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Religion & Law

: Thoughts in a Haystack

Design By Plantinga

By John Pieret

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TomS, in a comment, has made an important point about Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism:

I would suggest that Intelligent Design, as it refuses to make any statement about the intelligent designer(s), would have the same problem that evolution supposedly has.

That is, ID has no guarantee for the reliability of knowledge. Therefore, using the logic of Plantinga, ID is as incompatible with non-naturalism as evolution is with naturalism.

We don't know that intelligent designer(s) would be at all interested in, or capable of, designing our brains (or minds, whatever it is that they design) to know truths.

Plantinga's argument is basically that it is not rational to believe that philosophical naturalism is true, while it is rational to believe in "traditional theism," because we can't be sure our cognitive faculties are delivering truth if we evolved without aid from God but can presume that God, making us in his/her/its image, would give us cognitive faculties that deliver truth, even if our minds "have developed from those of the lower animals." But as William Dembski has said in Debating Design:

... ID never claims that an empirically based design inference by itself establishes the identity, character or motives of the designer.
Thus, by Plantinga's argument, ID, which admits that evolution occurs but claims that an unknown Designer of unknown motives and capabilities guided it, is as irrational as philosophical naturalism supposedly is, since we cannot presume that this Designer had any motive or ability to give us reliable cognitive faculties.

Quod erat demonstrandum.
.

Full post as published by Thoughts in a Haystack on June 01, 2009 (boomark / email).

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