I recently published my take on the award of the Templeton Prize to Alvin Plantinga, a “religious philosopher” (read: “theologian”) whose work consists of untenable arguments couched in unreadable prose.  Rupert Shortt, religion editor of the Times Literary Supplement (TLS), writes about it in a short piece, “Alvin Plantinga and the Templeton Prize“. Google adds that Shortt is “a former Visiting Fellow at Oxford University. His books include Benedict XVI (2005), Christianophobia: A Faith under Attack (2012) and Rowan’s Rule: The Biography of the Archbishop (2014)”. Reader Michael (see below) adds that Shortt studied under Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and Shortt’s writings (e.g., here) clearly show that he’s a believer and an apologist.

Although Shortt describes a bit of criticism I gave in Faith Versus Fact about Plantinga’s arguments , he’s clearly sympathetic to Plantinga’s claim that accepting God is a “properly basic belief” that needs no justification. Shortt doesn’t mention Plantinga’s belief that the “properly basic” God is the Christian god rather than Allah or Brahma, nor Plantinga’s idea (taken from Calvin) of the “sensus divinitatis” that God installed in us to enable us to sense him—and that that sensus is broken in atheists and Muslims. Finally, Shortt neglects Plantinga’s theodicy: that innocent people suffer because of Satan.

I’ll quote Shortt’s analysis, adding a few comments of my own.

Plantinga’s positive case for the existence of God is known as the evolutionary argument against naturalism. The basis of his case involves a distinction between adaptive behaviour and true beliefs. Evolution can explain the former, he thinks, but not the latter. His conclusion is that while no conflict exists between Christianity and science, there is a conflict between philosophical naturalism and science, because adherents of naturalism (including atheists) have no firm basis for believing that many of their statements genuinely map reality. The Darwinian view thus fatally undermines itself. If it is true, then the methods that support it are probably unreliable, meaning that we should not believe it . . .

In Faith Versus Fact (pp. 177-183), I argue that evolution can and would be expected to endow us with realistic beliefs about nature, but also that our senses and beliefs can be fooled by many features (indoctrination, optical illusions, “common sense”, and so on). Here’s what Shortt says about that:

In our conversation, I raised an objection expressed by some of Plantinga’s Christian critics, as well as by non-believers. The query centres on his assumption that the generation of reliable belief-producing mechanisms should not itself be part of evolutionary adaptation. This sort of reservation has also been voiced by Jerry Coyne in his recent book Faith Versus Fact: Why science and religion are incompatible. But whether or not one is fully convinced by Plantinga, he nevertheless succeeds in highlighting something disquieting about the naturalistic picture of our human predicament. Various scholars have noted that there is no systematic connection on a naturalistic world view between our possession of equipment that has turned out to be efficacious in the battle for survival, and our putative ability to track the truth in relation to our intellectual intuitions. The underlying point, as the philosopher John Cottingham urges, “is that it seems impossible for any philosopher to characterise our human situation with respect to the truth – the ways in which we have fallen short, the ways in which we are able to correct our mistakes – without implicitly assuming that we are indeed equipped to undertake the search for truth. And it is not clear that this assumption can be underwritten via the resources of evolutionary naturalism”.

If you know anything about evolution, the “evolutionary argument against naturalism” is a nonstarter. As I’ve said repeatedly, one cannot produce an a priori philosophical argument for why empirical observation, consensus, and reason—what I call “science construed broadly”—give us “true beliefs” (I prefer to call them “truths”). But we don’t need to. The reason we use such science is because it works. The theological method of revelation, dogma, scripture, and authority doesn’t work, as it’s provided no consensus on matters even as basic as the existence of God. This can be demonstrated by the difference in the efficacy of faith healing versus science-based medicine. We can make predictions based on science, but not on religious feelings. We can correct our mistakes using science, for that is what science is about, but we cannot correct our mistakes using religious belief. We cannot even approach truth using religious belief.

Shortt goes on:

In rejecting Plantinga’s arguments, Coyne stresses the many abilities that emerge as a by-product of evolution. Yes, he concedes, doing mathematics would not have enhanced the fitness of our pre-literate ancestors. But once the human brain had reached a certain level of complexity, it was already performing many tasks unconnected with evolution. Nor is this a mark of special pleading, Coyne adds. Crows can solve complex puzzles; lyrebirds can imitate chainsaws and car alarms. These will strike some as weak analogies, however, because Plantinga is talking about advanced abilities which float free from the world of contingency.

These are not weak analogies, for many animals can learn and some can reason—evolution, too, has bequeathed them with the ability to survive by forming what Plantinga calls “true beliefs” about the world. Certainly apes can do that very well, but they apparently lack the sensus divinitatis. Why? Yes, our reasoning is more complex, but is it not “true belief” when an antelope gets spooked when it sees or smells a lion? The canard of “advanced abilities” is irrelevant here.

Shortt continues:

It is important to be clear what Plantinga’s case does and doesn’t betoken in his eyes, let alone those of his opponents. As a Calvinist, he’d be the first to insist that reason alone cannot lead one to a living faith in God. Philosophers and theologians, however distinguished, can only take enquirers to the threshold of such faith. Getting beyond this point will involve living into a new way of thinking, not thinking into a new way of living. In other words, God is not be thought of primarily as an unmoved mover or first cause (despite being so, from a monotheistic standpoint), but rather as an intimate presence in the life of the believer responding to a gift from beyond his or her imagining.

What Shortt is saying here is that we must rely on our “internal feelings” to divine that there is indeed a god—the Christian god.  That is his “new way of thinking”, but it’s not new: it’s called “delusion” by some, “wish thinking” by others, and “confirmation bias” by still others. The plain truth is that “sensing an intimate presence in our lives” is no evidence that that presence exists at all, much less as the omnipotent, benevolent, and omniscient Abrahamic God.  All it shows is that you feel something.

And, by the way, what gives Shortt the authority to tell anyone how to conceive of God? The big advantage for him is to claim that, like Plantinga, believing in the existence of a divine being need not depend on evidence, but merely on our gut feelings. Well, isn’t that convenient? Sadly, what we feel inside has never been good evidence for the existence of what lies outside. That is what believers and religious philosophers obstinately refuse to see.

Reader Michael sent me his own take on the TLS piece, which I reproduce with his permission:

Bloody awful defence of Plantinga’s arguments by Rupert Shortt [Religion Editor at the TLS]. Shortt studied under Rowan Williams and advocates a ‘sophisticated’ and unfalsifiable view of a non-intervening God in his book God is No Thing: Coherent Christianity [a fluffy 96-page book I read in an hour for free in a Christian book shop last year].

An example of Shortt logic from the TLS article [apparently this is a common line among religious philosophers!]:

“…but Plantinga is bullish, pointing out, for example, that we take it wholly for granted that other minds exist apart from our own, even though this belief, while also “basic”, cannot be demonstrated beyond doubt. The same applies to belief in the past. We can play intellectual games suggesting that the world was created five minutes ago, along with all its ancient mountain ranges and so forth.”

What an absurd defence! If one wishes to take that line, then the endeavours of reasoning, philosophy, science or even getting up in the morning are futile! It is obvious that we must have something to stand on [first principles or axioms] that have to be taken on ‘faith’.

I think it is rank dishonesty to assign god the property of being ‘properly basic’, thus swerving around the need to show god is in the world/real.

h/t: Matthew Cobb