Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (7 page)

No. Unlike Dawkins, Dennett at least quotes John Locke, who holds it impossible that “pure incogitative matter should produce a thinking intelligent being.” Locke believed it impossible in the broadly logical sense that mind should have arisen somehow from “incogitative matter.” Supposing, as he did, that matter and mind exhaust the possibilities for concrete beings, he believed it impossible that there should be minds now, but at some earlier time no minds; minds can be produced only by minds. Or by Mind. Locke and other theists
agree that mind is a primitive feature of the universe: God (who is part of the universe even if not part of the created universe) has never come into existence; he has always existed; and he has always had intentions, beliefs and aims. Indeed, many theists will add that this is not merely true; it is necessarily true. Contrary to Dennett’s suggestion, the neo-Darwinian scientific theory of evolution certainly hasn’t shown that Locke is wrong or that God does not exist necessarily; it hasn’t even shown that it is possible, in the broadly logical sense, that mind arise from “pure incogitative” matter. It hasn’t shown these things because it doesn’t so much as address these questions. Like other scientific theories, evolutionary theory does not pronounce on such questions as whether it is logically possible that minds should come to be in a universe which is originally mindless.

Neo-Darwinism hasn’t shown that Locke was wrong, and neither has Dennett. His response to Locke is to take Locke’s claim as implying that there can’t be robots that can actually think—a view, he says, that would “risk hoots of derision today.”
¹³
Well, perhaps in some quarters it would call forth hoots of derision; in others it will receive enthusiastic agreement, and in still others a respectful if uncommitted hearing. But in any event
Argumentum ad Derisionem
is hardly an approved argument form; it will never rank up there with, for example, modus ponens, or even the complex constructive dilemma.

So neither Dennett nor contemporary evolutionary theory shows that possibly, all of the features of our world, including mind, have been produced by unguided natural selection. But assume (contrary to fact, as I see it) that this is in fact possible in the broadly logical sense. If so, is it also
biologically
possible? Biological possibility is a vexed notion. Shall we say that a state of affairs is biologically possible if it is compatible with the biological laws? Or with the conjunction of biological law together with some earlier total state
of affairs? But
are
there specifically biological laws—that is, biological laws in addition to the laws of physics and chemistry? Or should we instead think (with Dawkins) of biological possibility as simply a matter of less than astronomical improbability? So that it is biologically possible that mind arise from pure incogitative matter if those possible worlds in which it
does
so arise occupy a not-too-negligible volume of logical space? Or if a large enough space is occupied by those worlds in which mind arises from purely incogitative matter and which are like the actual world up to some time
t
at which there are no minds?

No matter. Take biological possibility in any of these ways, and suppose that all of terrestrial life has indeed come to be by way of natural selection. It doesn’t follow that life has come to be by way of
unguided
natural selection, and it doesn’t even follow that it is
biologically possible
that life has come to be that way. For, of course, it is perfectly possible both that life has come to be by way of
guided
natural selection, and that it could not have come to be by way of
unguided
natural selection. It is perfectly possible that the process of natural selection has been guided and superintended by God, and that it could not have produced our living world without that guidance. Recall the Library of Life in the last chapter: it is perfectly possible that life has developed just as it specifies, that each of the changes it mentions has come to be by virtue of natural selection, and that God has guided and directed the entire process—and that without his guidance life could not have developed at all.
¹⁴
The truth of the theory of natural selection, therefore, doesn’t for a moment show that all of life has come to be by way of
unguided
natural selection, or even that
it is biologically possible that it has come to be that way. It is therefore a mistake to say with Dennett that “the theory of natural selection shows how every feature of the world
can
be the product of a blind, unforesightful, nonteleological, ultimately mechanical process of differential reproduction.”

As far back as Darwin’s day, of course, people have argued that various features of the living world—the
eye
has been a favorite example—could
not
have come about by unguided natural selection.
¹⁵
They have claimed either that this is impossible or that it is astronomically improbable. Dennett and other defenders of unguided natural selection try to
refute
these arguments; to show that they do not establish their conclusions. But even if they are successful, what they show is only that these arguments don’t succeed; in doing this they do
not
show that unguided evolution
could
have produced these features. If they are right, perhaps the thing to say is that we can’t show that unguided natural selection has not produced these wonders (including mind). Given certain assumptions, what the friends of unguided natural selection show (if they are successful) is that we don’t know that it is astronomically improbable that unguided natural selection produce all the variety of the living world. Those stories as to how various biological phenomena could have been produced by unguided natural selection could be possible in the sense that we don’t know that they are astronomically improbable.

Dennett’s claim was that Darwin’s dangerous idea is not merely possible, but
true
: that the entire living world
has
been produced by mindless natural selection. Why believe that? What Dennett has so far offered is no more than what Dawkins came up with:
given certain controversial assumptions about logical possibility (for example, that it is possible that mind come to be in a mindless universe), we don’t know that
Darwin’s dangerous idea is astronomically improbable
.
¹⁶
This argument—that it is not astronomically unlikely that all the variety of life came to be by way of unguided natural selection; therefore that is how it
did
come to be—is no stronger when Dennett gives it than when Dawkins gives it, and we’ve already seen how weak it is when Dawkins gives it. You’ve always thought Mother Teresa was a moral hero; someone wanders by and tells you that we don’t know that it’s not astronomically improbable that she was a complete hypocrite. Would you be impressed? So far, theism doesn’t seem much threatened by Darwin’s dangerous idea.

So much for Dennett’s first line of argument; but he also has a second. If there is no such person as God, then, setting aside a few unlikely possibilities, natural selection is unguided. Dennett’s second line of argument, therefore, is for the conclusion that there isn’t any such person as God, or at any rate it is irrational to think there is; theism can’t be accepted by someone who is thinking straight. How does he propose to argue this point? He repeats several times that believing in an “anthropomorphic” God is childish, or irrational, or anyway obsolete. What he calls an “anthropomorphic” God, furthermore, is precisely what traditional Christians believe in—a God who is a
person
, the sort of being who is capable of knowledge, who has aims and ends, and who can and in fact does act on what he knows in such a way as to try to accomplish those aims. And what, exactly, is the matter with theistic belief? Why does Dennett think such belief is childish or irrational (for informed adults)? As far as I can see, he proceeds as follows. First, he claims that the traditional theistic arguments—the ontological argument, the cosmological arguments, the
argument from (or better,
to
) design—don’t work. Next, he assumes that rational belief in God would require broadly scientific evidence and proposes or rather just assumes that there isn’t any other source of warrant or rationality for belief in God or for religious beliefs generally.

Dennett mentions only one of the theistic arguments, the design argument, and even there he ignores the work of Richard Swinburne, the preeminent contemporary exponent of the argument, who over a period of at least thirty years or so has produced a powerfully impressive, and highly developed version of this argument.
¹⁷
Now Dennett makes quite a show of being serious and forthright where others give in to conventional politeness: “I know it passes in polite company to let people have it both ways and under most circumstances I wholeheartedly cooperate with this benign arrangement. But we’re seriously trying to get at the truth here.”
¹⁸
If we
are
seriously trying to get at the truth, however, it might be good to consider or at least mention the most important contemporary work on the subject.

But suppose Swinburne’s arguments are indeed unsuccessful, and add that the same goes for all the other theistic arguments—for example, the moral argument as developed by George Mavrodes and Robert Adams, and the cosmological argument as developed by William Lane Craig, and all the rest.
¹⁹
Does it follow that one who believes in God is irrational, unjustified, going contrary to reason, or in some other way deserving of reprimand or abuse or
disapprobation? No. After all, one of the main lessons to be learned from the history of modern philosophy from Descartes through Hume is that there don’t seem to be good arguments for the existence of other minds or selves, or the past, or an external world and much else besides; nevertheless belief in other minds, the past, and an external world is presumably not irrational or in any other way below epistemic par.
²⁰

Are things different with belief in God? If so, why? What makes the difference? This topic—the question whether rational belief in God requires argument or “scientific evidence”—has been central in philosophy of religion for a long time. Dennett apparently thinks philosophical theologians, some of whom hold that scientific evidence is
not
required for rational religious belief, are thereby committed to flouting rational judgment. He addresses this topic in a truly remarkable passage:

The philosopher Ronald de Sousa once memorably described philosophical theology as “intellectual tennis without a net,” and I readily allow that I have indeed been assuming without comment or question up to now that the net of rational judgment was up. We can lower it if you really want to. It’s your serve. Whatever you serve, suppose I rudely return service as follows: “What you say implies that God is a ham sandwich wrapped in tinfoil. That’s not much of a God to worship!”
²¹

That’s a memorable description, all right, particularly if you call to mind the work of such classical philosophical theologians as Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and Jonathan Edwards, or such contemporary philosophical theologians as Robert Adams, William Alston,
Eleonore Stump, Richard Swinburne, Peter van Inwagen, and Nicholas Wolterstorff, all of whose work, in terms of intellectual rigor and cogency, compares very favorably with that of Dennett (or, for that matter, de Sousa). As a matter of fact this canard is also irrelevant; the question is about the epistemology of religious belief, and in particular whether rational theistic belief requires the presence of cogent theistic argument; it is not about the real or alleged intellectual vices of philosophical theologians.

But what prompts Dennett to bring up his miserable ham sandwich in the first place? What is his point? It’s not entirely easy to tell. The topic is the claim on the part of many Christians that
faith
is a source of knowledge or information about the world in addition to reason. Take reason to be the ensemble of such faculties or processes as perception, memory, rational intuition (the source of beliefs about, for example, elementary logic and arithmetic), induction, and the like. Is Dennett claiming that anyone who thinks there is a further source of knowledge or warranted belief in addition to reason would be carrying on as irrationally as Dennett would be if he launched that ham sandwich zinger? It seems so; a bit further down he says: “Think about whether you really want to abandon reason when reason is on your side.” Then follows a maudlin little tale about how you are sightseeing in a foreign land, your loved one is killed, and, at the trial, the judge is swayed more strongly by emotional testimonies (from the killer’s kinsmen) to the fine character of the accused than by the testimony of eyewitnesses who saw him commit the crime: that would be unreasonable and you wouldn’t like it, would you? He goes on:

Would you be willing to be operated on by a surgeon who tells you that whenever a little voice in him tells him to disregard his medical training he listens to the little voice? I know it passes in polite company to let people have it both ways…. if you think that this common but unspoken understanding about faith is
anything better than socially useful obfuscation to avoid mutual embarrassment and loss of face, then either you have seen much more deeply into this issue than any philosopher has (for none has come up with a good defense for this) or you are kidding yourself.
²²

I’m sorry to say this is about as bad as philosophy (well, apart from the blogosphere) gets; Christian charity, perhaps even good manners might require passing silently by the embarrassing spectacle, eyes averted. As Dennett says, however, we’re seriously trying to get at the truth here; the fact is Dennett’s way of carrying on is an insulting expression of disdain for those who do serious work in this area, and honesty requires that it be noted as such. (Or perhaps it shows where blind allegiance to ideology can lead.) The question is whether there is a source of rational religious belief going beyond perception, memory, a priori intuition, induction, et cetera. This question has been widely discussed and debated for the last forty years, ever since Dennett was in graduate school.
²³
He airily ignores this lively and long lasting research project; instead he just tells absurd stories. Is this because he is ignorant of that work? Or doesn’t understand it? Or can’t think of any decent arguments against it? Or has decided that the method of true philosophy is inane ridicule and burlesque rather than argument?
²⁴
No matter; whatever the reason, Dennett’s ventures into the epistemology of religious belief do not inspire confidence.