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Is atheism compatible with belief in evolution?
Perhaps not.
Have a read of this extract from Alvin Plantinga’s entry on Religion and Science in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (dealt with at more length here):
In crafting our cognitive faculties, natural selection will favor cognitive faculties and processes that result in adaptive behavior; it cares not a whit about true belief (as such) or about cognitive faculties that reliably give rise to true belief. … What our minds are for (if anything) is not the production of true beliefs, but the production of adaptive behavior: that our species has survived and evolved at most guarantees that our behavior is adaptive; it does not guarantee or even make it likely that our belief-producing processes are for the most part reliable, or that our beliefs are for the most part true. That is because our behavior could perfectly well be adaptive, but our beliefs false as often as true. Darwin himself apparently worried about this question: “With me,” says Darwin, “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?” (Darwin 1887) …
Now naturalism entails that evolution, if it occurs, is indeed unguided. But then, so the suggestion goes, it is unlikely that our cognitive faculties are reliable, given the conjunction 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, one who believes that conjunction will have a defeater for the proposition that our faculties are reliable—but if that’s true, she will also have a defeater for any belief produced by her cognitive faculties—including, of course, the conjunction of naturalism with evolution. That conjunction is thus seen to be self-refuting. If so, however, this conjunction cannot rationally be accepted, in which case there is conflict between naturalism and evolution …
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about 1 year ago
‘But then, so the suggestion goes, it is unlikely that our cognitive faculties are reliable, given the conjunction of naturalism with the proposition that we and our cognitive faculties have come to be by way of natural selection winnowing random genetic variation.’
Unlikely?
You mean the chances of a species getting big brains is billions to one against?
We know that already. There have been billions of species.
So why is evolution defeated by a prediction of evolution being true?
Name a species and it is unlikely to win the lottery of life.
Homo sapiens have won the lottery of life.
And Plantinga’s claim that we have no reason to believe something if it is ‘unlikely’ is exactly like claiming lottery winners have no reason to believe they have won the lottery, even as they count their winnings, because the chances are very small that any named person will win the lottery.
Plantinga goes for the famous lottery fallacy.
For person 1 , it is unreasonable to believe he will win the lottery, as the chances are 14 millions to 1 against.
For person 2 , it is unreasonable to believe he will win the lottery, as the chances are 14 millions to 1 against.
For person 3 , it is unreasonable to believe he will win the lottery, as the chances are 14 millions to 1 against.
…..
For person 14 million , it is unreasonable to believe he will win the lottery, as the chances are 14 millions to 1 against.
So we have 14 million people, and for every single person it is
unreasonable to believe they will win the lottery, as it is 14 million to one against their numbers being chosen.
Therefore, it is unreasonable to believe anybody will win the lottery.
This is a well-known fallacy.
Plantinga, of course, teaches both that he has reliable cognitive faculties and that there exist demons highly motivated to attack his senses and reasoning and perfectly capable of doing so.
This is very contradictory, although I think Plantinga’s arguments often betray the malevolent effects of these demons upon his reasoning……
So Plantinga’s world view suffers from thevery problem his fallactious argument against naturalism tries to show.