CS Lewis Quote: EAAN

[The Pixie]

A product of an adaptive brain?

He is saying that we had to overcome the instincts that evolution gave us to believe in evolution. Evolution selected cognitive defects. He is agreeing with Plantinga that given Naturalism and Evolution (N&A) our neurocognitive reliability is low.

Sure, but that takes him in the opposite direction. He is pointing out that therefore evolution is more likely, given that our neurocognitive reliability is low.

 

[The Pixie]

Without saying it outright, Carrier is agreeing with Plantinga's EAAN. Our brains are crap but good enough to keep us from going extinct.

He is agreeing with part of it. Given he concludes the opposite to Plantinga, he clear does not agree with it all.

Plantinga's argument is flawed because Plantinga assumes we have high neurocognitive reliability, and Carrier shows that that is not the case.

At some point in the evolutionary process as our brains became bigger, evolution selected intelligence in which we then could develop logic, math, science, language with which we could overcome our poorly developed evolutionary faculties. I understand what he is saying but it sounds contradictory to me and he says the same thing in 3 different times in the article.

Our brains only evolved to be good enough that eventually we could invent logic, math and science. It is not something we are born with, we have to learn it at school, and even then a lot of people do not get it. It took hundres of thousands of years before mankind even invented logic. Our brains are good enough that as a race we eventually invented these things. They are not good enough such that we are born able to understand logic.

 

[The Pixie]

I've listened to Plantinga give 3 different presentations on EAAN and I have never heard the above in bold. Plantinga does explain his theory in fairly simple terms and leaves out a lot of philosophical jargon in speaking to a general audience and not an audience of naturalistic philosophers and psychologists.

The article I linked to was written by Plantinga, and in it he talks about a hypothetical man who encounters a tiger. In Plantinga's view, evolution is as likely to give the man the behavior to run based on the belief that the appearance of a tiger signals the start of a race as it is to give the man the behaviour to run based on the true belief that the tiger is dangerous.

I think that that is nonsense. Evolution does not give us beliefs. It gives us the ability to form beliefs.

And a man who can form true beliefs, such as tigers are dangerous, will survive much longer than a man who forms random beliefs such as tigers signal the start of races.

Here are Plantinga's own words:

But clearly this avoidance behavior could result from a thousand other belief-desire combinations: indefinitely many other belief-desire systems fit B equally well. Perhaps Paul very much likes the idea of being eaten, but when he sees a tiger, always runs off looking for a better prospect, because he thinks it unlikely that the tiger he sees will eat him. This will get his body parts in the right place so far as survival is concerned, without involving much by way of true belief. Or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a large, friendly, cuddly pussycat and wants to pet it; but he also believes that the best way to pet it is to run away from it. Or perhaps the confuses running towards it with running away from it, believing of the action that is really running away from it, that it is running towards it; or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a regularly reoccurring illusion, and hoping to keep his weight down, has formed the resolution to run a mile at top speed whenever presented with such an illusion; or perhaps he thinks he is about to take part in a 1600 meter race, wants to win, and believes the appearance of the tiger is the starting signal; or perhaps .... Clearly there are any number of belief-cum-desire systems that equally fit a given bit of behavior.​

An Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism

In this talk, Professor Plantinga provides an evolutionary argument against naturalism. An outline of the lecture is also given.

www.bethinking.org

He is agreeing that evolution gave humans a poor set of cognitive faculties but "once we became intelligent enough" we could use the intelligence nature selected for us to our advantage.

The thing is the faulty cognition (intelligence) with its flawed ideas caused us to develop religion and a spirit realm (once again given naturalism and evolution). The "software patches" (logic, science, etc) that humans invented were to cover up anything that could not be explained by naturalism.

That seems a strange way to look at it. The "software patches" cover up definicies in what evolution gave us, not in any explanations.

The simple fact is that our cognitive faculties are just not as good as Plantinga would have us believe, and that is enough to destoy his argument.

 

[5wize]

Becoming a Christian is not a matter of "considering Christianity as a worldview,"

Yes it is.

but rather considering a Person as a Savior.

That’s a worldview.

That's kind of like asking someone rescued by the Coast Guard from drowning if there was a mitigating factor that caused them to consider viewing that rubber raft as a rescue vehicle.

It doesn’t happen that way for everybody. Some people in distress actually do seek and try many potential spiritual resolutions looking for one that resonate and are meaningful to them. All roads of spiritual restoration do not lead to Jesus.