Appendix 2: Proving Naturalism and Related Views?
Appendix 2
Proving Naturalism and Related Views?
One of the most intriguing recent developments may pertain to how major naturalistic and similar-thinking researchers have critiqued their colleagues, hinting that there may be various sorts of deep fissures in their shared worldview perspectives, encompassing similarities among the varieties of materialism and other forms of atheism, for example. The history of philosophy and the history of ideas often involve infighting between somewhat like-minded schools of thought. Aristotelians argue with Platonists, while Freudians and cognitive behaviorists continue to hash out their theories and the meaning of empirical experiments.
But recent issues debated between species of naturalistic and related views often seem to go more deeply. When the various critiques are lined up side by side, the list grows to a rather impressive length. Instead of picking smaller items that might successfully convince one type of skeptic to move to just a slightly different emphasis, these recent deliberations seem to have more to do with the entire worldview not being able to explain the existence of some rather large and important ideas, such as being unable to substantiate naturalism along with like-minded positions, the seeming reality of free choices, or the existence of an immaterial portion of human thought processes that appears truly to have a real effect in the world, and so on.
For example, in a review of a new book by prominent “New Atheist” philosopher Daniel Dennett, equally prominent atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel charges Dennett with a very serious lapse. Nagel criticizes Dennett with casting scientific discussions according to his predetermined worldview without regard for whether the underlying position is accurate or correct. As Nagel complains: “And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality.” Hence, Dennett is blamed with making science appear to fit into his own preconceived materialistic mold, whether or not it actually does so. Driving home the point, Nagel adds regarding Dennett that “he is, in Aristotle’s words, ‘maintaining a thesis at all costs.’”
This is a very serious charge. Nagel apparently thinks that, rather than following the available evidence wherever it might lead, Dennett prefers to craft and formulate his science in such a way that it appears to simply reaffirm his materialistic views, regardless of how misleading and inaccurate they may be! One may expect a theist to bring such a retort against a materialist or vice versa, but when a fellow who might be thought to share some similar ideas does so, it is more significant, since given the larger worldview picture, one might expect them to stand more or less shoulder to shoulder in the same corner of the ring.
But consider a comment regarding the power of worldviews from Harvard scientist Richard Lewontin:
Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
This too is a radical comment. So, what is a proper answer? Are we all doomed to argue circularly from our predisposed, prior beliefs? Or, as scholars have done for centuries, perhaps it is largely a matter of comparing and contrasting arguments and ascertaining where the relevant evidence lies. No one is immune to personal bias or the force of our worldviews. Still, all we can do is conduct the most careful research possible, subject our views to peer review, lecturing widely, and interacting regularly with those with whom we disagree. Then others can judge who is exhibiting the best arguments.
Nagel comments further on the matter, drawing a few similar conclusions. He also evaluates a book by leading Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga regarding the comparing of evidence, showing that fruitful steps can still be taken, such as this theistic challenge to naturalism:
I say this as someone who cannot imagine believing what he [Plantinga] believes. But even those who cannot accept the theist alternative should admit that Plantinga’s criticisms of naturalism are directed at the deepest problem with that view—how it can account for the appearance, through the operation of the laws of physics and chemistry, of conscious beings like ourselves, capable of discovering those laws and understanding the universe that they govern. Defenders of naturalism have not ignored this problem, but I believe that so far, even with the aid of evolutionary theory, they have not proposed a credible solution.
This is not a recent conclusion for Nagel either. He has been leveling it against naturalists and similar scholars for many years: “But the reasons against a purely physical theory of consciousness are strong enough to make it seem likely that a physical theory of the whole of reality is impossible.” Such a cross-over critique of Dennett and Plantinga can be valuable as a lesson on how to arrive at the most-evidenced positions in spite of our worldviews.
This comment by Nagel is also reminiscent of a much stronger concession made by Quentin Smith and published in a philosophy journal directed chiefly to naturalists and others of like mind. Smith remarked that philosophical theism had grown so strong in universities since the 1960s that, if an entire series of debates in the field of philosophy of religion took place between theistic philosophers and their naturalistic counterparts, even if moderated by naturalists, the theists would probably win every last debate!
The point here is that, as Nagel and Smith have argued, there are ways to break through biases of all sorts in order to ascertain who is presenting the better arguments. Books, journal articles, debates, dialogues, and friendly discussions are some ways to show this, especially where the events or articles are constructed in such a way that requires direct responses to questions that are designed to allow listeners and readers to ascertain where the best data lie.
Still other, rather shocking confessions have been pointed out by very influential naturalists and fellow thinkers. Besides those already mentioned here, Nagel and others have spoken out freely in favor of the contributions made by Intelligent Design theorists. This cuts to the heart of several weaknesses in these views, especially since very few topics are more anathema—no doubt due precisely to the deep threat that Intelligent Design may pose to their origins scenarios. John West quotes Nagel as such: “‘The empirical arguments’ offered by [Intelligent Design] proponents ‘are of great interest in themselves.’” West adds, “It’s the evidence that matters, and it’s the evidence that demands a response.”
Another challenge is Michael Ruse’s several published references to naturalism (or at least to certain versions or expressions of it along with similar stances) as actually being a religion, complete with its own dogma, highly rigid and inflexible pronouncements, and tendencies to simply pound the podium and issue constant “Amens!” and guffaws from the crowd instead of providing serious scholarly responses. Ruse remarks rather pointedly:
I think that if, as I myself would, you extend the scope of [Darwinian] theory to an understanding of knowledge acquisition and justification and the same for morality—evolutionary epistemology and evolutionary ethics—then it can act as a religion substitute or alternative. It gives you a world picture that some people, starting with me, find entirely satisfying. I can’t answer all of the questions—Why is there something rather than nothing? How does the conscious mind arise from the physical brain? Is there a purpose to it all? . . . I do nevertheless think that often Dawkins and company show the sociological characteristics of the religious.
Intriguingly of late, though, it is widely proclaimed mostly by Dawkins and the “New Atheists” that religious individuals offer only faith while science offers “proof.” Well, the table has switched in the past few decades, with naturalists, materialists, and others too often providing too little, very shoddy, or virtually no scholarly comebacks at all. So what happened when Oxford University professor (with three earned doctorates) John Lennox debated Rich Dawkins twice? What about when William Lane Craig debated both Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris on different occasions? Or when Frank Turek debated Christopher Hitchens twice, and so many internet atheist comments complained that their fellow atheists brought the wrong defender and criticized Hitchens for doing an exceptionally poor job? By far the comments from both sides of the aisle thought the Christian theists got the best of the debates.
Still, the shrill mantra continues from atheists that religious persons cannot think while atheists are society’s’ “brights,” as Dawkins has been known to highlight. But folks who know how to find the data can listen, read, and decide for themselves. Is this why, precisely as mentioned by atheist philosopher Quentin Smith above, he thinks that Christian philosophers would win every single debate on philosophy of religion matters against their secular counterparts, even with naturalist debate moderators? Smith obviously rejects the view that Christian philosophers do not think well.
Now, it needs to be added quickly that winning debates definitely does not indicate who speaks the truth. One thinker could simply be a better debater. That is just not how truth works. However, it may serve as one indicator of what is transpiring. When naturalists and those of similar positions do not respond well in written works where there is plenty of time to think through and develop one’s position, or especially if they actually concede the victory to the theist and acknowledge that their earlier position can no longer be maintained after the conclusion of the give-and-take, these instances are far more significant than oral debates. When fellow naturalists do the same regarding their system as a whole, that is also very significant. Other measures could add to or subtract from these conclusions.
Altogether, the many critiques of naturalism, materialism, atheism, and the like that have been published in recent years arguably provide evidence of a growing dissatisfaction with the perspective. But what causes a paradigm to begin to lose its luster? One popular notion is that new facts keep piling up until the older conceptions of reality can no longer handle a good many of these challenges, followed by the scientific teeter-totter flipping to the other side. But another popular, more relativistic conception is that over time enough influential individuals simply grow increasingly ready for change.
Historian and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn argued that both developments can tip the scales away from prevailing views. One view “seems an attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies . . . indeed, those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all.” One example was mentioned above with regard to Nagel’s critique of Dennett’s inability to squeeze everything into the naturalistic or materialistic mold. For Kuhn, that is one of the features of a system that is suffering from significant stress.
In one of his scholarly volumes, C. S. Lewis mentions the other option: “When changes in the human mind produce a sufficient disrelish of the old Model and a sufficient hankering for some new one, phenomena to support the new one will obediently turn up.” Perhaps a view “will die a violent death, ruthlessly smashed by an unprovoked assault of new facts.” But Lewis still thinks that his initial option here is the more common one.
Perhaps scholars are simply growing weary of the fundamental sterility of naturalism and related positions. But many scholars have argued that there are many indications of late that this position is opposed by too many serious problems and is currently doing a poor job of responding to them.
For example, due to its dominance in the Western scholarly world today, perhaps naturalism has grown lax on its overall inability to show that it can even marshal the necessary data to argue that it is actually true. Debates with theists, such as those mentioned by Quentin Smith above, often appear to leave naturalists and other like-minded scholars with the short end of the stick when it comes to disproving the existence of God. The cause and birth of the universe is as large a problem as any, setting up a virtual war zone with studies in Intelligent Design. Nagel’s decades of pounding fellow thinkers for their inability to indicate how consciousness and personhood can emerge from evolutionary beginnings is a major example.
Other potential weak points might concern where naturalism and related stances derive their notions of true beliefs, the personal perception and conviction of free will and making one’s own decisions, or that all subjective states likewise must be derived from physical causation. What about Plantinga’s charge (and C. S. Lewis’s famous essay before that) that naturalism has severe epistemic issues in not knowing or recognizing the existence of truth, hence possessing no notion of “proof” or demonstration? Many sophisticated scholars have leveled these and still other serious criticisms at naturalism and sister views.
The most serious defense of naturalism and similar views has traditionally come from arguments regarding the existence of evil. But even here, many of the most influential philosophers exhibit a variety of significant disagreements among each other concerning the strength and application of these arguments, leading to impasses of one sort or another in the conclusions. Some like-minded scholars do think that the argument likely disproves theism, such as argued by Paul Draper. Mackie’s earlier thoughts were mentioned above, though he concluded that his argument from evil “may seem to be very modest.” He further concluded, “We cannot, indeed, take the problem of evil as a conclusive disproof of traditional theism, because, as we have seen, there is some flexibility in its doctrines,” though he considered his argument to be strong.
Atheist William Rowe rejected Mackie’s original deductive argument, going further and calling himself a “friendly atheist” because he concluded that “some theists are rationally justified in believing that the theistic God exists.” Much more recently, atheist philosopher Graham Oppy has argued against theses such as those by Draper, Mackie, Rowe, and other atheists. Oppy thinks that the philosophical arguments both for and against God’s existence are, on all sides, inconclusive in the end, especially from the perspective of neither side changing minds across the aisle. Greg Ganssle has responded well to Oppy on a topic that is closer to the ones being raised in this volume.
For many, perhaps even the best response to the problem of evil was written by Alvin Plantinga, for whom the bottom line regarding the problem of evil’s force for the theist “is not that his beliefs are logically or probabilistically incompatible.” Rather, the remaining issues are more often of a personal, pastoral nature. Thus, Plantinga declared that the “Free Will Defense . . . solves the main philosophical problem of evil.”
Concerning the problem of evil, then, one insightful development has been the opposing viewpoints where influential thinkers, like those just mentioned, frequently oppose their own colleagues’ viewpoints on whether and to what extent an argument demonstrates naturalism and related positions or disproves theism. Evil remains a serious problem across the board, perhaps for all positions, but it is not necessarily thought even by major naturalists, materialists, or other atheists to confirm or verify their positions or even to be determinative in its favor. Further, some of the naturalistic-type scholars do not think that evil refutes theism either. So, it must be insisted that the problem of indicating the truth of the atheistic view also remains a problem for a variety of reasons.
From various hints above among others, some philosophers assert that naturalistic and sister positions cannot be demonstrated to be true. For example, even materialist philosopher William G. Lycan treats materialism as lacking any strong reasons in its favor. He concludes his essay by declaring, “nor have we seen any good argument for materialism.”
Similarly, philosopher Stephen Parrish asserted that “there are no good reasons for thinking that naturalism is true.” He concludes his treatment with these words:
Taking naturalism seriously, human beings are creatures randomly thrown up by a mindless process of evolution, bereft of free will, any sort of real or absolute value, an afterlife, and even, if one is consistent, rationality. . . . To sum up: it seems that the case against atheism and naturalism is overwhelming.
Notes
Thomas Nagel, “Is Consciousness an Illusion?,” New York Review, March 9, 2017, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/03/09/is-consciousness-an-illusion-dennett-evolution/, in a review of Daniel Dennett’s book From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds.
Richard Lewontin, “Billions and Billions of Demons,” The New York Review, January 9, 1997, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/01/09/billions-and-billions-of-demons/, reviewing Carl Sagan’s book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.
Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 27.
Thomas Nagel, “A Philosopher Defends Religion,” The New York Review, September 27, 2012, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/09/27/philosopher-defends-religion/, reviewing Alvin Plantinga’s book Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism.
Thomas Nagel, What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 36–37; cf. also Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, 37.
Quentin Smith, “The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism,” Philo 4 (2001): 195–215.
John G. West, “Noted Atheist Philosopher Thomas Nagel: ‘Defenders of Intelligent Design Deserve Our Gratitude,’” Intelligent Design News, August 22, 2012, 2.
Michael Ruse, “Is Darwinism a Religion?,” Huffington Post, September 21, 2011, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/is-darwinism-a-religion_b_904828. Cf. Michael Ruse, “How Evolution Became a Religion, Creationists Correct?: Darwinians Wrongly Mix Science with Morality, Politics,” National Post Online, May 13, 2000, http://www.nationalpost.com/artslife.asp?f=000513/288424.html. Cf. also Ruse’s book, Darwinism as Religion: What Literature Tells Us about Evolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
Such as Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 134; Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Warner, 2007), 150, 202, 204; Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: Norton, 2004), 23, 40. A host of theistic responses came quickly, most notably by scientists and philosophers such as John C. Lennox, God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2007); Peter S. Williams, A Sceptic’s Guide to Atheism (Bucks: Authentic Media, 2009); James S. Spiegel, The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief (Chicago: Moody, 2010); Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great about Christianity (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2007); Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath, The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2007). On the cover of the book by McGrath and McGrath, Michael Ruse amazingly quipped concerning Dawkins, “The God Delusion makes me embarrassed to be an atheist, and the McGrath’s show why.”
Dawkins, God Delusion, 380.
For an example of how such written dialogues might determine an important issue, two intellectual “heavyweights” sporting diametrically opposed positions hammered out their respective views in a famous set of written challenges and responses. Oxford University atheist philosopher J. L. Mackie proposed in a 1955 article entitled “Evil and Omnipotence,” Mind 64 (1955): 200–212, later reprinted in Louis P. Pojman, ed., Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1994), 185–92, that there was a logical problem for theists from the problem of evil which, if successful, would disprove theism. Mackie was challenged by Plantinga, who critiqued Mackie’s argument point by point. The result of a protracted philosophical exchange was that Mackie actually conceded that Plantinga had sufficiently answered his objections here in Mackie’s volume The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982), 154. Later, another prominent atheist philosopher, William L. Rowe, likewise recognized that Mackie’s logical objection from the problem of evil had failed: “No one, I think, has succeeded in establishing such an extravagant claim . . . there is a fairly compelling argument for the view that the existence of evil is logically consistent with the existence of the theistic God.” Rowe’s original essay was published as “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism,” American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1979): 335–41 and then was later reproduced in William L. Rowe and William J. Wainwright, eds., Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings (Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace, 1998), 242. Cf. Ronald H. Nash’s overview of this written dialogue in his text Faith and Reason: Searching for a Rational Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 1988), 177–94.
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 24, cf. 135.
Nagel, “Is Consciousness an Illusion?”
C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 221, 222–23, respectively.
Robert C. Koons and George Bealer, eds., The Waning of Materialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Michael L. Peterson and Michael Ruse, Science, Evolution, and Religion: A Debate about Atheism and Theism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); C. Stephen Evans, Natural Signs and Knowledge of God: A New Look at Theistic Arguments (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Evans, Why Christian Faith Still Makes Sense: A Response to Contemporary Challenges (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015); Terence L. Nichols, The Sacred Cosmos: Christian Faith and the Challenge of Naturalism (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2003). Many thanks to my former philosophy department colleague Thomas Provenzola, who shared these bibliographic sources immediately above. Another excellent critique, which J. P. Moreland (on the back cover of the text) calls, “The clearest and most penetrating exposition and critique of naturalism anywhere,” is Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro, Naturalism, Interventions, ed. Conor Cunningham and Peter Candler (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), esp. chaps. 3–5; James Beilby, ed., Naturalism Defeated? Essays on Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002); Michael Dennett, “The Place of Life and Man in Nature: Defending the Anthropocentric Thesis,” BIO-Complexity 2013 (2013): 1–15; Alvin Plantinga, “Dennett’s Dangerous Idea,” Books and Culture 2, no. 3 (1996): 16–18, 35; Phillip E. Johnson, “The Case against Naturalism,” Vision and Values 4 (1996): 1–7; Richard Schlegel, “Is Science the Only Way to Truth?,” Zygon 17 (1982): 343–59; R. F. Holland, Against Empiricism: On Education, Epistemology, and Value (Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams, 1980); Gary R. Habermas, “Paradigm Shift: A Challenge to Naturalism,” Bibliotheca Sacra 146 (1989): 437–50; Gregory E. Ganssle, “Metaphysical Naturalism Is Doomed (Sort of)” (paper presented at the Evangelical Theological Society Annual Meeting, Nashville, TN, No-vember 15–17, 2000).
Paul Draper, “The Problem of Evil,” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, ed. Thomas P. Flint and Michael C. Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), chap. 15; Draper, “Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists,” Noûs 23 (1989): 331–50.
Mackie, Miracle of Theism, 176, also 172–76.
Rowe, “Problem of Evil,” 335–41, quotation on 340.
Graham Oppy, “The Evidential Problem of Evil,” in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, ed. Charles Taliaferro, Paul Draper, and Philip L. Quinn, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).
Graham Oppy, Arguing about Gods (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), xv, plus sections 1.2 and 8.3. William Lane Craig responded to these ideas on several grounds in “Arguing Successfully about God: A Review Essay of Graham Oppy’s Arguing about Gods,” Philosophia Christi 10 (2008): 435–42, and also in Craig’s upcoming second volume of his Systematic Philosophical Theology. Thanks to Bill Craig for highlighting some of these sources and ideas here on the problem of evil.
Gregory E. Ganssle, review of The Best Argument against God, by Graham Oppy, Philosophia Christi 18 (2016): 503–6.
Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), 63.
Plantinga, 64.
William G. Lycan, “Redressing Substance Dualism,” in The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism, ed. Jonathan J. Loose, Angus J. L. Menuge, and J. P. Moreland (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2018), 22.
Lycan, 33. Thanks to J. P. Moreland for suggesting this example.
Stephen E. Parrish, Atheism? A Critical Analysis (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2019), 226.