What’s wrong with the evolutionary argument against naturalism?
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 69 (3):193-204 (2011)
Abstract
Alvin Plantinga has argued that evolutionary naturalism (the idea that God does not tinker with evolution) undermines its own rationality. Natural selection is concerned with survival and reproduction, and false beliefs conjoined with complementary motivational drives could serve the same aims as true beliefs. Thus, argues Plantinga, if we believe we evolved naturally, we should not think our beliefs are, on average, likely to be true, including our beliefs in evolution and naturalism. I argue herein that our cognitive faculties are less reliable than we often take them to be, that it is theism which has difficulty explaining the nature of our cognition, that much of our knowledge is not passed through biological evolution but learned and transferred through culture, and that the unreliability of our cognition helps explain the usefulness of scienceAuthor's Profile
DOI
10.1007/s11153-010-9272-3
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Citations of this work
Natural Selection Does Care about Truth.Maarten Boudry & Michael Vlerick - 2014 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 28 (1):65-77.
The Real Conflict Between Science and Religion: Alvin Plantinga’s Ignoratio Elenchi.Herman Philipse - 2013 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 5 (2):87--110.
References found in this work
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Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman - 1974 - Science 185 (4157):1124-1131.