‘Turning the Tables on Naturalism: Unsaddling the four horsemen of modern atheism!’
The Scylla of his original title is religion, the charibdis is atheism and scientific naturalism. The aim of this lecture is to show that the burden of proof lies with atheism rather than theism, and that Dawkins et al have very poor arguments and are unaware of or ignore the philosophical community’s approach to theism as a coherent position (i.e. that it is one).
Part I: some problems with naturalism
Naturalism = the view that ‘reality is wholly accessible (at least in principle) to the natural sciences. Nothing…can exist beyond their reach,’ (Roger Trigg, Philosophy Matters, 149).
This is a philosophical view that must be distinguished from science. The sort of evidence that must be adduced for naturalism puts it on the same level as a religious belief rather than a scientific theory. Naturalism cannot result from science.
So there is no guiding force behind the universe; it and we evolved through chance and natural selection. For Dawkins, it follows that ‘ruthless utilitarianism’ is the only ethic that can survive in evolutionary terms (‘What use is religion?’ Free Enquiry magazine, vol 24, no 5 (June 2004)). For Patricia Churchland, humans are governed by their nervous systems, which operate according to the four F’s of ‘feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing’. (Journal of philosophy LXXXIV, Oct 87).
Darwin had a doubt here. Why trust any of the ideas of people who evolved from lower animals and whose sole purpose is the transmission of genes? If naturalism is true and evolution is true then the reliability of our epistemic faculties is low, because evolution would select only those desires that produced beliefs that furthered our search for the four F’s. This is a problem for naturalism.
Altruism is another problem for naturalism. Herbert Simon asked why certain people don’t behave according to evolutionary theory. His answer: they are either docile or of limited rationality, and therefore do not question what they are told by society or religion. This does not seem equal to the evidence, e.g. intelligent altruistic people who know what they’re doing and still do it.
So our ability to grasp the truth (which naturalism presupposes) and the existence of altruism (such as Dawkins travelling around the country persuading us out of our theism instead of reproducing as frequently as possible), are difficult to explain on naturalism’s own terms. It appears to be reductionist.
Part II: three reasons why theism is rational
1) Modal form of the ontological argument (which has existed for about 35 years apparently and still hasn’t been refuted)
‘If there is a possible world in which God exists, then since God is a necessary being, God exists in all possible worlds’ (handout). This implies that to be an atheist either that God cannot logically exist or that God does not exist is the actual world as a matter of fact. To do either is of course very difficult. Given three decades of attempts to refute this, let’s say the probability of it being fallacious is 0.5; this implies theism is rational.
2) Fine-tuning: basically, with incredibly small changes in any number of physical constants, the world would be uninhabitable for us; thus the chances of the universe being the way it is so as to be habitable for us are incredibly small. Torrance mentioned just three though he said there are other major ones too.
a) the ‘cosmological constant’: if there was a difference in this of the order of 1053 the universe would be completely different, but the chances of such a precise constant existing for the present conditions are thus incredibly small.
b) similar argument about gravity for 1036 or 1060.
c) Roger Penrose estimates our universe is one in 1010123 possible universes only one of which could be our current universe.
3) So one could account for this through theism, or through the generation of infinite universes which would eventually produce this one. The former is a more simple explanation. Would a universe generator have to be finely tuned?
Conclusion
Christian theism is rational and explains a number of things that naturalism struggles with: ‘Christian theism explains why there is something rather than nothing, the intelligibility of the contingent order, the fine tuning necessary for life to evolve and the moral universe which science presupposes. All this adds to the probability of the existence of a God who must already be judged to have an inherently high probability given the modal form of the ontological argument’ (handout).
The point of the lecture was not to show that theism is true (‘It takes a lot to get a Barthian to do this sort of thing’), but that it is rational, and hence why it is flourishing in analytic philosophy (apparently 1 in 4 analytic philosophers in North America are theists).
The modal ontological argument is valid but it’s only sound on certain interpretations of modality. If modal logic is about the metaphysics of modality, then it might just work: however, that’s controversial. If it’s just about propositions, then all the argument establishes is that the proposition ‘God is a necessary being (and therefore exists)’ is true but that gives us no more reason to believe that the concept of a necessary being is coherent (and therefore actualised). It’s contentious in general whether any type of logic can give us any metaphysical facts. Kripke said that it was only propositions that can be necessary or possible, not states of affairs, i.e. modal logic was not about metaphysics but just the logic of certain kinds of propositions in their relations to each other, just like classical logic.
Another problem is, does it necessarily have to be the case that God is a necessary being? We might live in a possible world in which God exists but is only a possible being, not a necessary one. Presumably we do live in such a world, since not everyone believes there is a God: if God’s existence were necessary, how would anyone be able to doubt it? Nobody can doubt the existence of absolutely everything (Descartes), so it might be that it’s necessarily the case only that something exists, i.e. the universe. So at best the modal ontological argument could only be an argument for pantheism, not theism.
Another question we might ask is, is the concept of God the concept of a ‘being’ at all? If not, then God couldn’t be touched by logic even if modal logic did make metaphysical claims.
Wish I’d gone to the lecture now…
Points taken in third and first paragraphs.
Second paragraph, surely people’s beliefs in God’s necessity or existence or whatever do not affect whether or not God actually is a necessary being? Someone did ask why God was considered a necessary being. I can’t remember what his answer was. Maybe it’s just because that’s the Christian idea of God.
I didn’t mean that people’s beliefs about God affect the reality; I meant that if God really is a necessary being, how is it possible for anyone to doubt God’s existence? The other example of a necessary being is the universe/reality/something external to the mind, of which nobody doubts the existence, precisely because it exists necessarily. Of course, for Descartes, the existence of God was just as clear and indisputable as the existence of mind-external reality but it’s doubtful whether his argument was a very good one.
Do you have the internet at home now, by the way?