Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: js1138

"I will, however, argue against the likelihood that you or anyone else are privy to the mind of God, or have inerrant knowledge of God." ~ js1138

If you want to "legitimately" argue your position, you will need to be able to "legitimately" answer the arguments of Alvin Plantinga regarding the Mind who created our minds.

"....Darwin's dangerous idea is really two ideas put together: philosophical naturalism together with the claim that our cognitive faculties have originated by way of natural selection working on some form of genetic variation. According to this idea, then, the purpose or function of those faculties (if they have one) is to enable or promote survival, or survival and reproduction, more exactly, the maximization of fitness (the probability of survival and reproduction).

Furthermore, the probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable (i.e., furnish us with a preponderance of true beliefs) on Darwin's dangerous idea is either low or inscrutable (i.e., impossible to estimate). But either gives the devotee of evolutionary naturalism a defeater for the proposition that his cognitive faculties are reliable, a reason for doubting, giving up, rejecting that natural belief. If so, then it also gives him a reason for doubting any beliefs produced by those faculties. This includes, of course, the beliefs involved in science itself.

Evolutionary naturalism, therefore, provides one who accepts it with a defeater for scientific beliefs, a reason for doubting that science does in fact get us to the truth, or close to the truth. [ 14 ] Darwin himself may perhaps have glimpsed this sinister presence coiled like a worm in the very heart of evolutionary naturalism: "With me," says Darwin,
'the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the 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?' [ 15 ]
Modern science was conceived, and born, and flourished in the matrix of Christian theism. Only liberal doses of self-deception and double-think, I believe, will permit it to flourish in the context of Darwinian naturalism."

Darwin, Mind and Meaning --Alvin Plantinga May, 1996 Full commentary and bibliography here: http://id-www.ucsb.edu/fscf/library/plantinga/dennett.html

*

bttt- Read: God and Other Minds by Alvin Plantinga
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0801497353/103-0517856-8903043?v=glance


672 posted on 05/09/2005 10:29:32 AM PDT by Matchett-PI (The DemocRAT Party is a criminal enterprise.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 668 | View Replies ]


To: Matchett-PI
Evolutionary naturalism, therefore, provides one who accepts it with a defeater for scientific beliefs, a reason for doubting that science does in fact get us to the truth, or close to the truth.

I would agree in principle that science does not seek Truth. Science answers to (literally) mundane questions.

674 posted on 05/09/2005 10:48:51 AM PDT by js1138 (e unum pluribus)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 672 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson