The Many Problems of EAAN, Part I

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 20:44:00 GMT

Methodological naturalism (naturalism hereafter) says only that all natural phenomena are best explained by natural causes. Naturalism is a means to an end (that of explaining natural phenomena) and in principle says nothing about the (continued) successfulness of those that practice it. What is often the case with anti-naturalists like Plantinga is that they point to the lack of naturalistic explanation to a natural phenomenon and conclude naturalism is inconsistent (and shouldn’t be taken seriously). Herein lays the first problem with EAAN. By pointing to a gap in a naturalist’s explanation as to how the truthfulness of a belief can be casually efficacious in such a way as to be evolutionarily beneficial, Plantinga then makes the leap to conclude there is no good reason to believe the truthfulness of our belief (all that is derived from it, including naturalism and evolutionary theory). By replacing the experimenter (her success in carrying out the experiment to be exact) with the experiment itself, Plantinga commits the straw man fallacy. Not only has Plantinga placed the burden-of-(naturalistic)-proof for any natural phenomenon on the naturalists, but he equated naturalists’ inability to produce a proof for any given phenomenon as evidence against naturalism all together.

If history is any lesson, it has been the case that gaps in the naturalist explanatory scheme have been ‘short’-lived (perhaps we are biased to explore certain class of phenomena by our nature such that this is the case, but that is another story). There is every reason to believe this gap too will close and the anti-naturalists will search for other gaps to pick on.

Needless to say, there is also good reason to believe the truthfulness of our beliefs given naturalism and the evolutionary theory (N&E). When a naturalist holds a belief to be true, which presupposes she is capable of true beliefs (regardless of N&E or supernaturalism—more on this in part II), her theories (the truthfulness of her theories to be exact) are casually linked to the natural world (and generally are not mere conjectures of an inaccessible reality). Furthermore, statistically speaking, it is probable, given the verifiably truthful beliefs naturalism has produced thus far, her beliefs are trustworthy, even if the exact naturalistic explanation of why her beliefs are trustworthy given evolutionary theory elude her (for the time being).

The Bigger Arrogant

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 05:30:00 GMT

Almost every conversation I’ve had with a religious person leads to the accusation that how could I be so arrogant, so boastful and limited in my imagination as to dismiss the existence of God. In fact, this accusation is so common that even Richard Dawkins has had to respond to it in many of the interviews and talk shows (at least in the US) he has been to … but never quite from the following perspective.

The truly remarkable arrogance is in fact to not dismiss God. That a mortal, feeble human being could be so immensely boastful and certain of its biological construction and mental capacity that it alone can ASSUME into existence a God for the universe thereby explain everything there ever was and ever will be in just one stroke ought to be arrogance incarnate.

The inherent complexity of the world and the capacity of the human mind to comprehend this complexity require extrapolations that are sometimes faulty. In light of such abundant research (even everyday experience) pointing to how easily the human mind could be tricked, to believe that the human mind is capable of such immense knowledge as to have the final explanation, God, for every facet of life is a truly remarkable arrogance (to borrow a term from The God Delusion, it is the Super Jumbo Jet of arrogance).

Beyond Common Sense - knowledge tag

The Many Problems of EAAN, Part I

The Bigger Arrogant