

Atheism as a Stealth Religion - tuxychandru
http://scienceblogs.com/evolution/2009/10/atheism_as_a_stealth_religion.php

======
shawndumas
"brains evolved by natural selection, their main purpose is to cause organisms
to behave adaptively in the real world--not to directly represent the real
world"

Sounds familiar: The following is from wikipedia
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_argument_against_n...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_argument_against_naturalism))

“[W]ith me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's
mind, which has been developed from the mind of the 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

Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism began with the
observation that our beliefs can only have evolutionary consequences if they
affect behaviour. Natural selection does not directly select for true beliefs,
but rather for advantageous behaviours. Therefore any belief we hold, being a
product of evolution, is as likely right as wrong.

Plantinga distinguished the various theories of mind-body interaction into
four jointly exhaustive categories:

1) Epiphenomenalism, where behaviour is not caused by beliefs: "if this way of
thinking is right, beliefs would be invisible to evolution" so the proposition
that our faculties are "reliable" would be unsupported.

2) Semantic epiphenomenalism, where beliefs have a causative link to behaviour
but not by virtue of their semantic content: Under this theory, a belief would
be some form of long-term neuronal event. However, on this view the
proposition that our faculties are "reliable" would be unsupported because the
semantic content of beliefs would be invisible to natural selection, and it is
semantic content that determines truth-value.

3) Beliefs are causally efficacious with respect to behaviour, but
maladaptive, in which case the proposition that our faculties are "reliable"
would be unsupported.

4) Beliefs are causally efficacious with respect to behaviour and also
adaptive, but they may still be false: Since behaviour is caused by both
belief and desire, and desire can lead to false belief, natural selection
would have no reason for selecting true but non-adaptive beliefs over false
but adaptive beliefs. Thus the proposition that our faculties are "reliable"
in this case would also be unsupported. Plantinga pointed out that innumerable
belief-desire pairs could account for a given behaviour; for example, that of
a prehistoric hominid fleeing a tiger:

Perhaps Prehistoric Paul very much likes the idea of being eaten, but when he
sees a tiger, always runs off looking for a better prospect, because he thinks
it unlikely the tiger he sees will eat him. This will get his body parts in
the right place so far as survival is concerned, without involving much by way
of true belief. [...] Or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a large, friendly,
cuddly pussycat and wants to pet it; but he also believes that the best way to
pet it is to run away from it. [...] Clearly there is any number of belief-
desire systems that equally fit a given bit of behaviour.

Thus, Plantinga argued, the probability that our minds are reliable under a
conjunction of philosophical naturalism and naturalistic evolution is
unsupported. Therefore, to assert that naturalistic evolution is true also
asserts that one has an insupportability of being right. This, Plantinga
argued, epistemically defeats the belief that naturalistic evolution is true
and that ascribing truth to naturalism and evolution is internally dubious or
inconsistent.

------
drKarl
Towards the end of the article it says: "I am also involved in the
establishment of evolutionary religious studies as an authentic scientific
discipline"

From that sentence I understand that he is in fact trying to combine creation
and evolutionary theory and call it a science. And to achieve that he must
attack atheism.

Calling atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.

~~~
tgsdysdt
And the people did rejoice, for the irony of this guy labelling atheism as a
stealth religion was not lost.

------
bediger
This seems like setting up a strawman version of atheism, and then logically
destroying the strawman as a method of apologetics.

I'm not buying it.

------
tgsdysdt
That'll be why atheism is not the final step in understanding the world and/or
your/our place in it. Next?

~~~
drKarl
For religious people, religion IS the final step in understanding the world.
That means that if you don't understand something or don't know something, you
explain that with religion and your god/gods and don't look for a better
explanation.

Many "misteries" explained by religion in ancient times are now explained by
science. Of course science does not yet answer every question, but keeps
asking, when religion cuts questions.

