Can atheists trust their reason?
November 1st, 2007 | Published in Evolution, Philosophy, Thoughts, Truth | 6 Comments
Here’s a comment I made on Justin Taylor’s blog about whether atheists can trust their reasoning abilities or not. It was in response to an Alvin Plantinga lecture arguing that atheists could not trust them.
Plantinga argues in the last talk that a naturalist cannot trust his own mental facilities. That might be true, but that is why methods like the scientific method exist and are used — it takes something out of the mind in order to test if something is really predictable and testable (and thus, scientifically “true”).
So even if we doubt our facilities, the fact is, we can test our deductions. That will help us determine if our minds our reliable in their deductive abilities. It doesn’t matter whether it is probable or not that we can trust them — the question is, can we?
For instance, we may hypothesize that every time we drop a large stone, on earth, under normal conditions, it will fall. We could doubt that it is true – our minds could be tricking us – but that is why we test it. And we find that every time we test it, it happens. So that would lead us, after thousands of years of testing and theorizing and philosophizing, that our faculties are not all that bad after all, which allows us to put more trust in ourselves for higher levels of thinking. (And thus understand and debate on the concepts of mind and reason and truth!)
So I think the naturalist/atheist has every right to trust their mental faculties just as much as a theist. Both the theist and the atheist can be mentally tricked and lead astray, and both have explanations on why that can happen. And both recognize that and seek to minimize it through methods.
In the end, the theist believes that man is able to reason. So does the atheist. And the atheist believes the theist can reason, and the theist believes the atheist can reason. So, ultimately, they can start at the same place to begin building methods, which is why theists and atheists can both (for instance) be scientists and come to the exact same conclusions when running the same test. (And why they are able to argue about it if they come to different conclusions!)
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:02 pm (#)
You make a good point, but Plantinga’s argument goes farther than this. It’s not just that atheists have reason to believe they might be wrong about some things. It’s that, on the basis of their system, there is no cause to believe any of us have any touch with reality at all. For example, you believe you are reading a comment on a blog in the year 2007, but in reality this is all just a dreamworld produced by synapses in your brain, and really you are slogging through a prehistoric swamp fighting off crocodiles (to use Plantinga’s analogy). As far as natural selection is concerned, it doesn’t matter what you believe, so long as your behavior is suitable for survival and reproduction.
Obviously, no one will be convinced by this they really don’t have trustworthy reasoning capacities. In my view, this argument is similar to the presuppositional argument that atheism provides no basis for morality. Everyone knows a moral law exists (Rom. 2), but the idea is to point out that it’s irrational to believe in both a moral law and atheism. I see Plantinga’s argument the same way. No one will be persuaded that their faculties are untrustworthy, but maybe they can be shown one of the logical contradictions in their beliefs.
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:39 pm (#)
Jordan,
Thanks for commenting.
My point is that atheists are not necessarily logically inconsistent. It isn’t impossible that humans could have reasoning ability through evolution — it’s just not probable. But just because it’s improbable that I would hit the jackpot on a slot machine doesn’t mean it can’t happen. The naturalist can point that from all tests, it appears that we can trust our rationality. And that is (and should be) enough and to move on.
I don’t think a theist, regardless, has much firmer footing. In order to believe God exists and created us depends first that we can reason our way to that. Without the first presupposition that our reason is reliable, we could never come to the conclusion God exists, which is supposedly required for our reason to be reliable. So it’s just as circular of an argument.
November 2nd, 2007 at 3:54 pm (#)
Thanks for responding so graciously Josh.
I don’t see how it’s possible for someone to test his own rationality. If the whole issue is whether or not we can know any objective fact accurately, then we can’t just assume that we are able to correctly interpret the results of an experiment, or that we even performed an experiment outside our own subjective imagination. Maybe I’m missing something, though, so I’m open to hear what you say.
On your second point, I would argue that Christians can’t claim to have reasoned our way to the existence of God. Rather, we intuitively knew of the existence of God through the natural order, and then special revelation opened our eyes to the full reality. Only then are we able to think it through and realize that theism is the only explanation that makes logical sense–that we have reason only because we have a rational Creator and thus a rational creation.
Thanks for having this discussion with me! By the way, you recommended that I read Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, which I did this summer. I really enjoyed it, and I’d like to read further about media’s effects on culture.
November 2nd, 2007 at 4:08 pm (#)
Jordan,
I think we might be seeing the same thing through a different lens. I don’t think it’s possible to “know any objective fact accurately,” but we have to make decisions the best we can. I trust my reason because my reason seems to work. That is good enough for me. It gives me a foundation for understanding the world around me — and from there, someone can begin reading, interpreting, and believing the Bible or rejecting that and becoming an atheistic evolutionist.
Your second point may be true — I tend to be more rationalistic. For me to perceive and feel God means that I have to interpret my senses and surroundings through my mind (and thus use reason). So I have to trust my reason is correct for me to trust that intuitive knowledge. Otherwise, why should I trust it? It is also complicated by the fact I have intuitive knowledge that ends up wrong. (For instance, by nature I think everything is about me — but after testing that a bit, that has proven to be incorrect. I also by nature think it’s really great to do bad things, which ends up not true, either.)
November 2nd, 2007 at 4:20 pm (#)
Haha, you’re definitely right about intuition. I sure am glad we haven’t been left to rely on either intuition or our senses alone, but God had mercy on us! Twas good discussing things with you brother.
December 30th, 2007 at 11:48 am (#)
I posted this following the comments left on Justin Taylor’s blog:
Your objection misses the mark in that it fails to recognize the significance of unreliable cognitive faculties. Any verification of faculties, even through scientific method, presupposes the accuracy of those faculties. How else could one judge reliablility of their faculties, unless those faculties were reliable enough to make such a judgement? If Plantinga’s argument is sound, then method has little to provide by way of support for naturalism. Afterall, those convictions by which we judge reliability would be just as much in question as any others.
If one considers the implications of Plantinga’s argument, then there is a foundational problem between reliable faculties and naturalistic evolutionary origins of those faculties. To argue, then, from method to reliability would be much like trying to build a foundation starting at the roof.