Religion and Science (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

We basin concisely state Darwins discredit as follows. let R be the mesmerism that our cognitive faculties atomic number 18 trusty, N the proposition that reality is true and E the proposition that we and our cognitive faculties be possessed of germ to be by agency of the paradees to which contemporary evolutionary opening points us: what is the conditional probability of R on N E . I.e. Darwin fears it whitethorn be quite an low. Of course it is hardly un channelise innate woof that prompts the commove. If pictorial selection were guided and orchestrated by the idol of theism, for example, the worry would disappear; God would presumably employment the whole process to create creatures of the carriage he wanted, creatures in his own image, creatures with reliable cognitive faculties. So it is unguided evolution, and metaphysical whims that entail unguided evolution, that prompt this worry about the reliability of our cognitive faculties. this instant realn ess entails that evolution, if it occurs, is so unguided. But then, so the suggestion goes, it is unlikely that our cognitive faculties argon reliable, given the continuative of naturalism with the proposition that we and our cognitive faculties have come to be by way of natural selection winnowing random genetic variation. If so, whizz who believes that club give have a defeater for the proposition that our faculties are reliablebut if thats true, she will excessively have a defeater for any belief produced by her cognitive facultiesincluding, of course, the conjunction of naturalism with evolution. That conjunction is thusly seen to be self-refuting. If so, however, this conjunction cannot rationally be accepted, in which wooing in that location is participation amidst naturalism and evolution, and indeed between naturalism and science. We can state the line of merchandise schematically as follows: Anyone who accepts N E and sees that (1) is true has a defeater for R . Anyone who has a defeater for R has a defeater for any opposite belief she holds, including N E itself. Therefore. Anyone who accepts N E and sees that is true has a defeater for N E ; hence N E cant be rationally accepted. Of course this is truncated and merely a schematic stochastic variable of the argument; there is no place here for the infallible qualifications.