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"We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion," John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty, "and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still." While I don't always agree with Mill, I think on this point he is correct. And being a man who attempts to avoid doing evil, I try not to stifle opinions -- especially my own. I avoid this evil even when I may certainly be wrong on matters of which I am certain.

Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to hear that I have a high opinion of my own opinion. My friends, family, and co-workers will also nod in agreement, adding that my confidence in the correctness of my opinions borders on the obnoxious. It is certainly true that I am quite opinionated. Like Ivan Turgenev, "I share no man's opinions; I have my own."

While I'll admit that this may be a character defect, I don't believe, as many might suspect, that it is evidence of vainglorious pride. I may embrace and defend my opinions with firmness; but it is a humble form of certitude. While rigidness of opinion could signal a lack of humility, wishy-washiness could be an even greater sign of haughtiness. Excess pride may cause a person to hem and hedge and qualify their claims so that thy may not have to admit being wrong. Have enough strong opinions, though, and you will eventually be served a five-course feast of crow. Personally, I have no fear of being wrong and humbly accept the fact that I will often have to admit that I am in error (I do, however, fear being uninteresting, which likely occurs more often than not).

[Note: Here at EO I’ve decided to honor my favorite bizarre worldview by hosting an Atheism Appreciation Week. For the rest of the week I’ll have posts dedicated to atheism and its related beliefs.]

Richard Dawkins once wrote that it appears almost as if "the human brain is specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism." Although his statement is bursting with irony, it appears to be lost on the typically clueless Dawkins. He appears not to realize that if the human brain is "designed" (he can't help but sneak in teleological terms for non-teleological processes) by evolution then our brains would have no way to "understand" Darwinism.

Even Charles Darwin recognized that if the human brain is a product of blind, non-teleological evolutionary processes, then we have no reason to believe that the brain is capable of producing convictions that are trustworthy:

With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has always been developed from the mind of 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?

Darwin understood what Dawkins is too blind to see: If naturalism is true, then we have no justification for science. Science is crushed under the radical skepticism that weighs down the naturalist (or would if they were more logical). In fact, as philosopher Alvin Plantinga points out,

People like Dawkins hold that there is a conflict between science and religion because they think there is a conflict between evolution and theism; the truth of the matter, however, is that the conflict is between science and naturalism, not between science and belief in God.

You can choose naturalism and evolution or you can choose evolution and rationalism but you cannot choose naturalism, evolution, and rationalism; taken together, the three are simply incompatible.

Last year while discussing bioethics with fellow blogger Jim Smalls, I expressed my disgust and dismay about ethicist Peter Singer. How could anyone with his intellect, I wondered, hold such bizarre and ridiculous beliefs? Jim has an M.D. and a Ph.D. He’s an extremely smart guy who is used to being around smart people so I expected him to confirm my suspicion that Singer may not be as intelligent as he seems. Instead, he said that I shouldn’t be surprised at all and provided an answer that floored me: “Increased intellect provides an increased power for rationalization.”

I was reminded of that insight while reading the New York Times piece, Free Will: Now You Have It, Now You Don’t. The author of the article, Dennis Overbye, discusses the issue of free will with several scientists, psychologists, and philosophers, almost all of whom hold materialism as an unshakable presupposition. The resulting rationalizations provide support for Jim’s claim and show how smart people can believe the dumbest things.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes:

"Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost is just never going to get universals right," says my friend Matt Anderson, "It’s impossible. I am giving up."

Of course, his faux resignation doesn't fool me for a second which is why I've decided to bait him by writing a post that will likely only be of interest to Matt, me, and the handful of Biola students who recently stayed up way too late debating the concept of Platonic "Forms" or "Universals." (Note: More on GodBlogCon tomorrow.)

One of the questions we addressed was whether blind people could know the form of the color Green since they could not perceive it with their senses. Matt responded matter-of-factly that angels don't have eyes either and yet they can know the color green. (The ability to make such dogmatic, brilliant, and utterly absurd claims with a completely straight face is one of the many reasons I love the guy.) But Matt's claim goes even further. His position is not only that angels can see green but that the "form" green existed even before there were men or angels to perceive colors at all.

�Most educated people nowadays, I believe, think of themselves as Darwinians,� wrote the late philosopher of science David Stove. �If they do, however, it can only be from ignorance: from not knowing enough about what Darwinism says. For Darwinism says many things, especially about our species, which are too obviously false to be believed by any educated person; or at least by an educated person who retains any capacity at all for critical thought on the subject of Darwinism.�

Nowadays, expressing any skepticism toward Darwinian theories is considered evidence that a person harbors creationist sympathies. But the Australian philosopher was no friend of �intelligent design.� In fact, Stove was an atheist and an ardent admirer or Charles Darwin�s genius who believed that it is �overwhelmingly probable� that our species evolved from another and that �natural selection is probably the cause which is principally responsible for the coming into existence of new species from old ones.�

But Stove could only follow the theory so far. Unwilling to disregard common sense, he was unable to accept the patent nonsense of the �ultra-Darwinists.� These Darwinian advocates, men like Richard Dawkins and E.O. Wilson, have, he said, an �amazingly arrogant habit of Darwinians� of �blaming the fact, instead of blaming their theory� when they encounter contrary biological facts.

Consider, for example, Darwin�s contention (Origin of Species, ch. 4) that �any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed.� This is one of the essential ideas of natural selection but, as Stove points out, we don�t even have to look past the first letter of the alphabet to find characteristics which are extremely injurious to humans yet have not been �rigidly destroyed�:

Abortion; adoption; fondness for alcohol; altruism; anal intercourse; respect for ancestors; susceptibility to aneurism; the love of animals; the importance attached to art; asceticism, whether sexual, dietary, or whatever.

All of these can either shorten our lives or lessen the number of children we have. So why has this �biological error� not been destroyed? According to the ultra-Darwinist, there has �not been enough time.�

Richard Dawkins once wrote that it appears almost as if "the human brain is specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism." Although his statement is bursting with irony, it appears to be lost on the typically clueless Dawkins. He appears not to realize that if the human brain is "designed" (he can't help but sneak in teleological terms for non-teleological processes) by evolution then our brains would have no way to "understand" Darwinism.

Even Charles Darwin recognized that if the human brain is a product of blind, non-teleological evolutionary processes, then we have no reason to believe that the brain is capable of producing convictions that are trustworthy:

With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has always been developed from the mind of 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?

Patricia Churchland, a prominent philosopher and advocate for philosophical naturalism, also agrees that since the aim of evolution is survival, we can't expect our brains to discover "truth":

Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F's: feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive. . . . Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism's way of life and enhances the organism's chances of survival. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.

Although they recognize that non-teleological evolution undercuts our trust in our ability to form true beliefs and convictions, neither Darwin nor Churchland consider the theory to be inadequate. But what they fail to realize is that non-teleological evolution is, as Roy Clouser says, self-assumptively incoherent:

Being able to trust our belief-forming capacities is an assumption necessary to believing in the theory of evolution. Unless we can trust our perceptions and belief-forming capacities to reveal reality, there are no reasons to believe the theory of evolution at all. In fact, if we can�t trust our perceptual beliefs, there is no reason to believe that there are such things as brains or life forms to be explained. [emphasis in original]

This is not to say that that the relation between evolution and our capacity to acquire truth is outright false. It just means that the claim undercuts its own justification: If we believe we have reliable belief-forming apparatus then we have reason to believe that non-teleological evolution is false. Likewise, if we believe that non-teleological evolution is true then we have no reason to believe the theory since we would have no reason to trust that our belief-forming apparatus is reliable.

All of this should be self-evident to anyone who has given it a moment's thought. So why would anyone still believe that it is possible that reliable belief-forming apparatus could have arisen from non-teleological evolution? I believe that there are four common errors that prevent them from letting go of this self-defeating theory.

[Note: I had hoped to be able to post my thoughts on the GodBlogCon for today but got sidetracked while working on other projects (a short article about the conference for World magazine and prepping for an interview for BBC Radio). Having already recycled material for over a week, I beg your indulgence for one more day. Regular blogging will resume on Tuesday.]

Life is a gamble. Every day we are forced to make decisions based on imperfect knowledge, unsure of the outcomes of our choices. We do the best we can with what we have available, developing strategies based on experience, accumulated information, and calculations of probabilities. Traveling to Seattle in April? We pack an umbrella since its likely to rain. Meeting a co-worker for lunch? No reason to rush since she is never on time.

Almost every rational decision we make in life is a based on what we assume to be the expected outcome. We make our choices in order to maximize our gains and minimize our losses, attempting all the while to to boost our expected value of every specific outcome. In order to better understand this process, it might be useful to examine this decision-making process from a hypothetical example.

[Note: This is post #9 in the Blogiversary II series.]

"We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion," John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty, "and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still." While I don't always agree with Mill, I think on this point he is correct. And being a man who attempts to avoid doing evil, I try not to stifle opinions -- especially my own. I avoid this evil even when I may certainly be wrong on matters of which I am certain.

Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to hear that I have a high opinion of my own opinion. My friends, family, and co-workers will also nod in agreement, adding that my confidence in the correctness of my opinions borders on the obnoxious. It is certainly true that I am quite opinionated. Like Ivan Turgenev, "I share no man's opinions; I have my own."

While I�ll admit that this may be a potential character defect, I don't believe, as many might suspect, that it is evidence of vainglorious pride. I may embrace and defend my opinions with firmness; but it is a humble form of certitude. While rigidness of opinion could signal a lack of humility, wishy-washiness could be an even greater sign of haughtiness. Excess pride may cause a person to hem and hedge and qualify their claims so that thy may not have to admit being wrong. Have enough strong opinions, though, and you will eventually be served a five-course feast of crow. Personally, I have no fear of being wrong and humbly accept the fact that I will often have to admit that I am in error (I do, however, fear being uninteresting, which I probably am more often than not).

�With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man�s mind, which has always been developed from the mind of 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?� -- Charles Darwin

Imagine if you had a friend who wore bell bottom jumpsuits, macram� shoes (made of hemp), and a crocheted beer can hat because they thought it made them look "groovy." Even if you approached the task with the best of intentions it would be almost impossible not to take perverse pleasure pointing out that their style was hopelessly out of fashion. That is how I feel about writing, once again, on the topic of materialism and belief. As much as I want to believe that my intentions are noble, I can't help but be amused by the shocked reactions when I point out to my materialist cohorts that one of their core beliefs is self-defeating.*

For those who may have missed the preceding arguments, the question we are addressing is why should we "trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind"? In a comment to the previous discussion, Greg Forster provided a useful summary of the argument:

In his book Metaphysics, philosopher Richard Taylor asks the reader to imagine a stone that�s just been dug out of the ground, and covered by peculiar markings. On first appearances the markings appear to be accidental, simply the result of millions of years of erosion. As your examine the marking, though, your friend, a professor of ancient languages, arrives upon the scene and promptly renders a translation of the marks:

HERE KIMON FELL LEADING A BAND OF ATHENIANS AGAINST THE FORCES OF XERXES. Now one can, to be sure, still maintain that the marks are accidental, that they are only scratches left by volcanic activity, and that it is only a singular coincidence that they resemble ... some intelligible message. Nature sometimes produces effects hardly less interesting and arresting as this. The point ... however, is this: if anyone having a knowledge of this stone concludes, solely on the basis of it, that there was someone named Kimon who died in battle near where this stone was found, then he cannot, rationally, suppose that the marks on the stone are the result of the chance or purposeless operations of the forces of nature. He must, on the contrary, assume that they were inscribed there by someone whose purpose was to record an historical fact.

Taylor�s point is that because it is entirely possible for the rock to have accumulated �various and peculiar markings� during vast periods of time, there is no reason to assume that these markings were not created by pure accident. However, it would be a grave mistake, says Taylor, to also believe that these markings "reveal some truth with respect to something other than themselves" about the world. In other words, the markings cannot be both the result of chance forces and indicative of any truth beyond the mere fact that there happen to be peculiar markings upon a certain stone.

Taylor uses this example in order to examine the question, �How is human consciousness any different from the accumulation of accidental markings upon a stone?� Even if we assume that it is possible for nature to create something as inexplicably complex as human consciousness, we cannot assume that consciousness would be reliable. We cannot consistently claim, says Taylor, that human consciousness is both the chance outcome of blind, accidental causes and a reliable belief-forming apparatus by which we discern truths about the world.

"We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion," John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty, "and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still." While I don�t always agree with Mill, I think on this point he is correct. And being a man who attempts to avoid doing evil, I try not to stifle opinions -- especially my own. I avoid this evil even when I may certainly be wrong on matters of which I am certain.

Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to hear that I have a high opinion of my own opinion. My friends, family, and co-workers will also nod in agreement, adding that my confidence in the correctness of my opinions borders on the obnoxious. It is certainly true that I am quite opinionated. Like Ivan Turgenev, "I share no man�s opinions; I have my own."

While I�ll admit that this may be a potential character defect, I don�t believe, as many might suspect, that it is evidence of vainglorious pride. I may embrace and defend my opinions with firmness; but it is a humble form of certitude. While rigidness of opinion could signal a lack of humility, wishy-washiness could be an even greater sign of haughtiness. Excess pride may cause a person to hem and hedge and qualify their claims so that thy may not have to admit being wrong. Have enough strong opinions, though, and you will eventually be served a five-course feast of crow. Personally, I have no fear of being wrong and humbly accept the fact that I will often have to admit that I am in error (I do, however, fear being uninteresting, which I probably am more often than not).

In my previous post on doubt, certainty, and epistemic humility I made the claim that ontology (the study of being) precedes epistemology (the study of knowing). On the most basic level that point appears rather obvious (a being must exist in order to know) but since I meant more than that by the statement �- that without a clear theory of ontology, epistemology is incomplete -- I feel compelled to offer further clarification.

My contention is that until we can understand why we exist and how our existence came into being, we cannot move on to establishing a satisfactory foundation for how we can know. Not all ontological claims lead to the same epistemological outcome, so we must first establish the nature of the knower before we can move on to what can and cannot be know.

A radical shift in the zeitgiest was occurring: authority began to be questioned; a skeptical relativism spread among the intelligentsia; claims about God and moral absolutes were rejected; human belief was perceived to be nothing more than a social-construction; the Christian worldview continued to crumble, its primacy supplanted by secularism.

The �postmodern� age may have started late in the second millennium but it isn�t so different from the post-Renaissance era, circa 1630s.

Into that age of skepticism came the French Catholic mathematician and philosopher Rene Descartes. Attempting to reestablish a firm footing for knowledge, Descartes decided to make a clean sweep of presuppositions by clearing away all that could be doubted. He applied the method with the precision of a mathematical proof. Cutting away anything that could be doubted, Descartes was left with only one piece of data that was clearly indubitable: the fact of his doubting.

Doubting is a form of thinking and thinking requires a thinker. The existence of the �I� that was doing the doubting, therefore, could not itself be doubted. Descartes discovered the foundation for all knowledge: Cogito ergo sum - I think, therefore I am.

To modern ears the phrase is a clich� that has lost its force and novelty. But in the mid-17th century it marked a revolutionary philosophical shift. As Richard Tarnas explains in The Passion of the Western Mind:

British philosopher Betrand Russell, famous for his agnostic views as much as for his theories on logic, was once asked how he would answer if he turned out to be wrong about God. Russell was delighted with the question and answered, "Why, I should say, 'God, you gave us insufficient evidence.'"

I suspect that upon their meeting, God corrected the ol' Brit, showing how the evidence was there and that Russel had simply chosen to ignore it. But it does raise the question of why different people when presented with much the same evidence, come to such varying conclusions about the existence of God.

Presumably, rational people weigh the evidence of God's existence or non-existence in order to determine the probability of one being more likely than another and proceed from there. After all, since we can't know the answer with absolute certainty, we have to base it on our best probabilistic assumption.

But how can we determine what is more likely when applied to an issue such as the ontological status of God? That is the question British theoretical physicist Stephen Urwin attempts to answer in his book, The Probability of God.

By applying Bayesian probabilities, a statistical method devised by 18th-century Presbyterian minister and mathematician Thomas Bayes, Urwin attempts to determine the probability of God's existence. Since 50-50 represents "maximum ignorance", Unwin begins with a 50 percent probability that God exists and then applies it to the following modified Bayesian theorem:

The probability of God's existence after the evidence is considered is a function of the probability before times D ("Divine Indicator Scale"):

Let me clarify that this argument is not intended to be used as a proof of God�s existence. The sole intention is to put in quantifiable terms the probabilities that we should form a belief about such a Being�s existence. In other words, this is not an ontological proof but a means of justifying a particular epistemic stance toward the idea of the existence or non-existence of a deity.

The argument is that starting from an epistemically neutral point (50%|50%), we can factor in specific evidence for the existence or non-existence of a deity. After evaluating each line of evidence, we can determine if it is more or less likely that it would entail the existence of God.

The numbers we assign are not completely objective (since we don�t have an objective standard to compare them to) but neither are they assigned arbitrarily. For example, the claim that a specific piece of evidence is two times (.2) more likely to be true if God exists does not mean that it is the only possible explanation. It is simply stating that from a neutral and objective viewpoint, it would be more likely to have occurred if a God exists then if he doesn�t.

Life is a gamble. Every day we are forced to make decisions based on imperfect knowledge, unsure of the outcomes of our choices. We do the best we can with what we have available, developing strategies based on experience, accumulated information, and calculations of probabilities. Traveling to Seattle in April? We pack an umbrella since its likely to rain. Meeting a co-worker for lunch? No reason to rush since she is never on time.

Almost every rational decision we make in life is a based on what we assume to be the expected outcome. We make our choices in order to maximize our gains and minimize our losses, attempting all the while to to boost our expected value of every specific outcome. In order to better understand this process, it might be useful to examine this decision-making process from a hypothetical example.

Forced to choose between a lackluster incumbent President and the womanizing governor from Arkansas, many Americans during the autumn of 1992 were willing to consider a third option: Ross Perot. The enthusiasm for the Dallas billionaire was highest when few people knew where he stood on the issues. Once he started to clarify his positions, though, the initial popularity waned. As the election season continued and Perot had more opportunities to express his opinions it became abundantly clear that he was a barking lunatic.

Unlike Perot, Tom Clark, the director of the Center for Naturalism, is not crazy. In fact, he seems to be not only sane but intelligent, decent, fair, and open-minded. But like the former Reform Party candidate, Tom presents a point of view that is attractive when poorly understood but becomes considerably less appealing when the implications are made clear.

To his credit, though, Tom is one of the few proponents of naturalism I�ve ever known that has been willing to follow the logic where it leads. He denies, for example, the existence of contra-causal free will. If naturalism is true then there certainly is no room for free will. The idea that some naturalists could believe otherwise seems rather odd, if not absurd. On this point, Tom and I are in agreement.

But while I appreciate his willingness to uses Occam�s razor to cut away the cord of free will, I�m still unclear why he doesn�t take the next step and shave off the unnecessary explanations of mental states. Why shouldn�t naturalists embrace eliminative materialism? And, assuming that naturalism is true, how do I know that Tom isn�t a zombie?

In a comment to my recent post on Richard Dawkins and naturalism, Tom Girsch (Tgirsch) wrote:

�I really, really, really wish you would put even a quarter as much scrutiny to bear on your own worldview as you do toward the other "absurd" worldviews you criticize.�

In my own defense I must say that I have a perfectly reasonable excuse for not examining my own worldview on this forum: I�m incredibly lazy. I find writing (and thinking) laborious and difficult, which is why I constantly relying on shortcuts, predigested opinions, and recycled posts. I tend to spend time scrutinizing other worldviews because it�s much easier to point out where they err than to show how Christianity does not suffer from the same errors.

I�m like a slothful engineer in a bridge-building competition who finds it much easier to simply walk up to the competitor�s bridge and point out the cracks and gaping holes than to reexamine every square inch of his own creation in order to show that it is completely sound and able to bear the required load.

But what if I wasn�t such a lazy bum, how would I go about testing the truth of my own worldview? I believe the most fruitful approach is one outlined by the philosopher and apologist Norman Geisler who proposes that unaffirmability is the test for the falsity of a worldview and undeniability the test for the truth of a worldview.

While trying to make sense out of Aristotle�s physics, the philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn had an epiphany:

When reading the works of an important thinker, look first for the apparent absurdities in the text and ask yourself how a sensible person could have written them. When you find an answer�when those passages make sense, then you may find that more central passages, ones you previously thought you understood, have changed their meaning.

I thought of this quote after reading the latest outrageous remarks by zoologist Richard Dawkins. Although Dawkins is considered by some to be one of the premier public intellectuals in Great Britain, it would be a stretch to consider him an important thinker. In fact, my view of the scientist can be summed up in a remark he recently made after meeting a political opponent: "You, sir, are an ignorant bigot."

But since some otherwise intelligent people take Dawkins seriously, I feel an obligation to do the same, if only to make sense of his apparent absurdities. In a recent interview with Salon.com, Dawkins provides just such an opening into understanding his murky logic:

In late 1920s, a school of philosophy arose in Austria and Germany that emphasized science and rejected metaphysics. Like many other horrendous European ideas, the philosophy, known as logical positivism, spread to American universities and became an influential political and educational activity. It was particularly well-received by political progressives, liberals, and some types of socialists.

The philosophy, however, had an obvious Achilles heel. Logical positivists claimed that metaphysical statements are meaningless and that a statement is meaningful if and only if it can be proved true or false by means of experience. The obvious problem with this contention is that the claim itself is a metaphysical statement would therefore be meaningless. Despite this absurd premise, the idea gained wide acceptance for almost thirty years, providing yet another example of a common feature of human nature: smart people often refuse to give up dumb ideas even when they are self-refuting.

Today, the primary example of such thinking is philosophical naturalism. While naturalism comes in many varieties the most popular version it the one espoused by The Center for Naturalism (CFN). According to the CFN, �the world view that is naturalism holds that human beings are fully included in nature.� The implication, as they admit, is the denial of the idea that �persons have traditional, contra-causal free will - that something within them is capable of acting as a first cause. �

If humans lack free will then the obvious conclusion is that they should not be held accountable for their actions. The CFN begins by following that logic but before reaching the obvious conclusion they make an irrational leap of faith:

After discovering the intriguingly candid website for The Center for Naturalism, I wrote a post and encouraged other bloggers to share their thoughts. I�ve collected their entries along with selected quotes in this post and, like my own thoughts, they are exceedingly critical of the naturalist position.

On reflection I realize that I may have been unduly harsh and allowed a previous spat with Brian Leiter to affect my tone. After writing my post I exchanged emails with Tom Clark, the director and founder of CFN and an exceedingly polite gentleman, and realized that if I had been writing about Islam, Judaism, or another religious viewpoint that I disagreed with that I would have been more generous. My disagreements with the philosophy should not preclude me from treating such deeply held beliefs with respect.

Mike Russell from Eternal Perspectives says it best when he writes:

For decades, Christian thinkers ranging from the profound to the banal have argued that philosophical naturalism is internally inconsistent and contradictory. Yet this naked emperor continues to promenade through our culture, slipping just out of sight whenever someone observes that he wanders sans clothes. The critics of the theists assume that the portrayal of naturalism must be a strawman since is makes Scientology look in comparison.

But we Christian critics now have a handful of unwitting allies in our cause. A small group of atheist philosophers, including Daniel Dennett and Brian Leiter, have instituted a new organization that will prove to be our best ally in the effort to expose the self-refuting philosophy:

The Center for Naturalism (CFN) is a 501(c)3 non-profit educational organization devoted to increasing public awareness of naturalism and its implications for social and personal well-being. By means of local activities, publications, research, conferences, educational programs, and policy development, the CFN seeks to foster the understanding that human beings and their behavior are fully caused, entirely natural phenomena, and that human flourishing is best achieved in the light of such understanding.

Initially, I assumed that this was a brilliant April Fool�s Day hoax. The website provides such a parody of naturalistic ideas that it couldn�t be anything other than an elaborate prank. But the CFN is no joke -- at least not an intentional one. The CFN website contains dozens of pages and articles, a virtual treasure trove for anyone who wants to point out the ludicrously inconsistent views espoused by these naturalists. With so many examples to choose from it is difficult to choose only a few to highlight.

Scientists have recently discovered a class of animals that are able to converse with humans, make rudimentary tools, and even distinguish between the paintings of Monet and Picasso. These creatures capable of such �complex cognitive behavior� are not chimps or gorillas or any other evolutionary �cousins� of Homo Sapiens. In fact, these bright beasts don�t have mammalian brains at all. These abilities are coming, quite literally, from birdbrains.

A group of the world's leading neuroscientists who study the brain circuitry of birds, fish and mammals claim that the "primitive" regions of avian brains are actually �sophisticated processing regions homologous to those in mammals.� These members of the Avian Brain Nomenclature Consortium believe that the old view of evolution in birds is no longer valid and that the old terminology--which implied that the avian brain was more primitive than the mammalian brain--has hindered scientific understanding.

"We believe that names have a powerful influence on the experiments we do and the way in which we think," wrote the authors of the new report. "Our current understanding of the avian brain requires a new terminology that better reflects these functions and the homologies between avian and mammalian brains."

What is most striking about this discovery is that scientists had previously been basing their ideas of the inferiority of bird brains not on objective evidence (could a monkey do this?) but on data that had confirmed their assumptions. Philosophers of science, though, wouldn�t be all that surprised since this is a micro-level example of a macro-level feature of theories � the limited explanatory value of empirical data.

[Note: This is the second week that I've struggled to finish my article on Dutch euthanasia before my Monday deadline. (Why can Kevin Keith drop 3,000 words into my comment section yet I struggle to write an essay of that same length?) Since I ran out of time to write any new material and since we�ve been discussing atheism I thought I�d recycle this piece on Pascal.]

Life is a gamble. Every day we are forced to make decisions based on imperfect knowledge, unsure of the outcomes of our choices. We do the best we can with what we have available, developing strategies based on experience, accumulated information, and calculations of probabilities. Traveling to Seattle in April? We pack an umbrella since its likely to rain. Meeting a co-worker for lunch? No reason to rush since she is never on time.

Almost every rational decision we make in life is a based on what we assume to be the expected outcome. We make our choices in order to maximize our gains and minimize our losses, attempting all the while to to boost our expected value of every specific outcome. In order to better understand this process, it might be useful to examine this decision-making process from a hypothetical example.

"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." -- Alice in Wonderland

Like Alice I am woefully unskilled in the art of believing impossible things. Even if I were to spend an entire hour a day I doubt I could develop the proficiency to believe even one impossible thing before breakfast, much less six. This lack of imagination is one of the primary reasons I could never be an atheist.

I�m not sure how they do it, how they aquire the skill, but they have an incomparable ability to believe impossible things. Take, for example, the following list of beliefs. Not all of them are shared by every atheist, but all who claim the label believe at least one of these items:

[Note: In keeping with this past Tuesday's theme of epistemology and basic beliefs, I've decided to repost this entry from earlier this year.]

After wasting several hours tonight debating issues of science, I was reminded of one of my favorite anecdotes. In his book A Brief History of Time, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking relates a story about a well-known scientist who gave a public lecture on astronomy:

[Note: This is the last recycled post of the Christmas holiday. Regular blogging resumes Tuesday, Dec. 28th]

Several years ago while I was stationed in Japan I had the opportunity to travel to Guam where I was able to visit a most peculiar landmark. Near the Talofofo River lay a small cave where Shoichi Yokoi, a Japanese soldier from WWII, hid after the U.S. forces occupied his country in 1945. When a pair of fisherman discovered him in 1972, he explained, �"We Japanese soldiers were told to prefer death to the disgrace of getting captured alive.� That singular, powerful belief motivated the Army Corporal to hide out for 27 years.

When the discussion of evolutionary theory and philosophical naturalism comes up in discussion, I always think of Yokoi. Like the old soldier, many atheists would prefer death rather than give up their belief in these twin theories. As Richard Dawkins once said in his now famous quip, �Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.� Unfortunately for Dawkins, the exact opposite is true. For contrary to what is commonly believed, modern evolutionary theory (macroevolution) and philosophical naturalism are quite clearly incompatible.

Such a statement will likely come as a surprise to those who believe that philosophical naturalism (which claims that either supernatural beings do not exist or if they do that their existence is irrelevant) is a foundation for macroevolution. But these two concepts have been soundly rebutted since 1994 when Notre Dame philosopher Alvin Plantinga published �Warrant and Proper Function.�

Though I�ve discussed Plantinga�s explanation in a prior post (Trusting the Monkey Mind: Naturalism and our Noetic Equipment), my summary can hardly substitute for the complete 58-page argument made in "Naturalism Defeated." Still, the gist of the paper can be outlined rather simply:

[Note: This is the second-to-last recycled post of the Christmas holiday. Regular blogging resumes Tuesday, Dec. 28th]

“With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has always been developed from the mind of 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? -- Charles Darwin

Darwin would have made a good philosopher. Unlike those who followed after him, he appears to have intuitively sensed that the theory of evolutionary naturalism undercut his ability to trust that we can form true beliefs and convictions. In order for us to have true beliefs we have to have properly functioning noetic equipment (brain, spinal cord, senses, etc. that operate in accordance with reality).

But can the evolutionary process produce reliable equipment? Notre Dame philosopher Alvin Plantinga thinks the answer is no. While his explanation is far too complex to be presented in a single post, I’ll try to outline the basics of his case in order to provide the gist of his argument.

[Note: This is the sixth post in the series, �C.S. Lewis�s Dangerous Idea: Physicalism and the Argument from Reason�]

According to premise #9, our processes of reasoning provide us with a systematically reliable way of understanding the world around us. But if physicalism is true then our faculties are the result of naturalistic evolution, a process that leads only to survival and not necessarily to the production of reliable belief-forming apparatus. This is a point I�ve previously dealt with at some length so I'll merely restate the form that this argument from reason takes:

1. If physicalism is true, then we should expect our faculties not to be reliable indicators of the nonapparent character of the world.
2. But our faculties do reliably reveal the nonapparant character of the world. (Presupposition of rational inference.)
3. Therefore, physicalism is false.

Since we believe that our faculties do reliably reveal the nonapparant character of the world, we have reason to reject physicalism.

[Note: This is the fifth post in the series, �C.S. Lewis�s Dangerous Idea: Physicalism and the Argument from Reason�]

According to premise #4, logical laws exist. These laws, such as the law of non-contradiction, are not, however, physical laws. In fact, these laws could apply equally well in a universe in which no physical objects existed. Logical laws are also not dependent on time and space. They are, therefore, nonphysical, nonspatial, and nontemporal. In a purely physicalist world, though, logical laws cannot exist.

Believing in the laws of logic leads us to our fourth argument from reason:

1. If naturalism is true, then logical laws do not exist or are irrelevant to the formation of beliefs.
2. But logical laws are relevant to the formation of beliefs. (Implied by the existence of rational inference.)
3. Therefore, physicalism is false.

Since we believe that logical laws are relevant to the formation of beliefs, we have a reason to reject physicalism.

[Note: This is the fourth post in the series, �C.S. Lewis�s Dangerous Idea: Physicalism and the Argument from Reason�]

One of the ways we can become convinced of the truth of a claim is to be rationally inferred through a deductive argument. Consider, for example, this famous syllogism:

1. All men are mortal.
2. Socrates is a man.
2. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

As we noted in the third premise of rational inference, human beings can be in the condition of accepting, rejecting, or suspending belief about propositions a process that follow when we read through the previous syllogism. We accept, reject, or suspend belief about each of the two premises and the conclusion. Each of these produces a "brain state" which we could label as brain state A (All men are mortal.), brain state B (Socrates is a man.) and brain state C (Therefore, Socrates is mortal.).

Accepting A causes us, if we are thinking rationally, to accept B which causes us to conclude that C is true. But if we accept physicalism we must believe that the content of each of these brain states is irrelevant to the causation. If all causation is physical, then the epiphenomenal mental state (if it even exists) is irrelevant to the act of causation. Again, we find this leads to a reductio ad absurdum and to our third argument from reason:

1. If naturalism is true, then no event can cause another event in virtue of its propositional content.
2. But some events do cause other events in virtue of their propositional content. (Implied by the existence of rational inference.)
2. Therefore physicalism if false.

Since we believe that the content of mental states is relevant to how it causes other mental states, we have a reason to reject physicalism.

[Note: This is the third post in the series, �C.S. Lewis�s Dangerous Idea: Physicalism and the Argument from Reason�]

According to the first premise of rational inference, thoughts and beliefs can be either true or false. But just as in the argument from intentionality, accepting that physicalism is true leads to absurd conclusions. For example, are some individual bits of matter �true� while others are �false?� Does matter collectively form to produce �true� and �false� beliefs and if so what happens if some bits are mixed in with others? Would a belief in physicalism be more true for someone who had more �true�-oriented bits of matter in his beliefs than someone who didn�t?

Following this reductio ad absurdum leads us to our second formulation for the argument from reason:

1. If physicalism is true, then no states of the person can be either true or false.
2. Some states of the person can be true or false. (Implied by the existence of rational inference.)
3. Therefore, physicalism is false.

Since we believe states of the person can be true or false, we have a reason to reject physicalism.

[Note: This is the second post in the series, �C.S. Lewis�s Dangerous Idea: Physicalism and the Argument from Reason�]

According to the first premise of rational inference, states of mind have a relation to the world we call intentionality; they have the capacity to represent the world as being a certain way. But if reality is at the fundamental level physical, then the meanings of words must be provided by matter and the physical laws of the universe. But as C.S. Lewis noted, �To talk of one bit of matter being true about another bit of matter seems to me to be nonsense."

Indeed, such nonsense requires us to either give up the claim that the physical world is all that exists or to give up on intentionality and rational inference which leads us to the first argument from reason:

1. If physicalism is true, then there is no fact of the matter as to what someone's thought or statement is about.
2. But there are facts about what someone�s thought is about (Implied by the existence of rational inference.)
3. Therefore, physicalism is false.

Since we believe that states of mind have a relation to the world, we have a reason to reject physicalism.

In his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, philosopher Daniel Dennett argues that the process of natural selection has explanatory relevance that reaches outside of the narrow field of evolutionary biology. For Dennettt, Darwinism is like a "universal acid� �- a corrosive that can eat through everything -- in that it can spread both downward from biology to the origins of life as well as upward, dissolving our current understanding of how such issues as consciousness and morality were developed.

In presenting his argument he compares two types of explanations, skyhooks and cranes. As philosopher Victor Reppert summarizes:

A skyhook is a mind-first explanation that in the last analysis is purposive and intentional. A crane, on the other hand, makes the explanation a feature of the system that in the last analysis is a product of the mindless system of physics and chemistry. For example, if we said that your heart is in the right place because God selected that place as the optimal location for a blood pump, that would employ a skyhook. If we were to say that creatures that didn�t have their hearts in the right place didn�t survive long enough to pass on their genes, that would be to employ a crane. Darwin�s dangerous idea, for Dennett, is that in our coming to understand the world we live in, cranes are the only acceptable kinds of explanations, and skyhooks are to be avoided.

This attempt to account for the world entirely in terms of cranes overlooks what Reppert calls �C.S. Lewis�s Dangerous Idea":

�We have to believe in free will,� said Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer when asked whether he believed in free will or determinism. �We�ve got no choice.� Singer�s quip highlights the conundrum we face in trying to decide which one to accept. While we might have the ability to freely choose to believe in determinism how would we know whether our choice to affirm free will was not determined?

A similar question arises when we consider the relationship between human free will and divine foreknowledge. If God knows everything before it happens then how can we we be responsible for the choices we make? If we accept that God can foreknow all that will ever happen, does that mean that free will is an illusion?

According to evangelical philosopher William Lane Craig, we are quite justified in believing that God has the ability to foreknow events without having to accept the conclusion that such knowledge causes us to make the choices we do. In order to arrive at that determination, though, we must first take a detour through the philosophical puzzle know as Newcomb�s Paradox.

In a recent article in About.com�s �Agnosticism/Atheism� blog, moderator Austin Cline wrote:

Have you read the news about Antony Flew abandoning atheism? This would be big news because Flew is one of the most prominent atheist philosophers of the 20th century. It would be big news, that is, if it were true. Evangelical Christians are all a twitter over the possibility, but as usual they are taking words out of context and misrepresenting them to suit their own religious prejudices.

Case in point is Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost:

Mr. Cline takes exception to my contention that Flew is �abandoning atheism for a Spinozian deism� and that his shift �lends an air of intellectual respectability to the blending of naturalism and deism, what I�ve previously dubbed �neism.�� To support his case, Cline refers to an article from 2001 in which Flew reaffirms his commitment to atheism:

Although I try to respect the opinions of those who disagree with my beliefs and arguments, I do have one prejudice that limits my ability to take my critics seriously. I have an admittedly low regard for the position held by some atheists that the assertion �God does not exist� requires no justification. Though this philosophical relic was once in vogue, it appears that some people didn�t get the memo that the claim has been deemed invalid.

What is even more maddening is that this idea is often accompanied by a claim that a disbelief in God is on par with a refusal to recognize the ontological status of the Tooth Fairy or some other presumptively mythical being.

A prime example is the comment left by BCB on a recent post:

That's right, I don't buy into the notion of God or the fairy or any of the crap...I became too sophisticated for when I was about five.

And a few comments later Rob Ryan added:

No faith is required to not believe something of which there is no evidence. It takes no faith to disbelieve in the tooth fairy, Joe. Your Bible god is similarly incredible to millions of Americans. Get over it. You are the one with the worldview that has a positive statement to defend, one it has never defended anywhere near adequately to assuage my doubts.

Several professed atheists (Larry Lord, Tom Girsch) have made similar claims in the past so I think it's important to clear us some of the confusion on this point. But before we begin, we must first define the meaning of the word �atheist.�

For over fifty years Antony Flew has been an important and influential representative of philosophical atheism. His approach, especially in God and Philosophy, is to disassemble the traditional arguments of natural theology -- design, cosmological, and moral proofs � before moving on to dispatch matters of revealed theology.

A cryptic letter to the journal Philosophy Now, though, hints that Flew may be conceding that there is more to natural theology than he had previously thought. The former Oxford don uses a critical evaluation of Richard Dawkins� work as an opportunity to point out �the limits of the negative theological implications of Darwin�s Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection.�

After recent discussions on the question of whether naturalism is self-refuting, I�ve developed a bizarre concern: I�m worried my neighbors might be zombies.

Don�t laugh. It�s certain possible. For the zombies I�m talking about aren�t the type found in horror movies like 28 Days Later or Dawn of the Dead and they don�t (at least as far as I know) eat people�s brains. These zombies, as they are defined in the field of philosophy, are beings that behave like us and may share our functional organization and even, perhaps, our neurophysiological makeup without having conscious experiences.

So defined, zombies are rather tricky. You can�t tell by looking at someone whether they are a normal sentient person or an unconscious creature. It also does no good to directly ask them. Some people who are not zombies will claim they are simply because they are eccentric. And some zombies will claim they are people even though they will deny the attributes necessary for consciousness.

There is, however, one reliable feature that might be useful. Zombies appear to have a peculiar attachment to what is often referred to as physicalism or materialism, the idea that everything that exists is, in some sense, physical and that nothing nonphysical exists at all. These odd creatures generally come in two basic forms:

Yesterday I walked to the moon. (Humor me for a few minutes.) Since I was able to take my laptop and had a wireless Internet connection, I was able to send an email to NASA. Though I?m unclear on the process they used, they were able to verify that I was, to their great surprise, reporting from the lunar surface. When they asked me how I got there I told them that I couldn't be completely certain, but I was pretty sure that I had walked to the moon.

As you can expect, they were rather skeptical. NASA didn't possess any data of a spacecraft leaving earth's atmosphere over the last 24-hour period. In fact, they didn't have any evidence that would provide a suitable explanation at all. But while they could not come to a decisive conclusion about how I got there, they were sure of one thing: I didn't walk to the moon.

The reason is rather obvious. Once we understand all the physical parameters and factors required (i.e., feet, a pathway, superhuman speed and stamina) we could reasonably conclude that it is simply not logically possible to walk from Dallas, Texas to the Sea of Tranquility. Excluding this possibility doesn't help us explain how I got up there but it does aid in understanding how I didn't.

The reason I bring up this rather absurd hypothetical example is because I believe it can help us better understand how to judge presuppositions and philosophical systems. While we may be at a loss to explain how certain events occur, we can certainly rule out any explanations that are logically impossible.

In a recent article in Philosophy Now, Australian mathematician Mike Adler provides some invaluable insights on the reasons why scientists and mathematicians �regard philosophy as somewhere between sociology and literary criticism, both ranking well below, say, kissing slugs on the list of healthy activities in which one might indulge before dinner�:

The scientist�s perception of philosophy is that all too much of it is a variation on the above theme, that a philosophical analysis is a sterile word game played in a state of mental muddle. When you ask of a scientist if we have free will, or only think we have, he would ask in turn: �What measurements or observations would, in your view, settle the matter?� If your reply is �Thinking deeply about it�, he will smile pityingly and pass you by. He would be unwilling to join you in playing what he sees as a rather silly game.

Adler claims that this rejection of what he calls �Platonism� originated with Sir Isaac Newton: