Metascience (2013) 22:427–429 DOI 10.1007/s11016-012-9725-7 BOOK REVIEW

Science and religion: Compatibility issues Daniel C. Dennett and Alvin Plantinga: Science and religion: Are they compatible? New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, vii+82pp, £6.99/$9.95 PB Jim Slagle

Published online: 11 October 2012  Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012

This slim contribution to the Point/Counterpoint series is the outcome of the debate between Alvin Plantinga and Daniel Dennett at the Central Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association in 2009. The debate consisted of a lecture by Plantinga, a response by Dennett, and a counter-response by Plantinga, which the book reproduces. The book includes further responses by Dennett, Plantinga, and Dennett again. Because it is a debate, there are numerous points that cannot be addressed in detail within Science and Religion’s short length. Perhaps, the three most significant are whether the randomness of Darwinism is compatible with God’s guiding the course of evolution, whether a naturalistic evolutionary explanation is preferable because it posits fewer entities than a theistic evolutionary explanation, and Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism. Regarding the first, Plantinga points out that the randomness of Darwinian evolution does not mean uncaused nor does it mean unsupervised. It merely means the lack of any physical mechanism in the organism or its environment that determines which mutations would be beneficial for the organism’s survival and then causes just those mutations to take place. Of course, this does not rule out the possibility that God may determine which mutation would be beneficial and then causes it, since God is neither physical nor a mechanism. ‘‘Hence the randomness involved in Darwinism does not imply that the process is not divinely guided’’ (6). Incredibly, Dennett concedes this but considers it moot because of the second point: ‘‘it is an entirely gratuitous fantasy’’ (27). We can certainly add God or other designing agents (like extraterrestrials) to the picture, but if we already have an explanation available that fully accounts for everything we observe, to appeal to such agents is completely unnecessary. Ockham’s razor cuts them away, and we are J. Slagle (&) Institute of Philosophy, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Burgemeestersstraat 16/202, 3000 Leuven, Belgium e-mail: [email protected]

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left with just the naturalistic explanation. This is perhaps the main objection to any compatibilist position between science and religion, and while Plantinga addressed it briefly in his opening speech, Dennett obviously remains unimpressed. Plantinga argued that, all things being equal, we should prefer the simpler explanation that posits fewer entities—but things are not always equal. If naturalism cannot plausibly account for some aspect of reality then we should prefer theism, even though theism posits the additional entity God. This leads directly to the third point, Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism or EAAN. Roughly, the argument is that the probability that we have reliable cognitive faculties given naturalism and evolution is low (Plantinga drops the ‘‘or inscrutable’’ which he has traditionally added at this point). This does not mean that the brain would not evolve to acquire reliable indicators of its environment in order to induce appropriate behavior, but that these indicators do not have any necessary connection to the belief contents, much less to their truth-values. The indicator triggers a particular behavior which allows the organism to survive in a particular circumstance, and this indicator also triggers a particular belief—but what reason do we have to think that this belief is about the circumstance, much less that it is a true belief about the circumstance? Plantinga has been asking this question in some form for 20 years and it is clear he is underwhelmed by the objections he has received. He argues that for any belief one would have a 50/50 chance of its being true, since for any true belief that is available its denial is available as well. If we take one hundred unconnected beliefs, the probability for them to be mostly true in this scenario is extremely small. From this, the rest of the argument follows: one who sees the low probability has a reason to not believe that his cognitive faculties are reliable; therefore, he has a reason to not believe any belief produced by his cognitive faculties, including belief in naturalism and evolution. Therefore, naturalism is self-defeating. As such, naturalism cannot plausibly account for an aspect of reality, namely, the existence of beings that reason, know, and engage in scientific analysis. Of course, Dennett demurs. In his final essay, he compares Plantinga’s EAAN to the claim that an engineer once proved that bumblebees are too aerodynamically challenged to fly—irrespective of the fact that one just whizzed past your face. If one could prove mathematically that bumblebees cannot fly, the obvious response should not be that God is holding them all up with an invisible finger every time one tries to launch itself out of the hive but that the mathematical proof is erroneous. The same goes for Plantinga’s argument: if we have an argument demonstrating that we cannot have reliable cognitive faculties on naturalistic principles, the appropriate response is to question the argument, not the principles. This, Dennett argues is the same error made by Plantinga’s favorite scientist, Michael Behe, who mistakes his inability to imagine a naturalistic explanation with a reason for thinking there is not a naturalistic explanation. Both Behe and Plantinga are committed to what ‘‘Richard Dawkins calls…the Argument from Personal Incredulity, and it is an obvious fallacy’’ (76). It is unfortunate that Dennett refers to this, however, since in the essay preceding this one, Plantinga referred to this very fallacy and applied it to Dennett, Dawkins, and likeminded authors: ‘‘Dennett and others make that same kind of argument from

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personal incredulity against theism. They find theism incredible, fantastic, irrational, worthy of ridicule and mockery, and so on. They don’t typically give reasons (or if, like Dawkins, they do, they are exceptionally bad reasons): They just find it incredible’’ (60). At any rate, Dennett has not actually refuted Plantinga’s EAAN, he has merely claimed that it must be invalid because otherwise it would mean that naturalism is false—which is precisely what Plantinga is arguing for. Again, there is much more to this debate—such as whether the assumption that God will not gratuitously interfere with the regular course of events amounts to an assumption of atheism, or whether belief in God is as absurd as belief in Superman—but to go into much more detail over such a short book would be disproportionate. Overall, Science and Religion is an excellent book which takes two of the top living philosophers going head-to-head over one of the most controversial (hence, interesting) subjects in Western culture. One wishes the authors had kept going or had asked several other philosophers to read their debate and write responses of their own; but their goal, I take it, is to keep the book short so that it can be used as an additional text for courses in philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, and (of course) science and religion. Besides, if one wants to read more, there is plenty of material available by both authors. The only weakness, and it is a big one, is that one side did not really come prepared. Dennett makes no mystery about his disdain for religion, and his unwillingness to take it seriously or even pay much attention to it: ‘‘the fact that it is an ancient tradition with many eminent contributors does not make it more deserving of attention than any other mythology’’ (48). This hubris, when matched up with perhaps the premier philosopher of religion of the last 100 years, results in a rather lopsided fight. Dennett certainly has a razor-sharp wit, but it does not really matter how sharp your knife is when you bring it to the proverbial gunfight.

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