Re: [asa] NY Times: Darwin's God

I think your summary glosses over the assumptions reflected in the article.
The clear assumption of most of those interviewed (except for one who is a
Christian), and it seems to me of the author of the article, is that belief
in God must be entirely explainable in terms of some evolutionary
mechanism. If a belief in something is entirely explainable by some
mechanism external to whether that thing really exists, it seems to me that
does bear direclty on whether one is warranted in believing the thing
actually exists. Explaining the origin of a belief raises very different
epistemological questions than explaining the physical development of a
physical system or structure.

On 3/7/07, PvM <pvm.pandas@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The article does not discuss whether or not there was a purpose behind
> the evolution of faith. I hope that one realizes that a natural origin
> of faith is in no way contradictory with or supportive of the
> existence of a God(s). As to the nature of free will, that by itself
> is an interesting concept worth exploring.
>
> Methodological naturalism of course has its limits as it cannot and
> does not address whether or not the belief in a God reflects the
> absence or presence of such a God.
>
> If a belief in God is indeed an innate tendency that evolved, I see
> little reason why this should conflict with the existence of a God.
>
> On 3/7/07, David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Interesting article. It raises for me questions about the limits of
> > methodological naturalism. For example, the article states the
> following:
> >
> >
> > What [scientists] disagree about is why a tendency to believe evolved,
> > whether it was because belief itself was adaptive or because it was just
> an
> > evolutionary byproduct, a mere consequence of some other adaptation in
> the
> > evolution of the human brain.
> >
> > Why are these the only two possibilities? Perhaps there is a tendency
> to
> > believe because there really is a God, with whom we really have an
> innate
> > spiritual connection, from whom we really are alienated, and who really
> has
> > broken into history to reveal himself to us and redeem us. The article
> > seems to present evolutionary explanations for a predisposition to
> believe
> > in God as ultimate explanations, without any possibility that such
> belief
> > actually relates to any external reality. (And the evolutionary
> > explanations it presents seem like the worst kinds of just-so stories).
> >
> > When I see an Aquafina bottle on my desk, I tend to believe there is
> water
> > available for refreshment. In some very broad way, I suppose, my
> perceptual
> > facilities and pattern recognition abilities reflect evolutionary
> pathways
> > that enabled my ancestors to find water and food. But I don't believe
> there
> > is water in the Aquafina bottle merely because of how those pathways
> > evolved. My belief that there's water in the bottle is connected to the
> > ontological reality that there really is water in the bottle. It seems
> > silly to me to try to explain my present belief that there is water in
> the
> > bottle by first assuming that there really is no water there.
> >
> > Put another way, from a Christian perspective, is it justifiable to
> > presuppose that belief in God can be explained at any level with
> reference
> > only to secondary causes? I don't think so.
> >
> > Actually, from any sort of non-deterministic perspective, it seems
> > impossible to me to explain any belief adequately in terms of secondary
> > causes, because all beliefs by definition involve some act of free will,
> and
> > free will implies intentional downward causation. (I would not consider
> a
> > thought held unintentionally a "belief".) IOW, if humans really have
> any
> > free will, it seems problematic to me to define human intentionality
> simply
> > as an ordinary secondary cause.
> >
> >
> > On 3/7/07, PvM <pvm.pandas@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html
> > >
> > > A good article on the evolutionary foundations of religious beliefs.
> > >
> > > Pim
> > >
> > > To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
> > > "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
> > >
> >
> >
>

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Received on Wed Mar 7 13:24:17 2007