scepticism renders religious belief unjustified because, unlike commonsense and scientific beliefs, religious beliefs have no way out of such scepticism.
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Notes
This raises the question of what truth-tracking consists in. Kahane (2011) does not specify, instead assuming “an intuitive understanding of the epistemic premise (such an understanding doesn’t require a positive account of truth-tracking processes)”. Presumably, however, he has something like Nozick’s (1981) account in mind, in which:
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(1)
p is true
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(2)
S believes p
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(3)
if p were not true then S would not believe that p, and
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(4)
if p were true then S would believe that p (and would not believe that not-p).
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(1)
Indeed, for epistemic externalists, reasons could count as causes; good reasons would thus be epistemically respectable causes
After all, Griffith and Wilkins’s (2013) inference to the best explanation is itself in the dock under this radical evolutionary scepticism.
This is not to deny that Swinburne thinks that religious experiences have a role to play in justifying religious belief. Indeed, Swinburne argues that “One who has had a religious experience apparently of God has, by the Principle of Credulity, good reason for believing that there is a God—other things being equal” (p. 324). But what if things are not equal? Swinburne concedes, as we do, that one who has had a religious experience but has other reasons to believe “that it is significantly more probable than not that there is no God” (p. 326) is not justified in believing that there is God. But what if it can be shown that “special considerations”—such as the influence of hallucinogens—render one’s religious experience questionable? Swinburne concedes, as we do, that the religious experience would not provide sufficient reason for believing that there is a God. However, neither Swinburne nor we believe that everything rides on the religious experience. Even if the religious experience itself fails to provide sufficient reason for believing that there is a God, other arguments are available. The validity and soundness of these arguments are not affected by the reason-providing poverty of the religious experience.
This is probably the reason why much of the EDA debate in philosophy of religion has so far been preoccupied with defending the truth-tracking nature of the cognitive mechanisms that (according to CSR) produce theistic beliefs. See, for example Clark and Barrett (2011), Murray (2009), and Murray and Goldberg (2009).
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Jong, J., Visala, A. Evolutionary debunking arguments against theism, reconsidered. Int J Philos Relig 76, 243–258 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-014-9461-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-014-9461-6