Alvin Plantinga: Science & Religion: Where the Conflict Really Lies
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- čas přidán 10. 02. 2012
- Biola University Center For Christian Thought Presents guest speaker Dr. Alvin Plantinga.
Professor Plantinga is currently the William H. Jellema Chair of Philosophy at Calvin College, and was until his retirement in 2010 the John A. O'Brien Chair of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is a past president of the American Philosophical Association and the Society of Christian Philosophers, a Guggenheim fellow, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been awarded several prestigious lectureships, including two Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen, the Wilde Lectures at Oxford University, and the Suarez Lecture at Fordham University.
I studied his work and was fortunate enough to have lunch with him when he visited my university. You don't have to agree with everything he says, but he's highly intelligent. All around good man. He co-authored Knowledge of God with his friend Michael Tooley, an atheist/Christian collaboration. Who can not continue to be inquisitive?
Thanks for uploading this video! I was wondering if you wouldn't mind uploading the handout from the lecture as well.
Thank you so much for this knowledge .Why does the Debate continue?
Awesome talk. No Spinning Ball in a Random universe Science here.
Plantinga has reenforced Deconstruction.
You mean he makes doubting Christians continue to doubt? Nope.
One of the main points of Plantinga's argument, the one by which successful adaptive behaviours have not to be necessarily related to the validity of the content of their believes is completely out of place! If one supposes there is any causal relation (feedbacks) between behaviours and the believes hold by the agents acting out those behaviours, it is clear that evolutionary process should enhance true believes, whereas wrong believes would fuel unsuccessful behaviours, being grounded on false conclusions. Furthermore, AI studies on distributed agents gave a great contribution to the contemporary epistemology showing that the meaning of signals (and hence words and languages) can be understood in terms of positive feedback loops relative to the intended goals of the communicating agents, such that the correctness of the behaviour is grounded on effective relations with fruitful paybacks by mates and environment.
>whereas wrong believes would fuel unsuccessful behaviours
Why do you think that? It's not obvious at all that this is the case.
From an evolutionary standpoint, it just doesn't matter what you think, all that matters is your behavior. You can have a correct belief that some poisonous food is in fact poisonous, but you can also have a false belief that some poisonous food is possessed by demons - as long as you don't eat it, it just doesn't matter. As long as you behave in certain way, it doesn't matter what you believe. Not only can you think total nonsense and behave in a way that counts (all that really counts is survival and reproduction, right), but it's not obvious at all that you need any beliefs whatsoever - let alone true beliefs - in order to behave in a way that counts. Bacteria, cockroaches, scorpions - they don't have any beliefs whatsoever, yet they are even better at survival/reproduction game than us humans. If we are the result of random mutations and natural/sexual selection, and if naturalism is also true, we simply don't have a reason to be confident in any of our beliefs, including the belief that evolution and naturalism are both true.
@@MrDzoni955 Your point is absolutely fine, but doesn't counter mine IMO. In your example, what I refer to as 'the content of our believes', is the fact that some food is really poisonous or not, with no regards of why one believes that. And my point is that natural selection naturally enhances believes corresponding to true aspect of reality (ie if a food is not poisonous and a population holds a false belief about it, is penalised wrt another one that as the correct belief and eats it). In other words, I totally agree that the only things that counts from evolutionary perspective is how you behave, but 'to behave in a way that counts' as you put it, we rational agents act accordingly to our believes, so that if they are not grounded on truths, they do not improve our chances of survival. Then, concerning the fact that lesser organisms have no believes: our believes are nothing more (nor less) than the emergent property of feedback loop on input/output stimuli, as AI's studies shows us, such that positive paybacks are gained when responses to actions and intended goals are successfully matched. This points to the fact that correct believes, ie those triggering fruitful actions, are self-reinforcing mechanisms at one with the evolutionary process.
It's worth noting that Plantinga writes this in "Where the Conflict Really Lies": "Isn't it just obvious that true beliefs will facilitate adaptive action?... Yes, certainly. This is indeed true. But it is also irrelevant. We are not asking about how things are, but about what things would be like if both evolution and naturalism (construed as including materialism) were true. We are asking about P(R/N&E), not about P(E/the way things actually are). Like everyone else, I believe that our cognitive faculties are for the most part reliable, and that true beliefs are more likely to issue in successful action than false. But that is not the question. The question is what things would be like if N&E were true; and in this context we can't just assume, of course, that if N&E, N including materialism, were true, then things would still be the way they are. That is, we can't assume that if materialism were true, it would still be the case that true beliefs are more likely to cause successful action than false beliefs." I don't know if you're satisfied with that response. But that is the response that Plantinga gives to this sort of objection.
@@MrDzoni955 I read "whereas wrong [beliefs] would fuel unsuccessful behaviours" and immediately thought "Why think that?". Nice to see someone beat me to it. :)
Alvin argument on evolution and naturalism is impressive and will be , now that Donald Hoffman after 100 years😅 since Alvin .. takes the lead of what evolutionary by taking natural selection seriously that the probability of seeing reality as it is is 0 considering fitness payoffs
I can't stand his view, but I have incredible respect for the man's ability to outwit me, and many others. Even if he is wrong, he presents decent arguments that, without sufficient skill to rebuff, succeed against many of his foes.
You "can't stand" it. May I ask why?
Translation: "I refuse to accept logic and sound reasoning, and so go my own blind way, ignoring the truth laid out in front of me.
Could you imagine if he were a Nepherandi too? Or a marauder? I feel like his bygone as a marauder would be a massive eyeball made of clock pieces that fit together too perfectly and can not function if pulled apart even if some of the pieces don't even touch. I feel like he's also a strong prime user but he has to have some mind in there, some forces too I'm sure and lastly a surprisingly big piece of correspondence.
What are you talking about? Who are you talking too? What's a Nepherandi? What do you mean by a marauder? What is one's "bygone as a marauder"? Why are you talking about a massive eyeball made of clock pieces? What does it mean for pieces of such and eyeball to fit together "too perfectly"? Properly speaking, perfection doesn't come in degrees. Who are you talking about? What are you talking about when you say "[it] can not function if pulled apart even if some of the pieces don't even touch"? What is a "prime user"? ; a "strong prime user"? What do you mean by someone having "some mind in there" and "some forces too"? What is a what do you mean by "a surprisingly big piece of correspondence"?
I feel like you commented on the wrong video and that your comment was about some sort of fiction novel or video game.
@@js1817 I see you've gotten no response. The internet has repeatedly shown us there are "sho nuff" crazies out there. Lemon may not be one. He may, as you said, just be responding to the wrong video, but there are some crazy I mean "nut talkers" out in the digital world.
@@js1817 Some people say Nothing but nonsense so don’t care about him he is probably looney
Haven't watched the video yet, but I'm too impatient to ask this question to any Plantinga fans that may see it: If my prediction is correct, at some point in this video Plantinga will state his self-defeater argument against naturalism+evolution, which he has presented before in many other places. I have never followed up the responding literature to this argument, so no doubt my question has been asked before by someone else and responded to by Plantinga in turn, nevertheless: Why can the naturalist+evolutionist not just plug the hole of warrant in her claims to know all she knows in an analogous way to how Plantinga plugs the hole of warrant with respect to belief in God in Warranted Christian Belief, as follows: 'via some naturalistic mechanism or other, we actually have warrant-basic knowledge of all the day-to-day things we take ourselves to know'? One possible response from Plantinga or a Plantinga-fan I might anticipate is as follows: 'it makes perfect sense for someone with a theistic view of the universe to postulate such warrant-basic faculties as the divine sense of Aquinas and Calvin, as since the universe and the cognitive faculties we have are all created by God, what would be wrong with God just decreeing that we will have such cognitive faculties that give us warrant-basic access to any domain of epistemic space whatever?. However', so the response would go, 'a naturalist+evolutionist has no such justification for postulating such warrant-basic faculties with respect to the things she claims to know, precisely because she also believes that all her cognitive faculties are in fact the product of naturalistic evolution, which', to collapse back down to Plantinga's intitial argument, 'are all generated from processes not aimed at truth'. I can imagine the naturalist+evolutionist responding in two different ways to this. The naturalist+evolutionist might respond that she is not postulating these warrant-basic faculties, rather just declaring them, as someone might declare goods at a check-in desk, and has no need to justify them to anyone, certainly no need to justify being confident of the beliefs these faculties produce, since they are warrant-basic faculties! She might accept that objecively the probability of developing warrant-basic faculties via the process of naturalistic evolution is inscrutable for her, but since she actually has these faculties, objective probability is of no import. If then asked why, given that on her warrant-basic faculties the objective probability of naturalism+evolution would itself be inscrutable, she does not withhold her assent to naturalism+evolution, she would of course point to all the scientific evidence for evolution and perhaps add that the objective probability of *any* metaphysical theory given her warrant-basic faculties is also inscrutable. The second response the naturalist+evolution might give to the objection that she has no justification in postulating such warrant-basic faculties in the first place is that, yes of course she is aware she believes that all her congitive faculties are the results of processes not aimed at truth, but nevertheless through some *additional* naturalistic mechanism, she does as it happens *also* have warrant-basic knowledge of the fact that the beliefs produced by said former naturalistically derived cognitive faculties are warrant-basic! What would be the problems with the naturalist+evolutionist's position here?
I'd like to begin by saying this is quite a noble effort. You seem to have a clear grasp of the argument, and have spent considerable time anticipating the responses. However, the fault here is actually quite simple, if it hasn't been pointed out to you already, which is as follows:
Whatever naturally-devised, truth-seeking mechanism one puts forth is itself a result of unguided evolutionary processes, and therefore subject to the same critique; namely, what would be the warrant for believing the mechanism itself seeks to produce primarily true beliefs? Even if this mechanism existed, there would still be no warrant for trusting in it by nature of the process of how it came to be.
The theist, when asked the question of why trust the mechanism, will quickly respond, "Because an intentional mind placed it there," and proceed to brush the dust off his hands.
The naturalist who holds to Neo-Darwininan evolution, when asked the same question, could only respond, "Because I choose to," which is perhaps no better than how he views the theist.
In Plantinga's argument, it makes no difference whether one's beliefs are true are not. The question, as you seem to understand quite well already, is what is the warrant for those beliefs?
Likewise, it makes no difference whether this mechanism you propose functions correctly or not in producing primarily true beliefs. The question here is what is the warrant for believing that it does so, and because the mechanism is itself the result of a blind, unguided process that does not have truth as its aim, no warrant exists for trusting in it. The interlocutor is then only left with his faith.
Thoughts?
@@micahscanz
Genius
Ah, true, just remembered the argument. Yes, it follows, but the premise isn't acceptable for a non-christian. The force of the historical, fallacious argument is that no matter belief it seems to pressure you towards "god exists". But after a treatment with modern formalizations and a correct placement of the modal operators he needs to define "maximally great being" as one that is greater than any other being and exists in all possible worlds. Counter: it doesn't exist here, hence logical imp.
How does he know that having accurate cognitive faculties isnt directly correlated with survival tho? The positive seems very intuitively true
Because from an evolutionary standpoint, it just doesn't matter what you think, all that matters is your behavior. You can have a correct belief that some poisonous food is in fact poisonous, but you can also have a false belief that some poisonous food is possessed by demons - as long as you don't eat it, it just doesn't matter. As long as you behave in certain way, it doesn't matter what you believe. Not only can you think total nonsense and behave in a way that counts (all that really counts is survival and reproduction, right), but it's not obvious at all that you need any beliefs whatsoever - let alone true beliefs - in order to behave in a way that counts. Bacteria, cockroaches, scorpions - they don't have any beliefs whatsoever, yet they are even better at survival/reproduction game than us humans. If we are the result of random mutations and natural/sexual selection, and if naturalism is also true, we simply don't have a reason to be confident in any of our beliefs, including the belief that evolution and naturalism are both true.
LOL The argument he makes is IF naturalism is true then "cognitive faculties ... [are] directly correlated with survival." He is saying that but he shows the position is self-refuting.
@@MrDzoni955 Basically Alvin is forcing the naturalist to either give up naturalism or make some metaphysical assumptions - but once they do that theist position no longer appears as "irrational" as the natutralist believed. Its more a logic-chopping maneuver but he is right.
In that case the belief in God is rational and the naturalist no longer can stay it's not.
Why would they be? What reason is there to think they are? We actually have contrary reasons to it. Not only mathematically(the analysis has already been done), but also intuitively(as you make your claim). Our representational systems are indirect and filter through a lot of things and create specific models of survivability. Why would we expect survival-oriented mechanisms to be truth-preserving mechanisms? The two are not logicaly connected nor necessarily so...
50:00 bookmark
One of the conflicts is for those religions that claim both that their god is good/just and that their god designed life and our world. Such a god would be a cruel designer which would conflict with the religious claim.
God is just and good, and designed the world perfectly. But he also gave humans free will. And the humans chose to reject God and live however they pleased. Instead of obeying and having respect for the true God, most humans, more often than not, choose to live selfishly as if they themselves are gods... and chaos and distruction always follows.
Instead of just blaming God for all the evil we ourselves have caused, we can simply admit that we've been wrong, repent, and accept His gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. Once you have done that... Your entire outlook on the world completely changes.
@@legodavid9260 I’m talking about designed suffering, not allowed suffering. A god who intentionally designs suffering is not a good god.
But as far as man being “evil”, don’t forget who designed us Lego
Soo a bat has always been a bat right? What was the transition? Why don't we find any fossils from bats transitioning from one creature to a bat? Like some type of partially winged fish or something.
So...bats popped up around 50 million years ago during the Eocene era. Scientists believe they evolved from insect eating placental mammals, shrews and moles may have evolved from a common ancestor of the bat. Scientists theorize the common ancestor is Insectivora. And many different animals came from it. It's pretty interesting.
welllll...
The argument beginning around 43:00. It boils down to arguing that if you really believe in evolution, then you don't have good grounds to trust any of your cognitive faculties. The reason: those cognitive faculties were evolutionarily selected for the purpose of helping you survive better, not for the purpose of giving you true beliefs. Since all your beliefs are ultimately derived from various cognitive faculties, you have no reason to trust any of them. So belief in evolution is self-defeating because it leads to radical skepticism.
I think a good response to this argument is to point out the following: Plantinga's argument only works if it really succeeds in undermining the evolutionist's trust in the cognitive faculties that led her to believe in evolution in the first place. The way she came to believe in evolution ultimately rests on an empirical methodology. The cognitive faculties involved were various kinds of perception, memory, and logical reasoning, all used in standard ways, and cross-checked by the process of numerous scientists repeating these same observations, experiments, and chains of reasoning, using similar faculties in similar ways. Plantinga needs to convince the evolutionist that one of these faculties should not be selected by evolution to lead to reliable conclusions.
I think if Plantinga were more specific about which of these cognitive faculties -- perception, memory, or logical reasoning -- he thinks evolution would select to lead to false beliefs, then his argument looks interesting, but ultimately empty. For example, scientists actively study the ways we misperceive things in phenomena like optical illusions. But I don't see any evidence that the such misperceptions might be present in the arguments leading to evolution. Or when it comes to memory, sure there are various ways that the human brain tends to misremember things. But the scientific method safeguards against this by having different researchers repeat experiments, by keeping lab notebooks, and in various other ways -- it seems there would have to be some bizarre conspiracy for thousands of scientists to have misremembered their observations in just such a way that evolution was supported. And so forth.
At least, that's how I think it plays out if Plantinga's talking about our cognitive faculties leading to "true" conclusions, where "true" is meant in the ordinary, everyday sense. Maybe instead Plantinga means "true" in some nonstandard sense. When he says that cognitive faculties won't lead to "true" beliefs under evolution, maybe he means "Look, maybe there's a whole side of the way the world is that we're blind to because this side of the way the world is was not relevant to our survival. Moreover, maybe if we were not blind to this side of the way the world is, we'd reach different conclusions about evolution." But when you put it that way, the argument sounds very speculative to me. Essentially, he's saying "It's possible that something is true but we have no reason to believe it's true." He's pointing out that this proviso should be tacked onto one's belief in evolution. But it's a vacuous statement -- it's a proviso that implicitly goes with every one of our beliefs! So Plantinga has accomplished nothing more than reminding us that we don't know everything.
Miguel
You’re off a little in presenting the argument. It’s not just belief in “evolution”, but belief in Darwinism AND naturalism that is self-defeating.
All conclusions are drawn by people, regardless of your data (from general observation, instrumentation, etc.). Thus any & all processes that pass thru your mind would not be guaranteed to produce truth. If your cognition is not geared to truth, how do you know the result is the truth.
It is like the idea this is all a simulation. You cannot know for sure, unless you find a way to get outside the simulation (which as a construct, you never could). It leads you to a doubt that you cannot reconcile as long as you hold the base idea. The simulation here & naturalism for Alvin.
Now, I like the way he formulates it. I do think it is still no more interesting than the simulation. You can never know for sure. So, it is just a conversation starter for anyone not deep into philosophy. Either way, you could not know & he has a point there.
That is unless you claim that it is a design. In which case you can say you were designed to find truth & use human base nature to advance it as true. You just would have to deal with whatever they choose to deny it.
In the end, Alvin is on to something there, but it would not be compelling to someone who denies God for other reasons. They would fob it off one way or another. A likelyhood seems to be the best.
But how do you know that what you say is true?
We literally saw people being convinced not to trust their own senses during COVID-19. A person with no symptoms would test positive and the person would freak out. It seems very easy to get the atheist to not trust their senses. That's what naturalism has done to us.
He could make a case that God should be the greatest in all worlds he exist in, but it is still possible that there be a world in which he simply doesn't exist. So it is the sneaking in of "and if possible, he exists in all worlds" that is the problem, since it is a dirty trick that Plantinga never argues for. And no, it isn't accepted by philosophers of religion. Not in Europe at least. But perhaps abroad? I am not really into it anyways, so might not know all that moves and breathes there.
Can anyone offer a summary of this so I can turn in an easy extra credit essay and focus on my other classes? K, thx
Edit: Scrolling through the comments has revealed a treasure trove of 3000 IQ heads butting together to try and seem smart on the internet.
Lol
@@pigeonrat5522 did you receive an essay?
@@bernicepandy3570 no
Ask ChatGPT
To me all these debates and argumentations show again and again: in humans irrational motivation comes first. rational thinking most often has to serve the irrational foundation and therefore is shaped around it (mostly unconsciously). The non- analytical non-critical foundation is very likely and obviously influenced in childhood by the natural identification of children mainly with their parents and secondly with their whole "social uterus" which also consists of other influential adults and the peer group. This identification is rarely critically analyzed and doubted. In the Abrahamic religions a critical rational distance is even tabooed mainly if the distance is related to "God" with all it's claimed properties (different in different religions). So philosophical Christian apologetics is contradictory to the Bible (see e.g. 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 or Tertullian in "De Carne Christi" " about the resurrection (in which he believed): "prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est" ("it is immediately credible--because it is silly" or "it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd"))
+Wassily Kandinsky thanks Freud.
And how do you rationalize that it is irrational motivation? ;)
for me the distinction of rational and irrational is not crystal-clear like any term or a language is a limited means for communication. But I'd say that human rationality is the way of thinking about certain issues that are hardly deniable for any human being, like for example: life depends on water. If someone would say: No, there are yogis who can live without water (and look around, there are a non negligible number of people, which believe such things uncritically) I'd call that irrational. In this sense most religions are based on severely irrational claims. And if a religion forbids critical thinking about its foundations (like many religions do) I'd call that irrational too. But here the rational faculty of my mind tells me that this is the way, a collective irrational idea protects itself against rational critique. It's often done by threat causing fear, which is another strong source of irrational acting. It's fairly obvious, isn't it? religions are means of taming individuality in favor of collectivity. Therefore often certain natural rational mental faculties are cut off. For me this is the symbolic content of the act of circumcision. The most important cut is not on the genitals but in the brains.
Interesting thoughts. I personally don't know any believers who would hold Tertullian's religious stance, nor has the Christian community I have grown up in forbidden critical thinking. Our Dad has always encouraged us growing up to see other viewpoints and other peoples' critiques, because ultimately if you're afraid of other ideas it just shows deep down that you don't really believe your own are true, eg. self-defense is often a mask of self-doubt.
So you think the physical resurrection of Jesus is a fact? He was dead in a biological sense? His proteins began do degrade, his brain cells died from lack of oxygen. But after three days those molecules miraculously rearranged to a similar state as before his death? What is rational about such a belief, which by the way is found in numerous other myths. By the way it's interesting that you mention your dad, who taught (allowed) you critical thinking. What would you think if he had forbidden it? But there are some people who dare to think out of the traditional boxes, no matter what their dads teach them. What do you think? I think if you love your dad, it is more probable, that you hesitate to think fundamentally differently. What would your dad say and feel if you would tell him that you think that the resurrection of Jesus was a metaphor but not a biological fact?
My last point from the former post: since he goes on to define the property of Deity to include existence and greatness in all worlds, and since a non-theist won't subscribe to the existence of a Deity (or a being with those properties in this world), it flatly follows from that god doesn't nec. exist. The old argument, however, started with some common ground. Plantinga should have made a case that his def. was common sense (thus common ground and non circular argument), but it would fail.
Sam Harris?
A philosopher who said in the beginning of his presentation that philosophers have to think about such things a brains in a jar and solipsism calls Gould's idea of thinking about "running the tape backwards" nonsense?
Because we have No examples of backward causation! Anywhere, anytime across history. But you red-herring will no doubt lead some of the unthinking viewers astray. Nicely done!
That would have been a devastating response if it had anything at all to do with what I was referring to.
Search for "sandwalk replaying life's tape" to see what Gould meant.
@@GalapagosPete Plantinga actually said was that the idea makes no sense "but you can see what he's getting at". The idea makes no sense because assuming confidently that evolution resound would produce a different result is foolish and useless because there is no way of testing the assertion and there are no grounds for believing evolution would have a different result, assuming evolution is real, which it is not. Douglas Axe explains the impossibility of evolution in "Undeniable". James Tour explains how the notion that life evolved from dead matter is nonsense in many lectures.
Robert Seavor Well, there are many thousands of biologists who disagree with Axe, and with respect to Tour, you would do well to recall that all living things are made up of “dead matter.”
@@GalapagosPete There are biologists who do not WANT to sgree with Axe because thry want to deny God. They are guided by ideology, not science or reason. Tour knows a lot fucking more about biology than you do.
And he hasn't shown that if god is possible he is nec., since he hasn't shown that he has given a correct definition of god. For instance, if god actually exists, i.e. if the term rigidly designates whatever being created this universe, then Plantingas argument would show that he might not have been a god. That allpowerful, allknowing and benevolent means maximally great, and that maximally great means greater than anything AND existence in ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS, is not at all clear.
In your last sentence, did you mean "exists" when you wrote "existence"?
@@js1817 Probably, yes. I wrote it a decade ago, so not sure if there is a finer point. Most likely a language mistake as english is not my lingua.
If Plantinga makes a case that God is the greatest in the worlds he exists in, this would include the actual world. A being who exists in the actual world is, by definition, greater than a being who merely exists in mind. It is a logically airtight argument.
Swinburn>Plantinga>Craig
I think Plantinga should go first :)
Craig has changed, he is now denying Genesis scriptural norms. Won’t be long til he’s a full blown atheist
@@reality4330that’s a stupid argument. Check out John Waltons stuff.
Swinburn>plantinga>lennox>craig
Mr. B could easily drop dead during one of his 11 mile runs, before he makes it to 70.
By the One, I wish he would
While the Gods assembled
The Gods had enough, with men’s nuttiness,
couldn’t waste godliness with mortals’ trifles,
became imminent to determine men’s future,
decide whether to end the nuttiness, or men.
The entire pantheon in Godly attire present,
with an old sloppy, dressed like mortal too,
“Hey you, fearless of getting thrown to dogs,
who are you, daring to be among us Gods?”
“Oh Gods, do not rush on me,” (The sloppy said,)
“you created worlds, men know you all,
Godly reverence is all yours, but as for me,
I’m not known at all, though I created thee.”
From the line, E. Ellymeu
Facetiously pretending not to remember Sam Harris's name is a give away that, rather than not taking him seriously, AP finds Harris to be a bit of a gadfly.
you guys get more stupid by the day. apparently you can read minds and know when someone is pretending and isnt doing a geninue honest mistake.
@@tinanikkillz8570 In this case, yes. *make a mistake.
@@grandepittore you read minds? i thought you didnt believe in the supernatural
@@grandepittore Or Harris just isn’t considered to be very philosophically relevant by anyone philosophically relevant, maybe since he starts his philosophical treatise by declaring himself philosophically illiterate, and then proving it.
@@whatsinaname691 Perhaps he's simply modest, and perhaps you would like to give me an example to support your assertion.
Are you kidding? Plantinga gives a correct analysis of the ontological argument, but by doing that he shows that it has no force. He then goes on to conclude that it is a real victory, since it goes to show that the argument isn't selfcontradictory. But since no one ever claimed that, but only that the conclusion that god nec. exists doesn't follow (which he agrees), he has shown absolutely nothing new or remarkable. IMO that goes down as sophistry. Camouflaging nothing as something. Hehe.
This man would make a great Celestial Chorister and his foci is using long winded qualifiers to channel quintessence and preform an act of true magic. And in a technocrat run city? The One appreciates his bravery
What the heck are you talking about?
Next to last question taken -
" these things just seem right!" What a poor answer! Blood letting seemed right in healthcare, slavery seemed right in many parts of the world, mass killings in world wars seemed right. Emotions and feelings are not the basis for actions. Facts and evidence should determine our opions, beliefs and convictions. He could have pointed to the historical evidence in eyewitness testimony, secular historians recording events, prophetic outcomes, the empty tomb, Roman crucifixion, the changed lives of the apostles and so many other references.
ATHEIST GIT REKT XDD
Your assessment is altogether wrongheaded. Which being is greater, a being who exists in every possible world or a being who exists in only a subset of these possible worlds? The definition is actually inclusive of every possible world. The greatest conceivable being, on which the ontological argument is formulated, leaves no room for your scenario. This is easily understood on St. Anselm's concept. There is no rigid definition as you state it. If a being greater can be conceived, that is God.
Narrow-minded morrow
Man, I like this guy, but his N-E-R argument is very weak. At best (for him), he has no way to determine the likelihood that an organism's beliefs are correct so his assessment of 50% is arbitrary. What is more likely is that correct beliefs are more conducive to survival, e.g., if I eat food, avoid the lion, etc., I will survive. Additionally, if materialism holds, beliefs would be reflected in neurological structures and the two would not be separable in terms of their effects on survival.
Lastly, Craig isn't big in philosophy of religion. Nobody gives a fuck about attempts to prove Jesus was divine etc. That isn't the focus of main stream philosophy of religion - at least not outside certain american states. You won't find anything he believes in represented anywhere important. And if you do, it won't be the focus of that place's research. I suggest you go read some of his stuff and make up your own mind. I stand by my comments.
sweet he knows what God is thinking
Sweet he didn't claim that!
Yes, but considering our status quo of knowledge that means nothing. He is one of the more likable christian philosophers, and I bet he is respectful of opponents (haven't seen him act smug or commit any outrageous things - the same can't be said of Craig). But still, the only nice stuff he has done is in epistemology, and even there it is just curiosa. Oh, and he has some fine views on modalities like logical pos/nec. But all his christian stuff is bs.
Gish gallop… at it worst. Instead of addressing the philosophical point of Religion and science.. he jumped around so many subjects he lost me completely
It is precisely his views on time and his arguments that makes me see him as an amateur. Both texts are full of simple mistakes and display a profound lack of understanding. I know this isn't a real intellectual crime, but: it is also very easy to see why he bothers with the subjects. He needs an ad hoc hypothesis about time that can accommodate the proposition that god is endless while accepting that the universe had a beginning and that time is bound to the universe. The result sucks though.
Fortunately, no one cares how you see him. When your brain and name develops sufficiently, maybe you'll warrant a debate against him.
You see Plantinga as an amateur philosopher? You must be a very great philosopher yourself!
@@js1817 He is a professional, but only because of the religious lobby. His work is mainly sophistry, and he always uses flawed logic.
@@Ewochable What? No...
And Craig has written 1 short shit article on Newtonian time. He has produced nothing that is important or influential outside his little Christian brotherhood. I think Plantinga has more to offer philosophically, than Craig. For instance his arguments against Evolutionary theory deserves some attention. And he has done something in epistemology. But Craig is pure shit. Plantinga just isn't extraordinary, and he has produced no plausible theories at all. So, cudos for being analytical, but meh.
What do you do for a living?
Sounds like he is retconning Christianity with science. No, sorry, for religion you have to get it right the first time.
Maybe engage with something that is actually in the video?
Oh, my god. Christian philosophers are such sophists. Plantinga is not even the worst. Check out Lane Craig. Difference between him an Plantinga is that P isn't as smug, he has a better personality.
WOW I mean do people really buy this stuff? This is so weak it is sad. 59:35 "Take any belief of these creatures. It could be true, it could be false. So the probability might be 50% to be true". That's like the young Sheldon example "I might believe that when I come home from school, there is 1 million $ on my bed. It could be true, it could be false. But in which Universe is it 50:50?" Putting it in other words he is saying that the ability to have reliable cognitive capacities brings no evolutionary advantage. Or again differently said, that whether you have reliable beliefs about the world or not doesn't make a difference for survival (and therefore reproduction). He is actually just overcomplicating the argument (and apologizes for it that nobody understands it) such that it is not immediately obvious that it is nonsense.
Philosophy is what you do if you can't get a real job. If it makes Plantinga happy to be delusional, I don't care. It's just silly.
Dave Joseph nice philosophical outlook
If you have no love of philosophy you might be at a higher risk of believing bad ideas. Philosophy is just thinking hard about something.
@@js1817 "If she weighs as much as a duck..." then she's made of wood, and is therefore a witch. Armchair philosophy is like this.
@@davejoseph5615 Says the armchair non-philosopher....
Is asking people stupid questions during job interviews a real job?
For all the adoration Plantinga gets from Christians, he sure is a bad philosopher.
Well, you should go tell that to the guys at the University of Notre Dame, that is, one of the universities with one of the largest philosophy departments in the Western world. They let him teach graduate students in philosophy for over 20 years over there.
But more to the point, if he is such a bad philosopher, you should be able to destroy his argument (the evolutionary argument against naturalism) easily then.
Junior Bakiny"you should be able to destroy his argument (the evolutionary argument against naturalism) easily then."
The ability to discern "truth" is a survival-enhancing trait.
There, I just destroyed it, and it was easy.
Osmosis You did not destroy it. You just made a random claim without even supporting it. The fact is, even if your claim is true, it is strictly speaking irrelevant to the argument (as it is presented by Plantinga here).
Junior Bakiny
LOL nice try kiddo, but wrong on all counts. I shouldn't have to defend the statement because it's obvious to anyone whose head isn't rammed up their ass.
And it's entirely relevant, so relevant in fact that it completely destroys his so-called argument upon contact.
Plantinga says there's no reason to suppose evolution would produce the ability to find truth, and I say that's exactly the kind of thing that it would produce. And I'm right.
Osmosis
There have been literally dozens of paper written on this argument and published in professional, peer-reviewed journals. PhD these have been written on it, and you think you just refuted it by typing a couple of sentences? Honestly, let’s be serious.
*I shouldn't have to defend the statement because it's obvious to anyone whose head isn't rammed up their ass*
This is just the so called proof by assertion fallacy. Just because you think a claim is obvious doesn’t mean it is. I think it is obvious that naturalism is false, so what? You can’t just announce your opinion without defending it and expect people to agree with you by claiming that if they don’t, it means they have their heads rammed up their butts; any idiot can do that! You should defend your claims if you want people to take them seriously.
At any rate, the adaptive role of truth has been debated at length throughout the history of this argument, and before for that matter. The fact is, just claiming that a system of true beliefs is more likely to be adaptive than a system of false ones has never been enough to refute this argument (either in its older versions, or in its newer versions). All you are showing is that you aren’t entirely familiar with the argument.
*And it's entirely relevant, so relevant in fact that it completely destroys his so-called argument upon contact*
It strictly speaking isn’t *directly* relevant to the newer versions of the argument, the version Plantinga presents here. I would love to try to explain you why if you are interested.
*Plantinga says there's no reason to suppose evolution would produce the ability to find truth, and I say that's exactly the kind of thing that it would produce. And I'm right.*
He never said that! He said *if evolution and naturalism are both true*, then it is unlikely that our cognitive faculties are reliable. This isn’t at all the same thing as what you said.
poor delusional people