Monday, October 20, 2008

Episode 23 Plantinga Schmantinga

By popular demand, the Doubtcasters present their critique of Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN). This celebrated argument attempts to demonstrate that natural selection, if unguided by god, could not produce beings with reliable cognitive faculties capable of discerning the truth. But is EAAN all its cracked up to be? Also on this episode: The Doubtcasters consider William Lane Craig's rebuttal to Euthyphro's Dilemma, answer listener e-mails, and discuss Bill Maher's new movie Religulous.
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1 comment:

RBH said...

As I remarked somewhere, I think in an email to you, the most succinct refutation of Plantinga's argument I know is that critters whose perceptual/cognitive apparatus tends to give them unreliable representations of (relevant aspects of) their reality tend to end up as lunch for critters whose apparatus gives them more veridical representations of reality. "Paul" may do fine with tigers, but over the long haul across situations, an unreliable cognitive apparatus is evolutionarily lethal.