This is the first in a series of interviews about religion that I will conduct for The Stone. The interviewee for this installment is Alvin Plantinga, an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, a former president of both the Society of Christian Philosophers and the American Philosophical Association, and the author, most recently, of “Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism.”
Gary Gutting: A recent survey by
PhilPapers, the online philosophy index, says that 62 percent of
philosophers are atheists (with another 11 percent “inclined” to the
view). Do you think the philosophical literature provides critiques of
theism strong enough to warrant their views? Or do you think
philosophers’ atheism is due to factors other than rational analysis?
Alvin Plantinga: If 62 percent of
philosophers are atheists, then the proportion of atheists among
philosophers is much greater than (indeed, is nearly twice as great as)
the proportion of atheists among academics generally. (I take atheism to
be the belief that there is no such person as the God of the theistic
religions.) Do philosophers know something here that these other
academics don’t know? What could it be? Philosophers, as opposed to
other academics, are often professionally concerned with the theistic
arguments — arguments for the existence of God. My guess is that a
considerable majority of philosophers, both believers and unbelievers,
reject these arguments as unsound.
Still, that’s not nearly sufficient for
atheism. In the British newspaper The Independent, the scientist Richard
Dawkins was recently asked the following question: “If you died and
arrived at the gates of heaven, what would you say to God to justify
your lifelong atheism?” His response: “I’d quote Bertrand Russell: ‘Not
enough evidence, God! Not enough evidence!’” But lack of evidence, if
indeed evidence is lacking, is no grounds for atheism. No one thinks
there is good evidence for the proposition that there are an even number
of stars; but also, no one thinks the right conclusion to draw is that
there are an uneven number of stars. The right conclusion would instead
be agnosticism.
In the same way, the failure of the theistic
arguments, if indeed they do fail, might conceivably be good grounds for
agnosticism, but not for atheism. Atheism, like even-star-ism, would
presumably be the sort of belief you can hold rationally only if you
have strong arguments or evidence.
G.G.: You say atheism requires
evidence to support it. Many atheists deny this, saying that all they
need to do is point out the lack of any good evidence for theism. You
compare atheism to the denial that there are an even number of stars,
which obviously would need evidence. But atheists say (using an example
from Bertrand Russell) that you should rather compare atheism to the
denial that there’s a teapot in orbit around the sun. Why prefer your
comparison to Russell’s?
A.P.: Russell’s idea, I take it, is we
don’t really have any evidence against teapotism, but we don’t need
any; the absence of evidence is evidence of absence, and is enough to
support a-teapotism. We don’t need any positive evidence against it to
be justified in a-teapotism; and perhaps the same is true of theism.
I disagree: Clearly we have a great deal of
evidence against teapotism. For example, as far as we know, the only way
a teapot could have gotten into orbit around the sun would be if some
country with sufficiently developed space-shot capabilities had shot
this pot into orbit. No country with such capabilities is sufficiently
frivolous to waste its resources by trying to send a teapot into orbit.
Furthermore, if some country had done so, it would have been all
over the news; we would certainly have heard about it. But we haven’t.
And so on. There is plenty of evidence against teapotism. So if, à la
Russell, theism is like teapotism, the atheist, to be justified, would
(like the a-teapotist) have to have powerful evidence against theism.
G.G.: But isn’t there also plenty of
evidence against theism — above all, the amount of evil in a world
allegedly made by an all-good, all-powerful God?
A.P.: The so-called “problem of evil”
would presumably be the strongest (and maybe the only) evidence against
theism. It does indeed have some strength; it makes sense to think that
the probability of theism, given the existence of all the suffering and
evil our world contains, is fairly low. But of course there are also
arguments for theism. Indeed, there are at least a couple of
dozen good theistic arguments. So the atheist would have to try to
synthesize and balance the probabilities. This isn’t at all easy to do,
but it’s pretty obvious that the result wouldn’t anywhere nearly support
straight-out atheism as opposed to agnosticism.
G.G.: But when you say “good theistic
arguments,” you don’t mean arguments that are decisive — for example,
good enough to convince any rational person who understands them.
A.P.: I should make clear first that I
don’t think arguments are needed for rational belief in God. In this
regard belief in God is like belief in other minds, or belief in the
past. Belief in God is grounded in experience, or in the sensus divinitatis, John Calvin’s term for an inborn inclination to form beliefs about God in a wide variety of circumstances.
Nevertheless, I think there are a large
number — maybe a couple of dozen — of pretty good theistic arguments.
None is conclusive, but each, or at any rate the whole bunch taken
together, is about as strong as philosophical arguments ordinarily get.
G.G.: Could you give an example of such an argument?
AP: One presently rather popular
argument: fine-tuning. Scientists tell us that there are many properties
our universe displays such that if they were even slightly different
from what they are in fact, life, or at least our kind of life, would
not be possible. The universe seems to be fine-tuned for life. For
example, if the force of the Big Bang had been different by one part in
10 to the 60th, life of our sort would not have been possible. The same
goes for the ratio of the gravitational force to the force driving the
expansion of the universe: If it had been even slightly
different, our kind of life would not have been possible. In fact the
universe seems to be fine-tuned, not just for life, but for intelligent
life. This fine-tuning is vastly more likely given theism than given
atheism.
G.G.: But even if this fine-tuning
argument (or some similar argument) convinces someone that God exists,
doesn’t it fall far short of what at least Christian theism asserts,
namely the existence of an all-perfect God? Since the world isn’t
perfect, why would we need a perfect being to explain the world or any
feature of it?
A.P.: I suppose your thinking is that
it is suffering and sin that make this world less than perfect. But then
your question makes sense only if the best possible worlds contain no
sin or suffering. And is that true? Maybe the best worlds contain free
creatures some of whom sometimes do what is wrong. Indeed, maybe the
best worlds contain a scenario very like the Christian story.
Think about it: The first being of the
universe, perfect in goodness, power and knowledge, creates free
creatures. These free creatures turn their backs on him, rebel against
him and get involved in sin and evil. Rather than treat them as some
ancient potentate might — e.g., having them boiled in oil — God responds
by sending his son into the world to suffer and die so that human
beings might once more be in a right relationship to God. God himself
undergoes the enormous suffering involved in seeing his son mocked,
ridiculed, beaten and crucified. And all this for the sake of these
sinful creatures.
I’d say a world in which this story is true
would be a truly magnificent possible world. It would be so good that no
world could be appreciably better. But then the best worlds contain sin
and suffering.
G.G.: O.K., but in any case, isn’t the
theist on thin ice in suggesting the need for God as an explanation of
the universe? There’s always the possibility that we’ll find a
scientific account that explains what we claimed only God could explain.
After all, that’s what happened when Darwin developed his theory of
evolution. In fact, isn’t a major support for atheism the very fact that
we no longer need God to explain the world?
A.P.: Some atheists seem to think that
a sufficient reason for atheism is the fact (as they say) that we no
longer need God to explain natural phenomena — lightning and thunder for
example. We now have science.
As a justification of atheism, this is pretty
lame. We no longer need the moon to explain or account for lunacy; it
hardly follows that belief in the nonexistence of the moon (a-moonism?)
is justified. A-moonism on this ground would be sensible only if the
sole ground for belief in the existence of the moon was its explanatory
power with respect to lunacy. (And even so, the justified attitude would
be agnosticism with respect to the moon, not a-moonism.) The same thing
goes with belief in God: Atheism on this sort of basis would be
justified only if the explanatory power of theism were the only reason
for belief in God. And even then, agnosticism would be the justified
attitude, not atheism.
G.G.: So, what are the further grounds for believing in God, the reasons that make atheism unjustified?
A.P.: The most important ground of
belief is probably not philosophical argument but religious experience.
Many people of very many different cultures have thought themselves in
experiential touch with a being worthy of worship. They believe that
there is such a person, but not because of the explanatory prowess of
such belief. Or maybe there is something like Calvin’s sensus divinitatis. Indeed, if theism is true, then very likely there is something like the sensus divinitatis.
So claiming that the only sensible ground for belief in God is the
explanatory quality of such belief is substantially equivalent to
assuming atheism.
G.G.: If, then, there isn’t evidence
to support atheism, why do you think so many philosophers — presumably
highly rational people — are atheists?
AP: I’m not a psychologist, so I don’t
have any special knowledge here. Still, there are some possible
explanations. Thomas Nagel, a terrific philosopher and an unusually
perceptive atheist, says he simply doesn’t want there to be any
such person as God. And it isn’t hard to see why. For one thing, there
would be what some would think was an intolerable invasion of privacy:
God would know my every thought long before I thought it. For another,
my actions and even my thoughts would be a constant subject of judgment
and evaluation.
Basically, these come down to the serious
limitation of human autonomy posed by theism. This desire for autonomy
can reach very substantial proportions, as with the German philosopher
Heidegger, who, according to Richard Rorty, felt guilty for living in a
universe he had not himself created. Now there’s a tender conscience!
But even a less monumental desire for autonomy can perhaps also motivate
atheism.
GG: Especially among today’s atheists,
materialism seems to be a primary motive. They think there’s nothing
beyond the material entities open to scientific inquiry, so there
there’s no place for immaterial beings such as God.
AP: Well, if there are only material
entities, then atheism certainly follows. But there is a really serious
problem for materialism: It can’t be sensibly believed, at least if,
like most materialists, you also believe that humans are the product of
evolution.
GG: Why is that?
AP: I can’t give a complete statement
of the argument here — for that see Chapter 10 of “Where the Conflict
Really Lies.” But, roughly, here’s why. First, if materialism is true,
human beings, naturally enough, are material objects. Now what, from
this point of view, would a belief be? My belief that Marcel
Proust is more subtle that Louis L’Amour, for example? Presumably this
belief would have to be a material structure in my brain, say a
collection of neurons that sends electrical impulses to other such
structures as well as to nerves and muscles, and receives electrical
impulses from other structures.
But in addition to such neurophysiological properties, this structure, if it is a belief, would also have to have a content: It would have, say, to be the belief that Proust is more subtle than L’Amour.
GG: So is your suggestion that a neurophysiological structure can’t be a belief? That a belief has to be somehow immaterial?
AP: That may be, but it’s not my point
here. I’m interested in the fact that beliefs cause (or at least partly
cause) actions. For example, my belief that there is a beer in the
fridge (together with my desire to have a beer) can cause me to heave
myself out of my comfortable armchair and lumber over to the fridge.
But here’s the important point: It’s by
virtue of its material, neurophysiological properties that a belief
causes the action. It’s in virtue of those electrical signals sent via
efferent nerves to the relevant muscles, that the belief about the beer
in the fridge causes me to go to the fridge. It is not by virtue of the content (there is a beer in the fridge) the belief has.
GG: Why do you say that?
AP: Because if this belief — this structure — had a totally different content (even, say, if it was a belief that there is no beer in the fridge)
but had the same neurophysiological properties, it would still have
caused that same action of going to the fridge. This means that the
content of the belief isn’t a cause of the behavior. As far as causing
the behavior goes, the content of the belief doesn’t matter.
GG: That does seem to be a hard
conclusion to accept. But won’t evolution get the materialist out of
this difficulty? For our species to have survived, presumably many, if
not most, of our beliefs must be true — otherwise, we wouldn’t be
functional in a dangerous world.
AP: Evolution will have resulted in
our having beliefs that are adaptive; that is, beliefs that cause
adaptive actions. But as we’ve seen, if materialism is true, the belief
does not cause the adaptive action by way of its content: It causes that
action by way of its neurophysiological properties. Hence it doesn’t
matter what the content of the belief is, and it doesn’t matter whether
that content is true or false. All that’s required is that the belief
have the right neurophysiological properties. If it’s also true, that’s fine; but if false, that’s equally fine.
Evolution will select for belief-producing
processes that produce beliefs with adaptive neurophysiological
properties, but not for belief-producing processes that produce true
beliefs. Given materialism and evolution, any particular belief is as
likely to be false as true.
GG: So your claim is that if materialism is true, evolution doesn’t lead to most of our beliefs being true.
AP: Right. In fact, given materialism and evolution, it follows that our belief-producing faculties are not reliable.
Here’s why. If a belief is as likely to be
false as to be true, we’d have to say the probability that any
particular belief is true is about 50 percent. Now suppose we had a
total of 100 independent beliefs (of course, we have many more).
Remember that the probability that all of a group of beliefs are true is
the multiplication of all their individual probabilities. Even if we
set a fairly low bar for reliability — say, that at least two-thirds (67
percent) of our beliefs are true — our overall reliability, given
materialism and evolution, is exceedingly low: something like .0004. So
if you accept both materialism and evolution, you have good reason to
believe that your belief-producing faculties are not reliable.
But to believe that is to fall into a total
skepticism, which leaves you with no reason to accept any of your
beliefs (including your beliefs in materialism and evolution!). The only
sensible course is to give up the claim leading to this conclusion:
that both materialism and evolution are true. Maybe you can hold one or
the other, but not both.
So if you’re an atheist simply because you
accept materialism, maintaining your atheism means you have to give up
your belief that evolution is true. Another way to put it: The belief
that both materialism and evolution are true is self-refuting. It shoots
itself in the foot. Therefore it can’t rationally be held.
This interview was conducted by email and edited.
Gary Gutting is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and an editor of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
He is the author of, most recently, “Thinking the Impossible: French
Philosophy Since 1960″ and writes regularly for The Stone.
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