Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism

WHERE THE CONFLICT REALLY LIES

Science, Religion, and Naturalism

Alvin Plantinga

Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further
Oxford University’s objective of excellence
in research, scholarship, and education.

Oxford New York
Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto

With offices in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Copyright © 2011 Oxford University Press

Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016

www.oup.com

Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Plantinga, Alvin.

Where the conflict really lies : science, religion, and naturalism / Alvin Plantinga.

p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-19-981209-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. Religion and science. 2. Evolution (Biology)—Religious aspects—Christianity. 3. Naturalism—Religious aspects—Christianity. I. Title.
BL240.3.P53 2011
231.7′65—dc22
2011002532

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

Preface

PART I
ALLEGED CONFLICT

1 Evolution and Christian Belief (1)

   I Preliminaries

  II Dawkins

2 Evolution and Christian Belief (2)

   I Dennett’s Argument

  II Draper’s Argument

 III Why Do People Doubt Evolution?

 IV Kitcher’s “Enlightenment Case”

3 Divine Action in the World: The Old Picture

   I The Problem

  II The Old Picture

4 The New Picture

   I Quantum Mechanics

  II What is the Problem with “Intervention”?

 III What
is
Intervention?

 IV Intervention and Divine Action at the Quantum Level

 V A Couple of Other Alleged Conflicts

PART II
SUPERFICIAL CONFLICT

5 Evolutionary Psychology and Scripture Scholarship

   I Evolutionary Psychology

  II Evolutionary Psychology and Religion

 III Historical Biblical Criticism

6 Defeaters?

   I Defeaters and Their Nature

  II Evidence Base

 III Methodological Naturalism

 IV Is Simonian Science a Defeater for Christian Belief?

  V Faith and Reason

 VI Can Religious Beliefs be Defeated?

VII The Reduction Test

PART III
CONCORD

7 Fine-Tuning

   I Fine-Tuning

  II Objections

8 Design Discourse

   I Michael Behe and Biological Arguments

  II
Perceiving
Design?

 III Design
Argument
vs. Design
Discourse

 IV The Difference it Makes

9 Deep Concord: Christian Theism and the Deep Roots of Science

   I Science and the Divine Image

  II Reliability and Regularity

 III Law

 IV Mathematics

V Induction and Learning from Experience

VI Simplicity and Other Theoretical Virtues

VII Contingency and Science as Empirical

PART IV
DEEP CONFLICT

10 The Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism

   I Superficial Concord

  II Deep Conflict

 III The Argument

 IV The First Premise: Darwin’s Doubt

  V The Argument for Premise (1)

 VI The Remaining Premises

VII Two Concluding Comments

Index

My overall claim in this book:
there is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism
.

Now central to the great monotheistic religions—Christianity, Judaism, Islam—is the thought that there is such a person as God: a personal agent who has created the world and is all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good. I take naturalism to be the thought that there is no such person as God, or anything like God. Naturalism is stronger than atheism: you can be an atheist without rising to the full heights (sinking to the lowest depths?) of naturalism; but you can’t be a naturalist without being an atheist.

Naturalism is what we could call a worldview, a sort of total way of looking at ourselves and our world. It isn’t clearly a religion: the term “religion” is vague, and naturalism falls into the vague area of its application. Still, naturalism plays many of the same roles as a religion. In particular, it gives answers to the great human questions: Is there such a person as God? How should we live? Can we look forward to life after death? What is our place in the universe? How are
we related to other creatures? Naturalism gives answers here: there is no God, and it makes no sense to hope for life after death. As to our place in the grand scheme of things, we human beings are just another animal with a peculiar way of making a living. Naturalism isn’t clearly a religion; but since it plays some of the same roles as a religion, we could properly call it a
quasi
-religion.

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
.

Many would dispute my claim that there is no serious conflict between religion and science—indeed, many seem to think naturalism or atheism is part of the “scientific worldview.” Among them are the “new atheists”: Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris. These are the Four Horsemen—not of the Apocalypse, nor of Notre Dame, but of atheism; and their aim is to run roughshod over religion. Their objections and complaints are manifold. First, they attribute most of the ills of the world to religion: they point to the Crusades, to witch hunts, to religious wars, to intolerance, to current terrorism, and much else besides. Of course 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.

The Four Horsemen also claim that religious belief is unreasonable and irrational, as silly as believing in the Spaghetti Monster or Superman, or maybe even the Green Lantern. Their claims are loud and strident. They propose to deal with their opponents not by way of reasoned argument and discussion, but by way of ridicule and “naked contempt” (see footnote 16 in
chapter 2
). Why they choose
this route is not wholly clear. One possibility, of course, is that their atheism is adolescent rebellion carried on by other means. Another (consistent with the first) is that they know of no good reasons or arguments for their views, and hence resort to schoolyard tactics. In terms of intellectual competence, the new atheists are certainly inferior to the “old atheists”—Bertrand Russell and John Mackie come to mind. They are also inferior to many other contemporary but less strident atheists—Thomas Nagel, Michael Tooley, and William Rowe, for example. We may perhaps hope that the new atheists are but a temporary blemish on the face of serious conversation in this crucial area.

Be all that as it may, these new atheists unite with the old atheists in declaring that there is deep and irreconcilable conflict between theistic religion—Christian belief, for example—and science. (And here they are joined by some from the opposite end of the spectrum: those Christians who believe that reason and modern science are the enemies of Christian belief.) Now if this were true, it would be both important and unhappy. Modern science is certainly the most striking and impressive intellectual phenomenon of the last half millennium. Think of the development of physics from the time of Isaac Newton to the present: the sheer intellectual brilliance and power of that tradition is astonishing. It involves a large number of extremely talented people, but also an army of less incandescent luminaries—all addressing an evolving set of overlapping questions in such a way that the later answers often build on and carry further the earlier answers. What is particularly striking about modern science (at least to a philosopher) is that it is in this way a
cooperative
venture. (Of course it is also, often, an extremely competitive venture.) Scientists not only collaborate with each other; they regularly build on each other’s results.