Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism

These are a few examples of evolutionary arguments against naturalism (EAAN). The basic idea is that if evolutionary naturalism is true, we couldn’t know it and have no basis on which to argue it.

Something often capitalized on in this discussion is a section of a letter Charles Darwin wrote to William Graham. This section is affectionately referred to as Darwin’s Doubt. While the thinking in this letter does seem to have led to the idea of the EAAN, I think it important to note that that was not Darwin’s intent. The conviction Darwin was doubting was not natural selection, but the idea that the universe is not the result of chance.

Nevertheless you have expressed my inward conviction, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the Universe is not the result of chance. But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?¹

Although the minds of many people seem to jump straight to Alvin Plantinga when the EAAN is mentioned, C.S. Lewis had a similar argument long before Plantinga’s:

If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents - the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts - i.e., of Materialism and Astronomy - are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It’s like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.²

In the essay Meditation in a Toolshed, Lewis put forth some ideas that could be used as a naturalistic argument against naturalism:

A young man meets a girl. The whole world looks different when he sees her. Her voice reminds him of something he has been trying to remember all his life, and ten minutes casual chat with her is more precious than all the favours that all the other women in the world could grant. He is, as they say, ‘in love’. Now comes a scientist and describes this young man’s experience from the outside. For him it is all an affair of the young man’s genes and a recognized biological stimulus. That is the difference between looking along the sexual impulse and looking at it.

[...]

As soon as you have grasped this simple distinction, it raises a question. You get one experience of a thing when you look along it and another when you look at it. Which is the ‘true’ or ‘valid’ experience? Which tells you most about the thing? And you can hardly ask that question without noticing that for the last fifty years or so everyone has been taking the answer for granted. It has been assumed without discussion that if you want the true account of religion you must go, not to religious people, but to anthropologists; that if you want the true account of sexual love you must go, not to lovers, but to psychologists; that if you want to understand some ‘ideology’ (such as medieval chivalry or the nineteenth-century idea of a ‘gentleman’), you must listen not to those who lived inside it, but to sociologists.

[...]

A physiologist, for example, can study pain and find out that it ‘is’ (whatever is means) such and such neural events. But the word pain would have no meaning for him unless he had ‘been inside’ by actually suffering. If he had never looked along pain he simply wouldn’t know what he was looking at. The very subject for his inquiries from outside exists for him only because he has, at least once, been inside.

[...]

…you can step outside one experience only by stepping inside another. Therefore, if all inside experiences are misleading, we are always mislead. The cerebral physiologist may say, if he chooses, that the mathematician’s thought is ‘only’ tiny physical movements of the grey matter. But then what about the cerebral physiologist’s own thought at that very moment? A second physiologist, looking at it, could pronounce it also to be only tiny physical movements in the first physiologist’s skull. Where is the rot to end?³

Lewis also has a case against naturalism via evolution, in his book, Miracles: 

An act of knowing must be determined, in a sense, solely by what is known; we must know it to be thus solely because it is thus. [...] Any thing which professes to explain our reasoning fully without introducing an act of knowing thus solely determined by what is known, is really a theory that there is no reasoning. [...] But this, as it seems to me, is what Naturalism is bound to do.

[...]

The type of mental behavior we now call rational thinking or inference must therefore have been ‘evolved’ by natural selection, by the gradual weeding out of types less fitted to survive. [...] Now natural selection could operate only by eliminating responses that were biologically hurtful and multiplying those which tended to survival. But it is not conceivable that any improvement of responses could ever turn them into acts of insight, or even remotely tend to do so. The relationship between response and stimulus is utterly different from that between knowledge and the truth known.⁴

And, finally, there is Plantinga’s argument. Here is my summary/outline of it:

1) If we have evolved via natural selection, genetic drift, genetic mutation, or similar mechanisms, then our cognitive faculties have also arisen via these mechanisms.

2) If our cognitive faculties arose from naturalistic evolution, are they reliable?

3) Natural selection is concerned with survival, rather than true beliefs or true information from the external world.⁵ “Natural selection doesn’t care what you believe; it is interested only in how you behave.”⁶

4) The ability of our cognitive faculties to understand truth, given naturalistic evolution, is then dependent upon the connection of belief and behavior.

5) There is not a necessary connection between belief and survival behavior; many false beliefs can lead to survival behavior.

6) Evolutionary naturalism is self-defeating. Given evolutionary naturalism, beliefs produced by our cognitive faculties cannot rationally be believed to be reliable. This not only includes the belief in naturalism, but belief in the previous sentence.

Now, I should point out that this is just a simplified summary that I have produced; Plantinga’s full argument is far more technical than what I have presented.

Now, if you would like a less technical argument than Platinga’s, then you might like the argument given by Rhology:

Atoms coalesced into molecules, into larger clumps of matter. Rocks became amino acids became proteins became unicellular organisms became bananas, platypuses, humans. Bananas don’t think. Neither do cans of Dr Pepper. Why assume that another lump of matter (arbitrarily and customarily called a “brain”) can “think”? A can of Dr Pepper, when shaken, produces fizz. The liver secretes bile when called upon to do so. The brain secretes brain fizz when called upon to do so. And the brain is somehow special?

The main idea behind all of these is that the idea naturalism is self-defeating, due to the inability of naturalism to produce brains that can produce thoughts that are true or reliable. Granted, most of the above arguments involve evolution (more specifically, natural selection). If someone were to produce a naturalistic theory contrary to the evolutionary synthesis, then, perhaps, that person may be able to argue against Lewis or Plantinga (though, I currently doubt this). However, it seems that, for the materialist, evolution is the only game in town.

1. Charles Darwin to William Graham, 3 July 1881 [↩]
2. C.S. Lewis, A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C.S. Lewis, ed. by Clyde Kilby (Harvest Books, 2003), p. 228. [↩]
3. C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. by Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970), pp. 212-15. [↩]
4. C.S. Lewis, Miracles ( HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), pp. 26-28 [↩]
5. Of course, it can be concerned with with accurate information from the external world, but only if false information leads to behavior inappropriate for survival. [↩]
6. Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function, “Naturalism Defeated” (Ithica, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993)  [↩]

Ruse and Religion

I just returned home from the Dembski/Ruse debate and the discussions that ensued. I came late and missed most of the debate and did not hear Dembski present. I heard the end of Ruse’s last presentation and the Q & A session. I had a question to ask Michael Ruse, but wasn’t able to at the debate.

My question was really going to be a challenge of sorts, rather than an attempt to satisfy curiosity. It seemed to me that Ruse was playing two sides, taking up whichever one was the most convenient at the time. On the one hand, he would say that it is possible that there is a transcendent, self-existing, necessary being and that the supernatural might exist. He would then also argue that science must presuppose naturalism and that methodical naturalism must be applied. It seems to me that when he makes both of these claims that he throws the relationship of science to truth under the bus. He is essentially arguing that science must adhere to framework that might be completely contrary to reality.

Vague and Misleading Articles #1

Today I read this article in Wired News, about the National Academy of Sciences releasing a report concerning the importance of teaching evolution in schools. 

The article says, “The new document includes recently discovered evidence supporting evolution, including an important fossil find.” The article, however, fails to mention any specific evidence.

The article goes on to say that there is a lack of evidence for anti-evolution views. Intelligent design (ID) is described as “an alternative to evolution favored by some religious conservatives.” While this is true, I think this still misleading. It lends itself to be mistaken to mean that only religious conservatives support ID, which simply isn’t true.

I think the statement that angered me the most was, “Intelligent design holds that the universe’s order and complexity are so great that evolution cannot explain it.” That is not what ID purports! ID holds that specified complexity within biological entities is evidence of design. Either the author, Nancy Zuckerbrod, did not research what ID is, understand what ID is, or purposefully lied about what ID is. I am also open to the idea that she found her definition of ID from someone else who committed one of the previous three choices. Nonetheless, she should have gotten her definition from Dembski, Behe, or Johnson. I find any of the four way to produce that statement to be either incredibly lazy or incredibly deceitful.

This article said nothing of much importance; it simply furthers the portrayal of those who are anti-evolution as a dimwitted, religious, conservative minority standing in the way of the real scientists, who are calmly trying to demonstrate the importance of teaching some great scientific truth to students.

It is one of thousands of such articles that are intentionally vague, deceptive, and subtle. These articles are not necessarily dangerous because of what they say, but usually because of the things they imply. Now and then, I am going to examine and point out one of these dangerous articles.