Science vs. Naturalism:
Why Naturalism is a Self-Refuting Philosophy (v. 2)
[Note: Here at EO I’ve decided to honor my favorite bizarre worldview by hosting an Atheism Appreciation Week. For the rest of the week I’ll have posts dedicated to atheism and its related beliefs.]
Richard Dawkins once wrote that it appears almost as if "the human brain is specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism." Although his statement is bursting with irony, it appears to be lost on the typically clueless Dawkins. He appears not to realize that if the human brain is "designed" (he can't help but sneak in teleological terms for non-teleological processes) by evolution then our brains would have no way to "understand" Darwinism.
Even Charles Darwin recognized that if the human brain is a product of blind, non-teleological evolutionary processes, then we have no reason to believe that the brain is capable of producing convictions that are trustworthy:
With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has always been developed from the mind of 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?
Darwin understood what Dawkins is too blind to see: If naturalism is true, then we have no justification for science. Science is crushed under the radical skepticism that weighs down the naturalist (or would if they were more logical). In fact, as philosopher Alvin Plantinga points out,
People like Dawkins hold that there is a conflict between science and religion because they think there is a conflict between evolution and theism; the truth of the matter, however, is that the conflict is between science and naturalism, not between science and belief in God.
You can choose naturalism and evolution or you can choose evolution and rationalism but you cannot choose naturalism, evolution, and rationalism; taken together, the three are simply incompatible.
Patricia Churchland, a prominent philosopher and advocate for philosophical naturalism, also agrees that since the aim of evolution is survival, we can't expect our brains to discover "truth":
Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F's: feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive. . . . Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism's way of life and enhances the organism's chances of survival. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.
Although they recognize that non-teleological evolution undercuts our trust in our ability to form true beliefs and convictions, neither Darwin nor Churchland consider the theory to be inadequate. But what they fail to realize is that non-teleological evolution is, as Roy Clouser says, self-assumptively incoherent:
Being able to trust our belief-forming capacities is an assumption necessary to believing in the theory of evolution. Unless we can trust our perceptions and belief-forming capacities to reveal reality, there are no reasons to believe the theory of evolution at all. In fact, if we can’t trust our perceptual beliefs, there is no reason to believe that there are such things as brains or life forms to be explained.
This is not to say that that the relation between evolution and our capacity to acquire truth is outright false. It just means that the claim undercuts its own justification: If we believe we have reliable belief-forming apparatus then we have reason to believe that non-teleological evolution is false. Likewise, if we believe that non-teleological evolution is true then we have no reason to believe the theory since we would have no reason to trust that our belief-forming apparatus is reliable.
The always enlightening Alvin Plantinga adds:
[F]rom a naturalist point of view the thought that our cognitive faculties are reliable (produce a preponderance of true beliefs) would be at best a naïve hope. The naturalist can be reasonably sure that the neurophysiology underlying belief formation is adaptive: but nothing follows about the truth of the beliefs depending on that neurophysiology. In fact he’d have to hold that it is unlikely, given unguided evolution, that our cognitive faculties are reliable. It’s as likely, given unguided evolution, that we live in a sort of dream world as that we actually know something about ourselves and our world.
If this is so, the naturalist has a defeater for the natural assumption that his cognitive faculties are reliable—a reason for rejecting that belief, for no longer holding it. (Example of a defeater: suppose someone once told me that you were born in Michigan and I believed her; but now I ask you, and you tell me you were born in Brazil. That gives me a defeater for my belief that you were born in Michigan.) And if he has a defeater for that belief, he also has a defeater for any belief that is a product of his cognitive faculties. But of course that would be all of his beliefs—including naturalism itself. So the naturalist has a defeater for naturalism; naturalism, therefore, is self-defeating and cannot be rationally believed. [emphasis in original]
“The naturalism that Dawkins embraces…is in deep self-referential trouble,” concludes Plantinga. “There is no reason to believe it; and there is excellent reason to reject it.”
Personally, I’d prefer to believe in science and reason than the mysticism of naturalism. But perhaps my preference is due to the fact that my own monkey mind isn't sufficiently evolved. Maybe with a few more eons of unguided unguided natural processes I too could reach the point where I can accept self-refuting philosophies as inviolable truths.
(HT: Prosthesis)
Addendum:
All of this should be self-evident to anyone who has given it a moment's thought. So why would anyone still believe that it is possible that reliable belief-forming apparatus could have arisen from non-teleological evolution? I believe that there are four common errors that prevent them from letting go of this self-defeating theory.
(1) Simple circular reasoning. An example is found in a comment made by Matthew Goggins, "If we see brains that appear to be produced by non-rational processes, such as evolution, we can therefore conclude that rational things or beings are indeed produced by non-rational processes. There is no reason to think otherwise." Obviously, simply assuming that our brains appear to be produced by non-rational processes does not serve as evidence for that claim.
(2) The assumption that true beliefs would have some form of adaptive value, and would therefore be "selected" by evolution. The problem with this claim is that it cannot tell us what beliefs are true, only that some beliefs have an adaptive value. The reason this is the case is that there are two sets of beliefs--beliefs that are true and beliefs that have an adaptive value--that may or may not overlap.
We can't say that all true beliefs have an adaptive value without resorting to the fallacy of begging the question. We also run into problems if we try to claim that all beliefs that have an adaptive value are true. For example, most evolutionary psychologists claim that religious beliefs (especially belief in God) were developed because they had some survival benefit. But is belief in God a true belief simply because it has an adaptive value? If not then we can't say that all valuable beliefs are true. (Also, if you agree that it has an adaptive value, how do you know that it is not true?)
(3) Willful ignorance. For example, many of our beliefs are simply impossible to explain by reference to non-teleological evolution yet people still pretend that naturalism can be a rational belief.
Richard Nokes provides an excellent example of this explanatory inadequacy:
In this material world, how can people imagine the non-material? If all is material, then the immaterial is completely beyond the paradigm of humans (and other denizens of the natural world). For someone to imagine the immaterial when neither they nor anyone else has ever experienced the immaterial is rather like trying to imagine a fifth dimension -- it is something so far out of our perception that conceiving of it seems nearly impossible.
Some would answer this question, I suppose, by arguing that the belief in the immaterial offers some sort of material benefit -- i.e., somehow religion helps mankind in the evolutionary contest. By necessity this argument pre-supposes a natural cause for such beliefs, and their ubiquitous nature suggests evolutionary advantage. But just how the material can mandate a fantasy about an immaterial world is always left unexplained; how could primitive mankind (and near-humans such as Neanderthals) contextualize such ideas? And, assuming they did, how could such ideas -- at odds with reality -- offer any kind of evolutionary advantage to the species? Wouldn't humans be better served by beliefs in material causes, even if those beliefs are wrong?
(4) Having an emotional attachment to theory that transcends all rational warrant. Believing that that non-teleological evolution has developed in us cognitive faculties capable of producing true beliefs requires a Kierkegaardian "leap of faith." Yet it is unlikely that the average naturalist will give up her belief without a fight. The reason isn't because they are lacking in intellect but rather that they are lacking in will. Our beliefs are not formed by reason alone and so are rarely changed solely by appeals to rationality. An obdurate will, rather than soft-headedness, is the primary reason why naturalists cling to such self-refuting concepts even when they are clearly absurd.
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