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I was raised as one of Jehovah's Witnesses. However, I came to doubt my Witness beliefs, rejecting many of them, and the doctrinal autho...

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Watchtower Online Library

You can access the service here. It has recently been expanded to include all the publications that the stand-alone Windows program does (Watchtowers since 1950, Awake! and other materials since 1970).

Sunday, June 24, 2018

His Flesh Saw Not Corruption

His Flesh Saw Not Corruption
October 2nd, 2017
[Edited: January 12, 2018]
Acts 2:24-31 – God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. For David says concerning him [at Psalm 16:8-11], ‘I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; my flesh also will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’ 
Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.
Acts 13:35-37 - Therefore he says also in [Psalm 16:10], 'You will not let your Holy One see corruption.' For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption, but he whom God raised up did not see corruption. 
This plainly shows that the resurrection body of Christ is human and is the self-same physical body that he died in. For only if he rose up in it could it not see corruption. How do those who, like Witnesses, deny the humanity of Christ's resurrection handle this passage? Poorly, I think. All they can say is that it was not permitted to smell and to slowly waste away - why? Because, they say, God dissolved it himself. But, in fact, this only hastens the corruption process that the Holy Spirit promised that Christ would not see. Thus, t was the body that was put to death that was raised anew.

Sunday, June 3, 2018

Evolution in Service of God

Evolution in Service of God
December 19, 2017
[Slight Revisions June 2, 2018]

Evolution is a boogeyman to many, a foe that threatens faith in God or even belief in His existence. To many it just doesn't jibe with what the Genesis creation account teaches. However, I don't think it is as potent a threat as it is presented to be; its bark is worse than its bite. As to whether it is true, and as to what we should make of the Genesis account, these are secondary concerns relative to this fact. I mean, theism (and Christianity in particular) can survive evolution as such. This much should be obvious concerning the former: it is logically possible that God used evolution, at least in part, to create mankind.[1] And so, if He did, this hardly can count against His existence. True, it is a bit harder to reconcile evolution and Christianity, but given the truth of theism, and the evidence for Christ's ministry, death and resurrection, I maintain that we'd have good reason to suppose that somehow they can be harmonized.

In any event, this isn't my present concern. Instead, I want to defend the following proposition: if evolution is true, we'd have good reason to think that there is some intellectual agency (ultimately God) behind it, given the reliability of our cognitive faculties. Or, more modestly, materialism /  naturalism must be false, and to suppose it true is self-defeating.

It's been a while since I've read Alvin Plantinga's exposition of this argument (in, inter alia, Where the Conflict Really Lies) and I haven't finished Jim Slagle's The Epistemological Skyhook, so this presentation will not be as detailed as it could be. Perhaps I should just wait until after I read these and other works. However, I didn't, though, I intend to return to this subject in greater depth later.

This argument is of interest to me, for it shows still another way that theism gets the upper hand; from every imagined defeat it suffers, it sows the demise of its detractors. Before I get into the main focus of the essay, I want to elaborate on this claim a bit. Consider the problem of evil. One can argue for God's existence using a moral argument which takes as its basis the existence of evil. There would be no such thing as evil (or good) if God (as paradigm of Good) doesn't exist. There is evil and good. Therefore, God exists. To them that say that God is too hidden for Him to exist, we can point out that God's being hidden would be news to many. He might be hidden from you (or, you might have turned your back on him and closed your eyes to his works) but not from me or countless millions!). And, just as one can bypass evolutionary arguments against God's existence by appealing to the fine-tuning of the universe (see here), or to the existence of contingent or composite reality (as Feser does), one can appeal to evolution as an evidence that God exists (or, again, more modestly, that naturalism is false). Now, to the argument.

Supposing that evolution - taken to be the theory that all present species evolved from prior species according to random mutation and natural selection - is true, is it probable that we should have cognitive faculties that are generally reliable? The Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN) maintains that it isn't likely given naturalism. The implication being that, for us to have a belief in naturalistic evolution is just for us to have a reason to doubt our ability to form beliefs that correspond to reality, which is just a reason for us to doubt our belief in naturalistic evolution. Hence, naturalistic evolution ultimately turns out to be self-defeating.

As a syllogism, we can express this, as Plantinga (as interpreted by William Lane Craig) does:[2]
(P1) The probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable, given evolutionary naturalism, is low. 
(P2) Anyone who believes evolutionary naturalism and sees that (1) is true has a defeater for believing that our cognitive faculties are reliable. 
(P3) Anyone who has a defeater for the belief that his cognitive faculties are reliable has a defeater for any other belief that he has. 
(P4) If anyone who believes evolutionary naturalism thereby acquires a defeater for evolutionary naturalism, then evolutionary naturalism is self-defeating and cannot be rationally believed. 
(C1) Therefore, evolutionary naturalism cannot be rationally believed.
(By defeater what is meant is that one has a reason to not believe X.)

The crux of the matter is (P1). True, some say that even if our own cognitive faculties are not reliable, we are, as a species, or groups thereof, able to come to reliable beliefs, and hence, would dispute (P2). But this doesn't seem to work: if my cognitive faculties are that bad, I'd have reason to doubt that there are really any other people to begin with, or that they say what I think they say, or whatever. So this line of reasoning doesn't seem to even get off the ground. So, (P1) is what is at issue, for everything else follows from it or is uncontroversial in its own right. Why, then, think that naturalistic evolution implies that it is likely that our cognitive faculties are unreliable?

First, it is clear that evolution doesn't select for true beliefs (except, perhaps, in a derivative way). It selects for whatever makes a species better at persisting - survival of the fittest and all that. Now, 'beliefs that aid in the persistence of a species that holds them' is different than 'beliefs that are formed by generally reliable cognitive faculties'; the two concepts are not coextensive, even if, as a matter of fact, beliefs of the second kind often are often beliefs of the former, that is, even if well-formed beliefs are also beliefs that aid in the survival of the species that can form them. Evolution doesn't 'seek' truth, but that which aids the persistence of a species.

But this won't justify (P1) by itself. As said, the two - survival-aiding beliefs / cognitive faculties are sometimes the same as true beliefs / reliable cognitive faculties. (Our evidence for this is that our cognitive faculties seem to be pretty reliable and help us survive.) However, that reliable cognitive faculties are also survival-aiding cognitive faculties doesn't mean that naturalistic evolution doesn't face any threat. If there can be a large number of ways faulty beliefs formed by unreliable cognitive faculties can be functionally equivalent to (or, just as survival-aiding as) well-formed beliefs produced by reliable cognitive faculties, that gives us good reason to believe (P1). So, are there? Consider the following.

I live in a forest. Now, when I see fire, I recognize it as such and know that it can gravely wound me, if not also kill me. Hence, I know that if I want to live, I must flee. My cognitive faculties, which are capable of forming concepts and beliefs that correspond to the reality of the situation help me survive. 

You, also live in the same forest. When you see fire, you think that it is an army of demons, and believe that they want to eat your body and take your soul down to Hell and throw darts at it. You don't want this to happen, so you flee. Your cognitive faculties were not able to form beliefs that corresponded to the situation, yet they still aided your ability to survive as much as my well-formed beliefs and reliable cognitive faculties did.

We can imagine numerous other ways faulty beliefs and unreliable cognitive faculties could produce the same survival-advantageous behavior result as my well-formed beliefs and reliable cognitive faculties. Maybe I instead believe that the fire is the start signal for a 10 mile race I want to run, and thus run out of the forest. Maybe I believe it is my in-laws coming to visit, and hence, not wanting to see them, I run out of the forest. Maybe I think it is an invitation to go to breakfast, and, wanting waffles, I leave the forest. I could go on. Between these, evolution has no preference. They all result in the right behavior. Since there are more ways a belief could be false and yet survival-friendly than it could be true and survival-friendly, this should give us pause: perhaps (P1) is right.

Now, a naturalist might grant this much. It should give us pause - but only for a moment. It is one thing for a false belief formed by unreliable cognitive faculties to be just as survival-friendly as a true belief formed by reliable cognitive faculties, but that isn't to say that a species that possesses unreliable cognitive faculties is as well equipped for survival as if they possessed more reliable cognitive faculties. Unreliable cognitive faculties would produce mostly false beliefs, and many (if not most) of these are likely to be inimical to survival, even if not always. Thus, the survival value of faulty cognitive faculties for a species is less than the survival value of possessing more reliable cognitive faculties.

Now, what can the anti-naturalistic challenger say? Has he been defeated. I don't think so. What needs to be done is to demonstrate that it is plausible that there are belief schemes that are wrong and yet are functionally equivalent (survival-wise) as well-formed beliefs schemes. One way to do so is to give a somewhat detailed sketch of such a hypothetical belief system.

I believe Alvin Plantinga tries to show just that by giving one that piggy-backs off of our belief scheme. We believe that Earth revolves around the sun, that rain comes from clouds, that grass grows because of water, that cows can eat grass, that we can eat cows . . . . Now, imagine that there is a species that held beliefs that resembled ours save that they thought most things were really witches. They believe that the witch Earth revolves around the witch sun, that witch rain comes from their homes to have intercourse with the witches that make up the dirt to produce witch grass as offspring, which evil cows eat. These beliefs are all false, but it isn't obvious that this would make them behave in ways inimical to their survival as a species.

Some might object that, these are still truth-tracking, and so are not unreliable in a relevant sense. I'm not a fan of this objection. But perhaps we should try to imagine a less truth-tracking belief system that is as survival friendly as a well-formed belief system. Maybe I'll do so in the future.

The naturalist might be tempted to object that naturalistic evolution clearly did result in human beings with cognitive faculties that are capable of forming generally true beliefs, so the EAAN doesn't even make sense. But this just ignores the argument instead of refuting it. It doesn't do anything to make it likely that naturalistic evolution would produce reliable cognitive faculties in us. At most it is the bare assertion that it happened to, but this is perfectly consistent with the claim that it likely wouldn't have, which just is the basis for the EAAN.

Myself, I see no reason to suppose that reliable cognitive powers (or cognitive powers of any kind) could emerge on and a materialistic conception of reality. For one thing, the laws of physics would govern the mind in that case, and these are just different from the laws of logic. Why think that a mind that is governed by the laws of physics could arrive at logically valid conclusions? But now I'm slipping into another reason to reject naturalism. (A more fundamental argument, I think, and for that reason more persuasive; I'll develop it when I write on the philosophy of mind.)

In any event, the EAAN is interesting. It think that it can ultimately be shown to be to sound, an thus yet another powerful reason to reject naturalism. However, this requires further argumentation, which requires further research and argumentation on my part. Until I take the time to do this, we shall let the subject rest. Well, partly. I am interested in what you think of this argument, especially if you know more about it than I. Comment below.

[1] I think that our intellect - that aspect of the mind, that power of the soul - that is able to abstract, understand concept and reason formally (mathematically, logically) - is immaterial and can't be accounted for in a purely materialistic way. Hence, evolution, if true, can't be the full picture. But for now, let's ignore this and suppose that some kind of evolution is able to fully account for the appearance of human beings (given that there is a universe and life at the start of the process).

[2] Where the Conflict Really Lies, pp. 344-345; see this as well.

[3] I also think that a similar, if more modest, argument can be made. That is, we need only claim that it is considerably more likely that our cognitive faculties would be reliable if they are the creations of a Supreme Intellect. Say, it is only 60% likely that we have reliable cognitive faculties if naturalistic evolution is true, but 90% if a Supreme Intellect stands behind them. To point out that our cognitive faculties are reliable does nothing to undermine this argument; indeed, to refute the original EAAN doesn't necessarily undermine this more modest version of the argument.