Book Review – ‘The Universe Within’ (2/2): Reductionism, Science, Religion and the Importance of Transcendence

There are many ways that Kursheed’s book touches on issues of importance to me. In this second and final post I will focus on just three of them: reductionism, religion and science, and the importance of our recognising the transcendent.

Reductionism:

It was in a way no surprise to find that Khursheed[1] shares Plantinga’s perspective, though expressing it in different terms: ‘religious literalism and scientific empiricism share many of the same psychological characteristics.’ He makes an additional observation drawn from another writer:[2] ‘Reductionism, according to Roszak, is responsible for “the turning of people and nature into worthless things”.’

This blocks any chance of our searching for[3] any ‘universal truth because it implies that such truths do not exist.’ This, he feels is a somewhat paradoxical  ‘contradiction in modern thinking, which in other instances prides itself on its openness.’

Unfortunately but predictably, my own discipline of psychology does not escape criticism:[4]

[There is] a strand in modern psychology that tends to dismiss the non-factual or the non-mathematical as unscientific. It reflects the prevalent mood advocating rejection of non-observable, non-quantifiable aspects of our experience, believing them to be less important than what can be directly observed and quantified.

A poem I wrote some years back attempts to capture some of the consequences of that error.

He goes on to draw out some less commonly noticed implications of the reductionism/fundamentalism relationship:[5]

One can draw a parallel between positivist science and fundamentalist religion – both de-emphasise the role of the individual in their pursuit of objective truths.

He explains where that takes us:[6]

Like the religious fundamentalist who denounces any attempt to draw wider meanings from Scripture, positivists shun all efforts to go beyond what the facts reveal.

He picks up on the way this expands upon Plantinga’s point that the conclusions of naturalism cannot be trusted:[7]

The strict empiricist denies the self-knowledge of others while relying on his or her own self-knowledge, while the Calvinist denies salvation to others while being assured of his or her own route to salvation. Both show caprice and self-centredness.

We end up[8] where ‘Religion reaches the point where the spirit of the law is forgotten, and the letter is scrupulously followed,’ and[9] ‘the religious zealot who condemns all faiths outside his own is just as spiritually impoverished as the scientist who denounces religion altogether as non-empirical or illogical.’

One of his most trenchant ways of describing an aspect of this impoverishment comes when he declares:[10]

. . . to base an understanding of God on human empirical notions would be like demanding that an ant crawling across a concert-hall floor name the piece of music the orchestra is playing.

Faith and Science

This discussion naturally leads on to an examination of the true nature of the relationship between religion and science.

Religion is not only often regarded as irrational in our modern world, but is also seen as bad.  In The Waste Land Hollis writes:[11]

‘All religions are evil,’ Pound had written in the months before Eliot’s arrival in France. ‘Whether or not a religion is founded upon sound ideals, it eventually resorts to unsound principles.’

This is a not uncommon example of the problem that people like Phillip Pullman also demonstrate in his Dark Materials trilogy – they dismiss the vital, originating and core spirit of religion because of the misguided malpractices that tend to obliterate it over time.

To do so is as much an act of faith as espousing a religion in the first place. I appreciate this can be a bitter pill for a convinced atheist to follow. I found this out during a meeting of the Hereford Death Café many years ago. I was making what I felt was the simple and self-evident point that the only completely rational position, i.e. reconcilable with reason alone, is agnosticism because both theism and atheism are acts or leaps of faith. The response of the atheist present can, I think, be fairly described as outraged, perhaps even incandescent. I was shocked.

Khursheed is essentially on the same page and believes that belief is inescapable:[12]

… there is no by-passing the act of faith by being sceptical. If one says ‘I doubt p’, this is equivalent to saying ‘I believe p is not proven’. There is always a belief content in our thinking, and the positivist attempt to eliminate the element of faith from science arises from a misunderstanding of science and the way human minds do their thinking.

He quotes Einstein, who essentially articulates the Bahá’í position almost as succinctly as it is possible to do:[13] ‘Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.’ I say almost because ‘Abdu’l-Bahá uses an equally powerful image:[14] ‘We may think of science as one wing and religion as the other; a bird needs two wings for flight, one alone would be useless.’

In fact, Khursheed is of the view that, in science, without an element of faith great discoveries would seldom if ever be made:[15]

. . . it is only when courageous leaps of faith are made that extraordinary scientific advances result. The larger of the leaps of faith, the greater the advances are likely to be. There is always a risk element in science.

As something of a side issue here, but intriguing nonetheless, is the extension of Greyson’s point about the ineffability of a near-death experience to experience in general:[16]

. . . since we can only describe natural phenomena with our everyday language, we can hope to grasp the real facts by means of these images. . . .  We are forced to speak in images and parables which do not express precisely what we mean.

And his conclusion, quoting Max Plank, is that an ultimate and complete grasp of reality will be ultimately elusive:[17]

‘Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature,’ he wrote. ‘And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of nature, and therefore, part of the mystery we are trying to solve.’

Fundamental propositions of science have much in common with truths in religion – they can only be conveyed in the form of ‘images and parables’.

In addition, we can never therefore be completely certain that our scientific paradigm is true:[18]

The notion that science proves theories to be true is a naïve conception of science: a finite number of observations can never establish the certainty of a theory, and there will always be a residual leap of faith involved in ‘proving’ the theory to be true.

We’re back with one of my favourite quotes from William James. David Lamberth, in his book William James and the Metaphysics of Experience, reports:[19]

For James, then, there are falsification conditions for any given truth claim, but no absolute verification condition, regardless of how stable the truth claim may be as an experiential function. He writes in The Will to Believe that as an empiricist he believes that we can in fact attain truth, but not that we can know infallibly when we have.

So, John Donne was right.[20] We should ‘doubt wisely.’

Relationship to the Transcendent

In the end, it has to be acknowledged that it is impossible to discount the existence of God as though that were a fact. In a way that closely relates to some descriptions of the fruits of the process of reflection, Khursheed feels human nature is linked in some way to the divine:[21]

. . . human nature can be thought of as composed of many layers of different selves, and religion penetrates beyond the animal self, beyond the conditioned self, beyond the robotic self, beyond all possibilities of external observation, to an ineffable spiritual core – to God within.

On the subject of reflection a short detour might be worth making.

Before you read beyond them I would like you ponder on which of the following passages was written by a philosopher and which by a religious person.

Meditation, the first man says:

. . . releases consciousness from its objects and gives us the opportunity to experience our conscious inwardness in all its purity.

The second man states of meditation that it:

. . . frees man from [his] animal nature [and] discerns the reality of things.

Even though I tried to equalise the style you probably got it right. The first statement comes from Peter Koestenbaum[22] and the second from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.[23]

I think you will agree though that they are more complementary than in conflict.

What each goes on to say is even more intriguing. Koestenbaum ends by saying:

The name Western Civilisation has given to . . .  the extreme inward region of consciousness is God.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s words are:

[Meditation] puts man in touch with God.

Khursheed feels, though, that we need to avoid[24] describing ‘God as all-powerful, as universal creator and so on’: these are ‘our poor substitutes for this inner spiritual experience of understanding God.’

The reflection parallels continue:[25]

The goal of religious experience can be understood in terms of becoming more like a perfectly polished mirror, moving towards a state of selflessness, and reflecting to a greater degree the light of God. The founder of a religion is our route to finding God, mirroring the attributes of God to us, which are none other than the attributes to God lying within us.

His conclusion is that[26] ‘human nature is composed of many layers of selves, but the most characteristic feature of humanity is the spiritual self.’

Why does it matter so much whether or not we believe this? Isn’t humanism sufficiently humane to help us achieve the necessary sense of connectedness to respond effectively to the challenges that confront us now? Isn’t Gaia consciousness enough to empower us to address the current global climate crisis?

Khursheed feels the answer to both those questions is ‘no’, and, for reasons I have explained elsewhere at length, I am inclined to believe him. He contends that:[27]

it is a difficult task to transform our values collectively and decisively when moral convictions are regarded as incoherently private, when human values are considered to be arbitrary, and when our minds are regarded as nothing but ‘ghosts in a machine’.

He quotes Einstein yet again:[28] ‘Man does not lack the intelligence to overcome the evils of society. What is lacking is his selfless, responsible dedication to the service of humankind.’

In the end:[29] ‘All means prove but a blunt instrument, if they have not behind them a living spirit. But if the longing for the achievement of the goal is powerfully alive within us, then shall we not lack the strength to find the means for reaching that goal and for translating it into deeds.’

Some kind of connection with a spiritual and moral core is essential:[30]

[T]he inner drama is animated by the different selves of human nature. All members of the cast have their respective parts to play, but it is only when the moral self takes centre stage that our lives take on meaning or can be of benefit to anyone else. . . . We must endeavour to uncover our eyes and ears, open our hearts and minds, so that we can recognise our role, play our part, and discover just who we really are.

If we do not connect in this way with our spiritual core, which in turn connects not just with a higher power but with all creation, it seems unlikely that we will have the relentless motivation and powerful sense of unity that meeting our current challenges demands of us.

I am grateful to Khursheed for articulating so many aspects of this reality so clearly.

References

[1]. The Universe Within – page 16.
[2]. Op. cit. – page 30.
[3]. Op. cit. – page 38).
[4]. Op. cit. – page 39).
[5]. Op. cit. – page 136).
[6]. Op. cit. – page 137).
[7]. Op. cit. – page 138)
[8] Op. cit. – page 139).
[9]. Op. cit. – page 140).
[10]. Op. cit. – page 146).
[11]. The Waste Land: a biography of a poem – page 131.
[12]. The Universe Within – page 101.
[13]. Op. cit. – page 106.
[14]. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks – page 130.
[15]. The Universe Within – page 113.
[16]. Op. cit. – page 122.
[17]. Op. cit. – page 122.
[18]. Op. cit. – page 144.
[19]. William James and the Metaphysics of Experience – page 222.
[20]. Satire 3, line 77.
[21]. The Universe Within – page 147.
[22]. The New Image of the Person: The Theory and Practice of Clinical Philosophy – page 99.
[23]. Paris Talks – page 175.
[24]. The Universe Within – page 148.
[25]. Op. cit. – page 149.
[26]. Op. cit. – page 156.
[27]. Op. cit. – page 14.
[28]. Op. cit. – page 131.
[29]. Op. cit. – page 132.
[30]. Op. cit. – pages 168-69.

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Book Review – ‘The Universe Within’ (1/2): Inscape and the Nature of the Mind

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

. . . astronaut
on impossible journeys
to the far side of the self
I return with messages
I cannot decipher . . .

(R. S. Thomas The New Mariner,
Collected Poems page 288)

The Importance of the Inscape

Anjam Khursheed, in his book The Universe Within,[1] summarises our situation: ‘Humanity stands on the dividing line between two universes: the conscious universe within us and the external universe that surrounds us.’

Such attempts to capture what I have come to call the inscape, a term borrowed from Hopkins, have always fascinated me, not least because of the quotation from Ali, the successor of Muhammad in Bahá’u’lláh’s The Seven Valleys. In the earliest version I came across it reads:[2] ‘Dost thou reckon thyself only a puny form/When within thee the universe is folded?’ Anjam Khursheed in his book The Universe Within uses[3] almost identical wording from The Writings of Bahá’u’lláh[4], along with quotations from other religious traditions, to give warrant to the title of his book.

Khursheed raises an important point here:[5]

Our spirit of exploration and discovery in the external universe is not matched by a corresponding spirit for the inner universe. We are more comfortable conquering far away moons then exploring inner space.

Much as we might brag about[6] ‘the impressive gains in our knowledge of the external world, our knowledge of ourselves remains limited.’ We are essentiually missing the point according to Laszlo:[7] ‘The critical but as yet generally unrecognised issue confronting mankind is that its truly decisive limits are inner, not outer.’

The climate of the mind, it seems, is at least as important as the climate of our planet, but we are out of balance, something which renders the maintenance of progress in the right direction highly problematic. In Khursheed’s view[8] ‘We must endeavour to uncover our eyes and ears, open our hearts and minds, so that we can recognise our role, play our part, and discover just who we really are.’ Blind to our inner reality we will fail to be fully effective.

In a quote that surprised me we find that:[9]

[Alfred Russel] Wallace believed that natural selection provided a plausible account of the development of the human body, but not the characteristics of the human mind. . . .

“Thus alone can we understand the constancy of the martyr, the unselfishness of the philanthropist, the devotion as the patriot, the enthusiasm of the artist and the revenue and persevering search of the scientific worker after nature’s secrets. Thus we may perceive that the love of truth, the delight in beauty, the passion for justice, and the thrill of exultation with which we hear of any act of courageous self-sacrifice, are the workings within us of a higher nature which has not been developed by means of the struggle for material existence. (from R Trigg Ideas of Human Naturepages 87-8)

Why We Can’t Always Trust our Judgement

In spite of all the energy invested by our culture to the contrary, a reductionist approach to experience is not to be trusted.

There is, for Plantinga, an undermining aspect of naturalism for anyone who chooses to espouse it:[10]

. . . . .  suppose you are a naturalist: you think that there is no such person as God, and that we and our cognitive faculties have been cobbled together by natural selection. Can you then sensibly think that our cognitive faculties are for the most part reliable? . . . . . . the probability of our cognitive faculties being reliable, given naturalism and evolution, is low. But then . . . . . if I believe both naturalism and evolution, I have a defeater for my intuitive assumption that my cognitive faculties are reliable. If I have a defeater for that belief, however, then I have a defeater for any belief I take to be produced by my cognitive faculties.

We need to unpack a little more the logic that underlies this conclusion:[11]

The principal function or purpose, then, . . . . . of our cognitive faculties is not that of producing true or verisimilitudinous (nearly true) beliefs, but instead that of contributing to survival by getting the body parts in the right place.  . . . hence it does not guarantee mostly true or verisimilitudinous beliefs. . . . . What Churchland therefore suggests is that naturalistic evolution—that theory—gives us reason to doubt two things: (a) that a purpose of our cognitive systems is that of serving us with true beliefs, and (b) that they do, in fact, furnish us with mostly true beliefs.

Where exactly does this lead us? In Plantinga’s view to this conclusion:[12]

With this notion of conditional probability in hand, we can put Darwin’s doubt as follows: the conditional probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable, given naturalism together with the proposition that we have come to be by way of evolution, is low.

So, if you believe naturalistic evolution is true, you cannot be sure that any of your beliefs, including naturalism, are true.

Khursheed raises an interesting related question in his exploration of the demise of positivism:[13] ‘What happens if one applies the verification principle to itself?’ He argues that we ‘can only conclude that it is a piece of mere metaphysics, which is “senseless” and should be eliminated.’ He adds further fuel to the fire incinerating such systems of belief:[14]

It is clear that other theories involving the dismissal of mental entities will also lead to internal contradictions. For example, to believe that all “beliefs are illusions” will lead one to conclude that this belief itself, namely the belief that “all beliefs are illusions”, must also be an illusion.

He also works in a dig against Freud. He asks:[15] ‘Were Freud’s so-called scientific theories not weakened as he himself was ruled by subconscious animal drives?’ His answer is no surprise: ‘His belief in human rationality, and in particular the rationality of his own scientific work, is undermined by the conclusions of this very same work.’

And in the end the conclusion seems to me inescapable:[16]

. . . if the thoughts of human beings are merely the by-product of physical processes, then the theory of epiphenomenalism itself will be the by-product of a physical process.

And most importantly, from my point of view, when it comes to what Khursheed describes as ‘the fundamental nature of the mind’, he makes a strong claim:[17]

It cannot be treated like any other object, weighed, measured, observed or dissected, since it is the very entity through which all scientific research is made possible. One cannot be objective about it, just as in the same way that one cannot examine telescope while looking through it.

Inevitably therefore:[18] . . . every attempt at solving fundamental problems of the mind will use the very qualities that are under examination.

Next time I’ll take another look at reductionism and briefly revisit the relationship between religion and science. I will though resist exploring yet again in detail the case against reducing the mind to a by-product of the brain.

References:

[1]. The Universe Within – page 7.
[2]. The Seven Valleys (1945 edition) – page 34.
[3]. The Universe Within – page 23.
[4]. The Writings of Bahá’u’lláh – page 40.
[5]. The Universe Within – page 157.
[6]. Op. cit. – page 10.
[7]. Op. cit – page 133.
[8]. Op. cit. – page 169.
[9]. Op. cit. – pages 75-6.
[10]. Where the Conflict Really Lies – page 313.
[11]. Op. cit. – page 315.
[12]. Op. cit. – page 316.
[13]. The Universe Within – page 48.
[14]. Op. cit. – page 64.
[15]. Op. cit. – page 75.
[16]. Op. cit. – page 163.
[17]. Op. cit. – page 158.
[18]. Op. cit. – page 166.

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Where the Conflict Really Lies (4/4): the deep conflict

Alvin Plantinga (Wikipedia)

My latest sequence explores in the last post the delusion of materialism. In the end it becomes clear that religion and science are compatible and necessary if our civilisation is to progress. It therefore seems appropriate to republish this earlier sequence. This is the last of four.

If it proved difficult to grasp that there is no real conflict between religion and evolutionary theory, somewhat more difficult to even hear that there is only a superficial conflict between religion and science, and almost a self-evident and inescapable contradiction that ‘there is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and religion,’ then Plantinga‘s last idea will seem bizarre in the extreme. The last chapter of his deeply engaging book, Where the Conflict Really Lies, argues that there is ‘superficial concord but deep conflict between science and naturalism.’

By ‘naturalism’ he means a system of belief that excludes a priori any idea of God, supernatural power, spirit or anything similar. There can be no such things ever anywhere. This position, in his view, is fundamentally incompatible with science. As most of us have been indoctrinated to believe the exact opposite I may have to take his exposition of this case rather more slowly even than I did the explanation of his previous idea. This is why the quotes are even longer and there is a certain amount of repetition. Those who have got the point already should feel free to skim.

Naturalism and Evolution

Let’s pick up his argument with evolution (page 308):

The scientific theory of evolution just as such is entirely compatible with the thought that God has guided and orchestrated the course of evolution, planned and directed it, in such a way as to achieve the ends he intends. . . .   On the one hand, therefore, we have the scientific theory, and on the other, there is the claim that the course of evolution is not directed or guided or orchestrated by anyone; . . . .  This claim, however, despite its strident proclamation, is no part of the scientific theory as such; it is instead a metaphysical or theological add-on.

He goes on to explain an aspect of naturalism that I was not expecting to hear (page 310):

Naturalism tells us what reality is ultimately like, where we fit into the universe, how we are related to other creatures, and how it happens that we came to be. Naturalism is therefore in competition with the great theistic religions.

However, there is an undermining aspect of naturalism for anyone who chooses to espouse it (page 313):

. . . . .  suppose you are a naturalist: you think that there is no such person as God, and that we and our cognitive faculties have been cobbled together by natural selection. Can you then sensibly think that our cognitive faculties are for the most part reliable? . . . . . . the probability of our cognitive faculties being reliable, given naturalism and evolution, is low. But then . . . . . if I believe both naturalism and evolution, I have a defeater for my intuitive assumption that my cognitive faculties are reliable. If I have a defeater for that belief, however, then I have a defeater for any belief I take to be produced by my cognitive faculties.

We need to unpack a little more the logic that underlies this conclusion (page 315):

The principal function or purpose, then, . . . . . of our cognitive faculties is not that of producing true or verisimilitudinous (nearly true) beliefs, but instead that of contributing to survival by getting the body parts in the right place.  . . . hence it does not guarantee mostly true or verisimilitudinous beliefs. . . . . What Churchland therefore suggests is that naturalistic evolution—that theory—gives us reason to doubt two things: (a) that a purpose of our cognitive systems is that of serving us with true beliefs, and (b) that they do, in fact, furnish us with mostly true beliefs.

Where exactly does this lead us? In Plantinga’s view to this conclusion (page 316):

With this notion of conditional probability in hand, we can put Darwin’s doubt as follows: the conditional probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable, given naturalism together with the proposition that we have come to be by way of evolution, is low.

So, if you believe naturalistic evolution is true you cannot be sure any of your beliefs, including naturalism, are true.

He goes onto to show how what naturalism proposes almost inevitably leads to and fuses with materialism and the implications of that for the viability of this world view (pages 318-320):

First, naturalists often argue that dualism (the thought that a human being is an immaterial self or substance intimately related to a human body) is incoherent or subject to crushing philosophical difficulties; hence, so they say, we are rationally compelled to be materialists. . . . A second and somewhat better reason is this: . . . It may not be completely easy to see or say precisely what naturalism is, but, so goes the thought, at any rate it excludes things like immaterial selves or souls.  . . . A third reason is as follows. Naturalists will ordinarily endorse Darwinian evolution; but how, they ask, could an immaterial soul or self have come to exist by way of the processes that evolutionary science posits? .  . . . . . That seems doubtful. . . . For these reasons and perhaps others, most naturalists are materialists about human beings. For present purposes, therefore, I propose to assimilate materialism to naturalism; . . . .  and what I’ll be arguing against is the conjunction of current evolutionary theory and naturalism, the latter including materialism.

Materialism

He examines the nature of beliefs. He sees (page 321-322) that they have two aspects from a materialist point of view: neuro-physiological properties (NP) and content. This raises a critical question:

NP properties are physical properties; on the other hand content properties—for example the property of having as content the proposition all men are mortal—are mental properties.   . . . how are content properties related to NP properties—how is the content property of a particular belief related to the NP properties of that belief?

There are two types of explanation for that (page 322): a reductive materialist and a nonreductive materialist one. He explains what this means (page 322):

. . . [according to] reductive materialism,  . . . mental content properties are reducible to NP properties; according to nonreductive materialism, content properties are not reducible to NP properties, but are determined by (supervene on) NP properties. 

We then come to the key conundrum (page 326):

what is the likelihood, given evolution and naturalism (construed as including materialism about human beings), that the content thus arising is in fact true.

We mostly tend to assume (ibid.) that ‘the beliefs they produce in us are true.’ He feels that those of us who espouse naturalism are not so fortunate (ibid.):

What I do mean to argue is that the naturalist—at any rate a naturalist who accepts evolution—is rationally obliged to give up this assumption.

Why should that be (ibid.)?

This underlying neurology causes adaptive behavior; as Churchland says, it gets the body parts where they must be in order to survive. But (in line with nonreductive materialism) it also determines belief content. As a result, these creatures have beliefs, which of course have a certain content. And here’s the question: what reason is there for supposing that this belief content is true? There isn’t any.

Reliability of Belief

He does not expect us simply to accept that without further explanation (page 328):

Fleeing predators, finding food and mates—these things require cognitive devices that in some way track crucial features of the environment, and are appropriately connected with muscles; but they do not require true belief, or even belief at all. . . . . The objector is therefore right in pointing out that fitness requires accurate indication; but nothing follows about reliability of belief.

The physiological structures that underpin the cognitive devices that detect predators, amongst other things, have a limited function (page 330-331):

the structure is correlated with the presence of a predator and indicates that presence; but indication is not belief. Indication is one thing; belief content is something else altogether, and we know of no reason (given materialism) why the one should follow the other. . . . 

It is just a meaningless coincidence that this particular content tends to ride on the back of the firing of this useful clump of neurones (page 334):

The content doesn’t have to be true, of course, for the neuronal structure to cause the appropriate kind of behavior. It just happens that this particular adaptive arrangement of NP properties also constitutes having that particular content.

This has disturbing implications for the materialist follower of naturalism (page 336):

. . . . we can’t assume that if materialism were true, it would still be the case that true beliefs are more likely to cause successful action than false beliefs. And in fact, if materialism were true, it would be unlikely that true beliefs mostly cause successful action and false belief unsuccessful action.

Perhaps I need to spell out here what he explains above but perhaps too technically. Awareness that a predator is present is not a belief. It is a trigger to action based on lower level brain processes.  Any beliefs that ride on the back of those processes at a higher level of brain function are irrelevant to the production of life-saving behaviour and may or may not be true.

And if that weren’t bad enough for our materialist follower of naturalism worse implications follow (page 338):

the underlying neurology is adaptive, and determines belief content. But . . .  it doesn’t matter to the adaptiveness of the behavior (or of the neurology that causes that behavior) whether the content determined by that neurology is true.

This is because this leads to the conclusion (page 340) that:

 the naturalist who sees that [the probability of beliefs being reliable when naturalism and evolution are both true] is low has a defeater for [the reliability of beliefs], and for the proposition that his own cognitive faculties are reliable.

This is therefore , in the case of a materialistic naturalist, a defeater for (page 345)

. . . . any other belief she thinks she has, including [Naturalism and Evolution] itself. . . . . . If you have a defeater for [the reliability of belief], you will also have a defeater for any belief you take to be produced by your cognitive faculties, any belief that is a deliverance of your cognitive faculties. But all of your beliefs, as I’m sure you have discovered, are produced by your cognitive faculties. Therefore you have a defeater for any belief you have. . . . . This is a really crushing skepticism, and it is this skepticism to which the naturalist is committed.

The final upshot of all this is (page 345): “Conclusion: [Naturalism combined with Evolution] can’t rationally be accepted.”

Perhaps with his tongue slightly in his cheek, Plantinga closes his book by saying (page 349):

My conclusion, therefore, is that there is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic belief, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism. Given that naturalism is at least a quasi-religion, there is indeed a science/religion conflict, all right, but it is not between science and theistic religion: it is between science and naturalism. That’s where the conflict really lies.

I accept that this book, in places, is somewhat inaccessible. The argument is sometimes dense (or perhaps it’s me) even when he has not closed me out with symbolic logic (though I have to admit I got slightly better at decoding it as the book went on). However, for me the theme of the book is absolutely critical. If we do not, as a culture, find a way of reconciling the apparent differences between religion and science and of working from a deep understanding of their fundamental compatibility, we will fail to solve the problems our increasingly global society faces swiftly enough to spare most of the lifeforms on this planet unacceptable levels of suffering. This reality is well captured in the words of a recent paper prepared by the Office of Social and Economic Development at the Bahá’í World Centre:

Social action, of whatever size and complexity, should strive to remain free of simplistic and distorted conceptions of science and religion. To this end, an imaginary duality between reason and faith—a duality that would confine reason to the realm of empirical evidence and logical argumentation and which would associate faith with superstition and irrational thought—must be avoided. The process of development has to be rational and systematic— incorporating, for example, scientific capabilities of observing, of measuring, of rigorously testing ideas—and at the same time deeply aware of faith and spiritual convictions.

I am very aware that in this sequence of posts I have been trying to convey the ideas of someone who is focusing on problems well outside my area of expertise. As a result, there’s been a great deal of quotation and relatively little comment. Next, I will be turning to an area of human experience which has been a focus of mine for almost forty years: the mind. At least the next two posts, and maybe more, will be looking at consciousness – again.

‘No surprise there, then,’ did I hear you say?

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Where the Conflict Really Lies (3/4): a deep compatibility

Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night;
God said “Let Newton be! and all was light.”

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

My latest sequence explores in the last post the delusion of materialism. In the end it becomes clear that religion and science are compatible and necessary if our civilisation is to progress. It therefore seems appropriate to republish this earlier sequence. This is the third of four: the last will be published tomorrow. 

The two previous posts have looked at various aspects of Plantinga‘s view of the relationship between religion and science as expressed in his book Where the Conflict Really Lies. The first post took an overview to phase us in gently, and the second focused on two components of his detailed argument against the idea that religion and science are fundamentally opposed.

Now we have come to one of the two key buttresses supporting his overall position. Both these will be surprising to those who have come to accept the conventional view that science and religion are fundamentally at odds. He summarises them as follows before launching into a more detailed consideration of the first one (page 265):

Recall my overall thesis: there is superficial conflict but deep concord between theistic religion and science, but superficial concord and deep conflict between naturalism and science.

Most people who have bought into the prevailing myth will have expected the exact opposite and he knows that.

In this post let’s take a closer look at his first trance breaker. We’ll save the second plank in his argument till next time.

The History of this Harmony

He opens with an obvious truth which most of us may well have overlooked and whose implications he is keen to unpack (page 266):

Modern Western empirical science originated and flourished in the bosom of Christian theism and originated nowhere else. . . . it was Christian Europe that fostered, promoted, and nourished modern science. . . . This is no accident: there is deep concord between science and theistic belief.

He defines what he means by science in this context (pages 267-268):

the fundamental class to which science belongs is that of efforts to discover truths—at any rate it is science so thought of that I mean to deal with here.

He accepts that what distinguishes the scientific approach or method is empiricism, the need to test belief against experience in a systematic way (page 268):

While it is difficult to give a precise account of this empirical component, it is absolutely crucial to science, and is what distinguishes science from philosophy.

Then begins a line of thought that might at first seem likely to test the patience of an agnostic to breaking point, but I would ask any reader coming from that position to take the time to consider his argument very carefully indeed. He is looking at the notion, commonly held by Christians everywhere, that we are made in God’s image, and this will have an unexpected link to empiricism (ibid.):

God is a knower, and indeed the supreme knower. God is omniscient, that is, such that he knows everything, knows for any proposition p, whether p is true. We human beings, therefore, in being created in his image, can also know much about our world, ourselves, and God himself.

This capacity to learn about our world is a key aspect of our being and relates to this issue in his view (ibid.): ‘this ability to know something about our world, ourselves and God is a crucially important part of the divine image.’ And this is where he springs on us an unexpected point in favour of his case (pages 268-269):

God created both us and our world in such a way that there is a certain fit or match between the world and our cognitive faculties. . . . . For science to be successful . . . there must be a match between our cognitive faculties and the world.

That match is not at all what we should necessarily expect. The world could just as easily, probably far more easily be an incomprehensible and apparently random puzzle to us, but it is not.

As we discussed in the first post of the series evolution does not entail that our beliefs are true, only that our behaviour is adaptive (page 270):

Natural selection is interested in adaptive behavior, behavior that conduces to survival and reproduction; it has no interest in our having true beliefs.

What we find we have though goes far beyond the requirements of mere survival (ibid.):

I’ve just mentioned perception; clearly this is a most important source of belief about the world; and one condition of the success of science is that perception for the most part, and under ordinary and favorable conditions, produces in us beliefs that are in fact true.

And beyond that, science requires that we can accurately predict consequences on the basis of these beliefs (page 271):

For intentional action to be possible, it must be the case that we, given our cognitive faculties, can often or usually predict what will happen next. . . . . science as practiced by us humans requires predictability given our cognitive faculties.

This predictability makes successful empiricism possible. An expectation of such predictability is built into theistic religion (ibid.):

It’s an essential part of theistic religion—at any rate Christian theistic religion—to think of God as providentially governing the world in such a way as to provide that kind of stability and regularity. . . . . The world was created in such a way that it displays order and regularity; it isn’t unpredictable, chancy or random. And of course this conviction is what enables and undergirds science.

The Laws of Nature

He quotes Alfred North Whitehead as attributing (page 272 ) this ‘widespread instinctive conviction to “the medieval insistence on the rationality of God.”‘ This rationality extends beyond moral laws (page 273):

The rationality of God, as Aquinas thought, extends far beyond the realm of morality. God sets forth moral laws, to be sure, but he also sets forth or promulgates laws of nature, and he creates the world in such a way that it conforms to these laws.

He sees this point as crucial (page 275):

It is important to see that our notion of the laws of nature, crucial for contemporary science, has this origin in Christian theism.

An additional critical factor is that the laws of nature lie within the grasp of our understanding (page 276):

On this conception, part of the job of science is to discover the laws of nature; but then of course science will be successful only if it is possible for us human beings to do that. Science will be successful only if these laws are not too complex, or deep, or otherwise beyond us. Again, this thought fits well with theistic religion and its doctrine of the image of God; God not only sets laws for the universe, but sets laws we can (at least approximately) grasp.

Also changing them, on the other hand, must lie beyond our reach (page 280)

The laws of nature . . . resemble necessary truths in that there is nothing we or other creatures can do to render them false. We could say that they are finitely inviolable.

So, to his conclusions (page 282):

With respect to the laws of nature, therefore, there are at least three ways in which theism is hospitable to science and its success . . . First, science requires regularity, predictability, and constancy; . . . From the point of view of naturalism, the fact that our world displays the sort of regularity and lawlike behavior necessary for science is a piece of enormous cosmic luck, a not-to-be-expected bit of serendipity. But regularity and lawlikeness obviously fit well with the thought that God is a rational person who has created our world, and instituted the laws of nature.

Second, not only must our world in fact manifest regularity and law-like behavior: for science to flourish, scientists and others must believe that it does. . . . such a conviction fits well with the theistic doctrine of the image of God.

Third, theism enables us to understand the necessity or inevitableness or inviolability of natural law: this necessity is to be explained and understood in terms of the difference between divine power and the power of finite creatures.

Mathematical Maps

He goes onto to consider other more familiar issues, for example the uncanny way that the world can be described mathematically (page 284):

What Wigner notes . . . is that our world is mathematically describable in terms of fascinating underlying mathematical structures of astounding complexity but also deep simplicity. . . . It is also properly thought of as unreasonable, in the sense that from a naturalistic perspective it would be wholly unreasonable to expect this sort of mathematics to be useful in describing our world. It makes eminently good sense from the perspective of theism, however. . . . So here we have another manifestation of deep concord between science and theistic religion: the way in which mathematics is applicable to the universe.

What’s more, understanding the universe (page 286-287):

. . . involves mathematics of great depth, requiring cognitive powers going enormously beyond what is required for survival and reproduction. . . . What prehistoric female would be interested in a male who wanted to think about whether a set could be equal in cardinality to its power set, instead of where to look for game? . . . numbers and sets themselves make a great deal more sense from the point of view of theism than from that of naturalism.

The deep simplicity of the underlying regularities of our world is not what a godless universe would lead you to expect (page 298):

It isn’t a necessary truth, however, that simple theories are more likely to be true than complex theories. Naturalism gives us no reason at all to expect the world to conform to our preference for simplicity. From that perspective, surely, the world could just as well have been such that unlovely, miserably complex theories are more likely to be true.

He concludes that (ibid.): ‘We value simplicity, elegance, beauty; it is therefore reasonable to think that the same goes for God.’

And this paves the way for his final thoughts on this subject (page 302):

In this chapter, we’ve seen that theistic religion gives us reason to expect our cognitive capacities to match the world in such a way as to make modern science possible. Naturalism gives us no reason at all to expect this sort of match; from the point of view of naturalism, it would be an overwhelming piece of cosmic serendipity if there were such a match.

The next post will deal with his other major issue: ‘superficial concord and deep conflict between naturalism and science.’

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Where the Conflict Really Lies (2/4): a superficial conflict

My latest sequence explores in the last post the delusion of materialism. In the end it becomes clear that religion and science are compatible and necessary if our civilisation is to progress. It therefore seems appropriate to republish this earlier sequence. This is the second of four: the last two will appear next Tuesday and Wednesday. 

As we noted in the previous post Plantinga, in his thought-provoking book, Where the Conflict Really Lies, feels evolution has incorrectly been seen as hostile to religious belief (pages 63-64):

The scientific theory of evolution as such is not incompatible with Christian belief; what is incompatible with it is the idea that evolution, natural selection, is unguided. But that idea isn’t part of evolutionary theory as such; it’s instead a metaphysical or theological addition.

Divine Intervention

He covers many aspects of the religion/science problem in his book, including the ‘fine tuning’ hypothesis, ie that the probability of the preconditions for conscious life being so exactly met is vanishingly small, and the argument from design. This is well-trodden territory. I felt it might be more interesting to cherry pick some of the more unusual arguments even at the risk of selling short the power of his overall case. He covers so much ground so thoroughly that it would be impossible to do this book anything like justice. It would be best to take the examples below as an inadequate sample or taster and go direct to the book before judging the quality of his argument as a whole.

A topic he moves to along the way is the question of divine intervention. I am risking doing his case an injustice by only picking up his argument from where he begins to deal with the implications of quantum mechanics, but this kind of selectiveness is unavoidable, I fear (pages 94-95):

If we try to define a miracle as an event that is incompatible with (what we presume, on the basis of the best evidence, to be) laws of nature, then it seems that water changing to wine, a dead man coming back to life, etc. are not miracles because they are not incompatible with QM. But QM does say that they are very, very improbable.

It is a short step from this to his feeling that (page 96) ‘[o]n the “new picture,” therefore—the picture presented by QM—there is no question that special divine action is consistent with science.’

Incidentally, QM has other implications as well that other thinkers have seized upon to undermine the default assumption of naturalism. Take Kelly and Kelly, for example, in their book, Irreducible Mind (page xxii):

. . . advances in physics from Newton’s discovery of universal gravitation to 20th century developments in quantum mechanics and relativity theory have undermined the classical and commonsense conceptions of matter to such an extent that reducibility of mind to matter is anything but straightforward, and hardly a foregone conclusion.

Plantinga, before expanding on the implications of QM, argues that the possibility of divine intervention does not necessarily impact upon our ability to make informed decisions about how to act (page 103):

What’s required for free action is that there be enough regularity for us to know or sensibly conjecture—at least for the most part and with reasonably high probability—what will happen if we freely choose to take a given action. . . . . All that’s required for purposeful free action is reasonable confidence in substantial regularity in the neighborhood of the proposed action. And that’s certainly compatible with God’s sometimes intervening.

However, he is not content to leave the matter there (page 108):

The reasons for supposing God couldn’t or wouldn’t intervene in his creation are weak. But now we must face a more poignant question: what, from the point of view of the new picture, is intervention?

Link to the source of this summary

His argument gets rather complicated here and I hope I have condensed it accurately. It seems to me to boil down to the idea that quantum theory supposes that reality collapses at a ‘regular rate’ into a new state, but there is no requirement for this state to be identical with the previous state. There is considerable uncertainty about how frequent this regularity is. I expect I have lost some of his argument’s subtlety somewhere somewhat but I think that is the basic point.

He feels this paves the way for supposing that divine intervention, rather than being the exception, is in fact the normal state of affairs (pages 115-116):

Perhaps, then, all collapse-outcomes (as we might call them) are caused by God. If so, then between collapses, a system evolves according to the Shrödinger equation; but when a collapse occurs, it is divine agency that causes the specific collapse-outcome that ensues. On this view of God’s special action—call it “divine collapse-causation” (“DCC”)—God is always acting specially, that is, always acting in ways that go beyond creation and conservation, thus obviating the problem alleged to lie in his sometimes treating the world in hands-off fashion but other times in a hands-on way.

The freedom in nature to collapse into any form whatsoever paves the way for God’s hand to be free in this respect (pages 116-117):

[I]t is in the nature of physical systems to evolve between collapses according to the Shrödinger equation; it also is in their nature to undergo periodic collapses; but it is not part of their nature to collapse to any particular eigenstate. . . . . Hence, in causing a nature to collapse to a particular eigenstate, God need not constrain it against its nature.

Methodological Naturalism

He goes on to take a careful look at what happens when practitioners of the scientific method, including those who also believe in God, bracket the possibility of religious belief and remove it from their methodological process (page 169).

Consider the fact that many who practice historical Biblical criticism themselves personally accept the whole range of Christian belief, but separate their personal beliefs (as they might put it) from their scripture scholarship; in working at scripture scholarship, they prescind from their theological beliefs; they bracket them, set them aside. Why would they do that? Because they believe an effort to be scientific requires this separation or dissociation. Their thought is that scientific investigation requires thus setting aside theological belief. They accept the methodological naturalism (MN) that is widely thought to characterize science.

This is not the same as the naturalism he attacks, and which we looked at in the previous post. Methodological naturalism is confined to the one area of activity (ibid.):

The methodological naturalist doesn’t necessarily subscribe to ontological naturalism. MN is a proposed condition or constraint on proper science, or the proper practice of science, not a statement about the nature of the universe. . . . “Science neither denies or opposes the supernatural, but ignores the supernatural for methodological reasons.”

He spells out what this means in practice (pages 171-172):

According to MN, furthermore, the data model of a proper scientific theory will not invoke God. . . Secondly, there will also be constraints on the theory itself. . . . according to MN the parameters for a scientific theory are not to include reference to God or any other supernatural agents.

There is a totally unsurprising consequence of this (page 174):

Then the relevant point is that the evidence base of the inquiry in question includes the denial of central Christian (and indeed) theistic beliefs. If so, however, the fact that this inquiry comes to conclusions incompatible with Christian belief would be neither surprising, nor—for Christians—an occasion for consternation or dismay.

It is perhaps worth mentioning here that this a priori exclusion of the spiritual dimension from scientific enquiry may not be sustainable for much longer. The Irreducible Mind points up very clearly how psychology must at some point bring this aspect of reality into its approach. Referring amongst other things to psi phenomena, Edward Kelly writes (page xxviii):

These phenomena we catalogue here are important precisely because they challenge so strongly the current scientific consensus; in accordance with Wind’s principle, they not only invite but should command the attention of anyone seriously interested in the mind.

The prevailing attitude of course in many cases goes far beyond methodological naturalism into the strongest possible form of it (op.cit. page xxvii):

Most critics implicitly – and some, like Hansel, explicitly – take the view that psi phenomena are somehow known a priori to be impossible. In that case one is free to invent any scenario, no matter how far-fetched, to explain away ostensible evidence of psi.

In terms, though, of methodological naturalism alone any conflict is in Plantinga’s view trivial. This leads him to conclude at this point (page 190):

To return to that main line: so far I’ve argued that there is no conflict between Christian belief and evolution; nor is the claim that God acts specially in the world in conflict with science. I’ve gone on to argue that there is indeed conflict between Christian belief and certain areas of evolutionary psychology and historical Biblical criticism; this conflict, however is superficial. So much for conflict; I turn next to concord between Christian belief and science.

But that will have to wait for the next post in this series.

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Where the Conflict Really Lies (1/4): preparing the ground

My latest sequence explores in the last post the delusion of materialism. In the end it becomes clear that religion and science are compatible and necessary if our civilisation is to progress. It therefore seems appropriate to republish this earlier sequence. This is the first of four: the second will be published tomorrow, and the last two next Tuesday and Wednesday. 

It’s hard to tell which falling straws are a good guide to the way the wind is blowing.

Is it the one whose label can be drawn from the research Cosmo Landesman wrote about in the Sunday Times recently?

The average Briton feels a hundred percent fit and healthy only 61 days a year, according to a report out last week. . . . . What has turned us into a nation of hypochondriacs?

Or is it the one drawn from the research indicating that the UK’s stiff upper lip reluctance to trouble the doctor is adversely affecting this country’s treatment of cancer?

Should we be dashing to the GP at the first faint whiff of trouble or should we stop whinging and ignore our trivial aches and pains.

I was sitting in the GP’s surgery having decided I was more likely to be one of those who let the curable turn into the untreatable rather than someone with a highly volatile twinge magnification system. I clearly had a serious case of late-onset lung rot: I really needed to be here.

While I waited to be called, to distract myself from dwelling on how few days were probably left for me to put my house in order, I listened to a BBC radio interview with Professor Brian Cox. Among the interesting ideas he shared was the view that, although he doesn’t believe in God himself, there is nothing at all in science that rules God out (or, as I suspect he could have added, rules Him in either).

If research data cannot even clarify for certain whether I should go to the doctor’s or not, how can we fairly expect science to determine the God question – one for which it is totally unsuited. Incidentally, you may be relieved to learn that my cough will not carry me off just yet. So much for my experiment with hypochondria.

A Deep Concord

Thank heaven (my view, obviously) that some people are talking sense about the science vs religion issue from within the scientific community. I’ve already written on this blog about Rupert Sheldrake, Eben Alexander, Ken Wilber, Jenny Wade, Margaret Donaldson and others. Now I can add Alvin Plantinga to my list.

I need to own up from the start that there are dozens of pages of his book, Where the Conflict Really Lies, that I simply don’t understand. These occur when he resorts to symbolic logic to explain his point. Maybe it is the briefest way to explain a complex issue. Maybe it is the best way of cutting out any of the cognitive biases that can creep in from dodgy heuristics. Maybe it’s the best way of showing the opposition what a big hitter he is. Whatever the reason it leaves me outside the warmth of his argument in the winter cold with my nose pressed fruitlessly against the glass. I’ve found though that skipping such pages doesn’t affect my basic grasp of the rest of what he says, and what he is saying is welcome and compelling stuff. Take this for starters from his introduction:

If my thesis is right, therefore—if there is deep concord between science and Christian or theistic belief, but deep conflict between science and naturalism—then there is a science/religion (or science/ quasi-religion) conflict, all right, but it isn’t between science and theistic religion: it’s between science and naturalism 

He defines ‘naturalism’ as ‘the thought that there is no such person as God, or anything like God.’ He sees it as a kind of religion.

He doesn’t claim that the expression of religious feeling is universally benign but he’s clear that, not only do religions not have a monopoly on the creation of suffering, but also their efforts in that direction are comprehensively upstaged by secular ideologies:

. . . . the world’s religions do indeed have much to repent; still (as has often been pointed out) the suffering, death, and havoc attributable to religious belief and practice pales into utter insignificance beside that due to the atheistic and secular idiologies of the twentieth century alone.

This is a point Jonathan Haidt has also addressed in his humane and compassionate book ‘The Happiness Hypothesis.‘ In his view idealism, and this is not by any means restricted to religion, has caused more violence in human history than almost any other single thing (page 75).

The two biggest causes of evil are two that we think are good, and that we try to encourage in our children: high self-esteem and moral idealism. . . . Threatened self-esteem accounts for a large portion of violence at the individual level, but to really get a mass atrocity going you need idealism — the belief that your violence is a means to a moral end.

The Real Conflict

To go back to our main argument, Plantinga clarifies where the conflict seems to lie for him:

There is no real conflict between theistic religion and the scientific theory of evolution. What there is, instead, is conflict between theistic religion and a philosophical gloss or add-on to the scientific doctrine of evolution: the claim that evolution is undirected, unguided, unorchestrated by God (or anyone else).

If there is no deep-seated conflict for Plantinga between the theory of evolution and theism, the same is surprisingly not true in the case of naturalism and science:

I argue that the same most emphatically does not go for science and naturalism. . . . . there is deep and serious conflict between naturalism and science. . . . it is improbable, given naturalism and evolution, that our cognitive faculties are reliable. . . . . a naturalist who accepts current evolutionary theory has a defeater for the proposition that our faculties are reliable. . . . naturalism and evolution are in serious conflict: one can’t rationally accept them both.

Later posts will come back to this point again but I probably need to clarify this summary of it. Basically he argues that, from naturalism’s perspective, all beliefs are reducible to neuronal activity and all that evolution ensures is that the actions that neuronal activity produces are conducive to our survival. The content of our beliefs is an irrelevant by-product of this neuronal activity and cannot be relied on for its truth value. All that is required is that the action patterns produced by our synaptic activation keep us alive. There is no need for the beliefs we also coincidentally hold to be true and therefore no guarantee that they are. There are therefore no good grounds in terms of a completely reductionist evolutionary theory for believing that naturalism is true. After all, believing in naturalism would have had no survival value in our prehistory and therefore no warrant in this version of evolutionary theory. For this reason naturalism disqualifies itself as a well-founded belief system.

The evangelical atheists have, in Plantinga’s view, grossly overstated their case (pages 24-25):

Dawkins claims that he will show that the entire living world came to be without design; what he actually argues is only that this is possible and we don’t know that it is astronomically improbable; for all we know it’s not astronomically improbable.

He wryly adds (page 28): ‘Whatever happened to agnosticism, withholding belief?’

The nature of the situation is, in Plantinga’s view, much less clear cut. He starts with a simple statement of naturalism’s position before exploring some of his doubts about it (page 34)

Life itself originated just by way of the regularities of physics and chemistry (through a sort of extension of natural selection); and undirected natural selection has produced language and mind, including our artistic, moral, religious, and intellectual proclivities. Now many—theists and others—have found these claims at least extremely doubtful; some have found them preposterous. Is it really so much as possible that language, say, or consciousness, or the ability to compose great music, or prove Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, or think up the idea of natural selection should have been produced by mindless processes of this sort? That is an ambitious claim.

He looks at Dennett’s position (page 35): ‘Darwin’s dangerous idea as set out by Dennett is a paradigm example of naturalism’ and calls it seriously into question (pages 37-38):

Locke believed it impossible in the broadly logical sense that mind should have arisen somehow from “incogitative matter.” . . . . Contrary to Dennett’s suggestion, the neo-Darwinian scientific theory of evolution certainly hasn’t shown that Locke is wrong or that God does not exist necessarily; it hasn’t even shown that it is possible, in the broadly logical sense, that mind arise from “pure incogitative” matter. It hasn’t shown these things because it doesn’t so much as address these questions.

Plantinga feels that the Dawkins and Dennett position is creating a major problem in the States at least (page 54):

The association of evolution with naturalism is the obvious root of the widespread antipathy to evolution in the United States, and to the teaching of evolution in the public schools. . . . As a result, declarations by Dawkins, Dennett, and others have at least two unhappy results. First, their (mistaken) claim that religion and evolution are incompatible damages religious belief, making it look less appealing to people who respect reason and science. But second, it also damages science. That is because it forces many to choose between science and belief in God. Most believers, given the depth and significance of their belief in God, are not going to opt for science; their attitude towards science is likely to be or become one of suspicion and mistrust.

One of the main purposes of Plantinga’s book is to scotch this misconception for good and all (page 55):

Well, if we think of the Darwinian picture as including the idea that the process of evolution is unguided, then of course that picture is completely at odds with providentialist religion. As we have seen, however, current evolutionary science doesn’t include the thought that evolution is unguided; it quite properly refrains from commenting on that metaphysical or theological issue.

And that is what makes it seem worthwhile spending another three posts exploring various aspects of his argument – and even that will barely scratch the surface of this brilliant book.

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