philosophy of religion questions (3 questions)
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Ruse-3-2-2.pptxThe Naturalist Challenge to Religion
Michael Ruse
Naturalism
“Philosophical Naturalism” – an intention to let one’s philosophical discussions be as science-like and science-based as possible
“Methodological Naturalism” – the attempt to understand the world in terms of unbroken law, i.e. no appeal to supernatural interventions.
“Metaphysical Naturalism” – it claims that there is nothing beyond this natural world, e.g. no gods.
Methodological Naturalism and Metaphysical Naturalism
Many methodological naturalists are metaphysical naturalists, while some methodological naturalists are not metaphysical naturalists.
Outline
The Case for Methodological Naturalism
Objections to Methodological Naturalism
1. Inadequacy of Natural Selection
a. Origin-of-Life Objections (Plantinga)
b. Adaptations Objections (Intelligent Design)
2. Problem of Humans
a. Free Will
b. Preferences and Character Dispositions
c. Consciousness
d. Morality
3. Incoherence of Methodological Naturalism
Metaphysical Naturalism
Methodological Naturalism to Metaphysical Naturalism
The Case for Methodological Naturalism
Thesis
Methodological naturalism is true in the sense that it embodies the proper procedure for acquiring knowledge.
Initial Argument
After 400 years since the Scientific Revolution, the thesis should have been obvious by now. The world operates lawfully. We, increasingly, are knowing more and more about such laws. Anomalous or difficult to explain events have been resolved, according to unbroken law. Many religious scientists feel absolutely no tension between their religion and wholehearted methodological naturalism, since it works and they feel that they can better reveal and understand God’s creation.
Naysayers
There are invokers of miracles (actual violations of the laws of nature). At some level, you cannot argue with them. But, from the standpoint of evidence and reason, it is more reasonable to conclude that an alleged miraculous event is likely explicable naturalistically.
Existence and Nature of Organisms: Organisms are adaptively organized, i.e. not just thrown together randomly but are complex, integrated, and functioning (in accordance to their “final causes” – means to ends). For example, hands and eyes have purposes. There’s a need for an intelligent designer.
For naturalists, Darwin already solved this problem by proposing natural selection. For Darwin, all organisms are the end product of a long and slow process of change. Some, or the fittest, survive and reproduce and their distinctive features (showing final cause) that are passed on to their offspring. Over time, a change in the direction of adaptive advantage is produced. After Darwin, we reject Aristotelian special life forces, which direct organisms or their parts to ends. But the metaphor of design remains among Darwinists, since natural selection produces design-like entities, e.g. eye.
Objections to Methodological Naturalism
1. Inadequacy of Natural Selection
Origin-of-Life Objections
Alvin Plantinga (Religious Philosopher) / Thomas Nagel (Secular Philosopher): Darwinism does not explain the ultimate origin of organisms from the non-living, that it never will, and that this is a severe challenge to naturalism.
Ruse’s Response
They do not appear to have looked at the pertinent science. It is true that the origin-of-life problem has not been cracked and probably won’t be for some time. But progress has definitely been made.
In order to carry information, the early life forms probably used the macromolecule RNA rather than (as most organisms today) the macromolecule DNA, because RNA has the ability to self-replicate.
Early life may have been formed on the lips of the deep-sea vents where the continents are coming up from the depths.
Adaptations Objections
Intelligent Design Theorists (e.g. Michael Behe): Some biological, adaptive phenomena are so complex that they could not have been formed by natural selection. All of the parts must be in place simultaneously for the adaptation to work, and this natural selection could not produce, e.g. bacterial flagellum and blood-clotting cascade.
Ruse’s Response
Biologists (e.g. Kenneth Miller) have shown that these examples do not stand up. One should turn to biology before one should turn to God for explanations. With the blood-clotting cascade, for example, there are about thirty, different, sequential, chemical reactions that have to occur. But that’s not irreducibly complex. There are lots of existing organisms with simpler cascades, just parts of the mammalian one. It is just not true that when you take one step out everything falls apart. Natural selection could quite well have done the job, move by move.
2. Problem of Humans
Free Will
Most naturalists are compatibilism. For compatibilists, free will and causal determinism can co-exist, because free will is truly opposed to constraint and has nothing directly to do with being bound by the laws of nature.
For most naturalists, unless you are bound by the laws of nature, you are crazy, not free.
The person who shows love and compassion because she was trained to do so by her parents deserves moral praise.
The hypnotized person is constrained and is not guilty of any crimes committed in such a state.
The person who tears his clothes off in public for no reason at all is simply mad and not a moral agent at all.
Preferences and Character Dispositions
Sexual Orientation: generally understood now as in terms of fetal development
Consciousness
People disagree about the nature of consciousness and its place in the world. They may not disagree about the science. But what does it all mean?
Ultimate Reductionists (Dennett, Churchlands): Consciousness is simply a matter of brain waves and that is it. Explain brain waves naturally. That’s consciousness.
Do we need more than naturalism to account for consciousness?
It’s not obvious that we need more than naturalism to account for consciousness. But one does not necessarily need to think about any supernatural involvement. Evolution just hasn’t given the mental apparatus to solve such problems. In addition, everything we know about mind-body interactions points to them being governed by law. The mind seems to follow rules no less than the brain. We don’t think randomly but conceptualize the physical world in terms of cause and effect. You alter bits of the brain and you affect the mind in what become predictable fashions (e.g. Phineas Gage).
Morality
Many religious people, and some secular people (e.g. Thomas Nagel), think that moral codes rise above the purely natural. Even if we grant that morality is in the realm of the non-natural, it does not necessarily follow that the supernatural realm is involve. Perhaps there is some sort of non-natural domain that is entirely secular (e.g. Platonism in mathematics). Moral truths can be like mathematical truths (in a Platonist sense). Perhaps emotivists got it right: moral claims are reports on feelings or expressions of emotions. But even some naturalists consider emotivism as wrong and immoral, since it seems to trivialize very deep judgments about certain acts. Make morality non-natural and obviously you go beyond the bounds of methodological naturalism. You may not be in the world of the supernatural, but you are in some limbo beyond this world. Make morality natural and you run into David Hume’s prohibition against trying to get morality from statements about matters of fact. Deny that morality is factually true in some sense, classify it as all a matter of emotions, and you seem to flounder on the fact that now morality is subjective, just relative to individuals and times and places, and that goes strongly against our sense of morality as objective, more than just a matter of opinion but binding whether recognized or not.
Morality: Sociobiology and Evolution
Some sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists (i.e. ones who are sympathetic to the Darwinian approach to human social behavior) think that one can explain moral feelings and behaviors as the result of natural selection, e.g. nice ones tend to get more in life than the nasty ones. But some might worry that that does not justify the truth of certain moral claims.
Morality: Emotivism
Emotivists are probably right in claiming that all we have in morality is a bunch of emotions that fuel us to be moral, but they are probably wrong or incomplete in thinking that morality is nothing more than a bunch emotions. Morality seems to refer to some objective facts.
Morality and Objectivity
For Darwinians, there are no objective facts beyond us. So, in a sense, morality or our sense of its objectivity is an illusion. If we do not think morality was objective, before long it would break down as we began cheating. If rape isn’t really wrong, then why stay back when others move forward? So the entirely natural case is that morality or the objectivity of morality is an illusion put in place by our biology to make us social animals, because social animals are selected over non-social animals.
3. Incoherence of Methodological Naturalism
Plantinga’s Objection
Methodological naturalism collapses in on itself as an attempt to find real – reliable, interpersonal, objective – knowledge about the world, and that the only escape is to reject metaphysical naturalism in favor of some kind of theistic belief that guarantees knowledge in the realm considered by methodological naturalist. It collapses in on itself, because it is incoherent.
Plantinga’s Argument
P1. If you are a methodological naturalist, then you will take a Darwinian approach to human nature.
P2. But sometimes selection may and will deceive us for our own good.
P3. We cannot always trust our beliefs.
P4. We can never know which beliefs to trust or not to trust, including those of evolution.
P5. So, methodological naturalism is incoherent.
C. Therefore, everything collapses in paradox.
Ruse’s Response
Selection does not deceive us randomly but for good reason (e.g. the case of morality). The fact that we are deceived does not mean that we cannot find out about it (e.g. the case of morality). So, the case is not as dire as what Plantinga suggests.
Total Deception?
Are we living in total deception in some general sense? In some systematic way selection could be shifting all of our beliefs out of whack (e.g. someone in a factory with red lighting thinks that all of the products are red). Since Hume and Kant in the 18th century, we have been aware that we cannot tell how things really are. All of our knowledge comes through our human faculties. If they distort reality, so be it. The best we can have is some kind of coherence theory of truth rather than a strict correspondence theory – the best we can do is to make all of our judgments hold together coherently – but this really is quite enough.
Metaphysical Naturalism
Question
Should methodological naturalists be metaphysical naturalists?
[Assumption: The opposite to metaphysical naturalism to be some of kind of theism – belief in a God who intervenes, and perhaps more explicitly the God of Christianity. Considering such assumption, methodological naturalism wipes out much that is claimed under theism.]
Ruse’s Response: YES
Methodological naturalism certainly wipes out the possibility of fundamentalist Christianity or the religion of biblical literalists. It should incline one to metaphysical naturalism, rather than any moderate forms of theism. If one can explain the world without God, why should one suppose that there is a God? There is now no need for a designer to explain organisms, a moral lawgiver to explain morality, etc. Perhaps methodological naturalism does not give a full and satisfying explanation of everything (e.g. sentience), but generally one can get by with it and simply admit ignorance about the rest. One is not forced into belief in God.
Theistic Response to Ruse
It is not level playing field with the following disjuncts:
methodological naturalism + nothing more = metaphysical naturalism
Or
methodological naturalism + something more (God) = theism
The former is simpler, so it is much more favorable. But the disjuncts should be stated in the following way:
methodological naturalism + nothing more = metaphysical naturalism
or
methodological naturalism + a special sense that God does exist = theism
The second disjunct in the second set of disjuncts is bringing something new to the table and simplicity is no longer definitive. Faith is now part of the equation. Plantinga, following Calvin, thinks that faith is a gift bestowed by God.
Ruse’s Response: Circularity
If you are in the faith sphere then that is definitive. If you are not in the faith sphere, then that is because of original sin [Calvin / Plantinga View]. But that’s begging the question. If you are in the faith sphere that kind of excuse is compelling but if you are not in the faith sphere, that kind of excuse is not compelling. Could it not be that we are mistaken? Plantinga thinks that we can get out of our troubles by rejecting metaphysical naturalism and appealing to God. In other words, a good God would not let us be deceived systematically in the way that methodological naturalism seems to allow (a-la Descartes). How can Plantinga be sure that a God exists? There’s reason for naturalists to be skeptical. The fact that Plantinga believes that his conviction is genuine and self-confirming is a matter of his psychology and not a philosophical argument.
A Matter of Choice?
Is it just a matter of choice, i.e. the choice between metaphysical naturalism and theism, or what is appealing?
Metaphysical Naturalists (not necessarily Ruse): NO
Methodological naturalism is stronger than so far realized.
But, for Ruse, naturalists’ arguments are important, but they are not definitive.
Naturalists’ Argument 1
E. O. Wilson and others: One can give a naturalistic account of religion and once one has done that, that is it. Religion is favored by selection because it fosters a sense of group identity and with this we get a driving sense of purpose. Religion has been explained; so, religion has been explained away.
Ruse’s Response
If one thinks that something like the conversion of Saul is a miracle (outside the course of nature), then one is hardly a methodological naturalist. So, one is not in this discussion. If one is a methodological naturalist and wants to take religion as true, then presumably one is going to say that miracles and such things are natural but what makes them miraculous is the meaning behind the events, not the events themselves. And the point is that if one is such a methodological naturalist, then religion is putatively a natural phenomenon and one positively expects therefore that it will have a natural origin. The very fact that one can give a naturalistic explanation of religion is no more necessarily devastating to the truth claims of the religion.
Naturalists’ Argument 2
Darwin: Methodological naturalism tightens the screw on the problem of evil to the point where belief in a god, e.g. the Christian God of love and power, is unreasonable.
Ruse’s Response
This is not a new problem. Christians do have answers. So perhaps the suffering is a necessary part and parcel of the creative process.
Methodological Naturalism Metaphysical Naturalism
The Natural Origin of Religion
Methodological naturalism shows that miracles are really not on the table.
The methodological naturalists agrees with Hume on this matter, we get religious ideas because we make mistakes about inanimate objects being living and it all goes from there.
We had a time and place of mass hysteria and true nuttiness. All these people from different religious groups couldn’t all be right. Those poor old disciples had so much invested in Jesus being the Messiah that on that fateful Easter Sunday they simply couldn’t face up to the fact that he was dead and buried, and so made up a collective story about his being risen?
The Problem of Evil
Methodological naturalism having explained away all of the compulsive reasons for theism, the way is now clear for the problem to have full and definitive effect. For example, look at the lives of children who senselessly suffered under the hands of cruel people. Going on to metaphysical naturalism is not just an inference justified by reason; it is an inference that is morally obligatory.
