[betty boop]

....Plantinga demonstrates that scientific materialism, without a designer who intended man to be equipped with an aptitude for truth, leads inexorably to an epistemological catastrophe, the "epistemic defeat" of all of the materialist's aspirations for knowledge.... The materialist has no option but to believe that humanity is solely the product of an undirected and unplanned Darwinian process — random changes culled by natural selection. Natural selection "cares" only about behavior that produces and promotes survival and reproduction; it has no interest in truth as such. There is no good reason to believe that an aptitude for truth is the only way, or even an especially likely mechanism, for producing survival-enhancing behavior. For example human beings may generally come to believe that fellow human beings have intrinsic dignity and worth and that objective moral values and their attendant obligations exist. Given naturalism, these beliefs would be false — even if holding such beliefs helped humans better survive.

The materialist position inevitably leads to self-contradiction, as in the above example. Although the cited immaterial beliefs evidently have survival value (as human history suggests), they have to be false in principle given the presupposition of Darwinist natural selection. But if they're false, then how can they have survival value? It makes no sense.

Indeed as you say Texas Songwriter, "the scientific materialist cannot reasonably, in the end, claim to know that the results of science (or any other human mode of knowledge) are in fact true."

For one thing, truth is immaterial; and so are the laws of nature and the moral laws; so are logic and reason, mathematics, scientific theories themselves, including Darwin's theory. Materialists cannot account for such non-phenomenal, immaterial aspects of reality, so try to ignore them. Yet then they will claim that their scientific findings are "in fact true." But how can anything be true if truth itself is denied?

This is the "epistemic defeat" of which Prof. Plantinga speaks.

It seems to me scientific materialists put themselves in a relentless, vicious epistemic and logical quandary by insisting that only the material exists.

Thank you ever so much, TS, for summing up Alvin Plantinga's argument for us. I think it's spot-on.

[kosta50]

Indeed as you say Texas Songwriter, "the scientific materialist cannot reasonably, in the end, claim to know that the results of science (or any other human mode of knowledge) are in fact true."

No he can't and it doesn't matter because that's not what he is after. He can know, however, if his model works or not. Science does not claim to make true models; only working models.

That's a heck of a lot more to hang up your hat on than on imaginary models.