Plantinga's Norton Lectures at SBTS
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Notre Dame's Alvin Plantinga, one of the great philosophers of our time (Christian or non-Christian), recently delivered the 2007 Norton Lectures at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Here are the audio links:
- "Science and Religion: Why Does the Debate Continue?"
- "Divine Action in the World"
- Ph.D. Graduate Club luncheon
- “Evolution vs. Atheism”
posted by JT at Monday, October 29, 2007
8 Comments:
None of those links work
I was able to download them last weekend, and they're great. Thanks JT.
Not sure what happened to the links.. but just saying they worked when they got posted.
God bless! Romans 5:8
Looks like they're working now
Plantinga argues in the last talk that a naturalist cannot trust his own facilities. That might be true, but that is why methods like the scientific method exists — it takes something out of the mind in order to test if something is really predictable and testable (and thus, scientifically "true.").
So even if we doubt our facilities, the fact is, something ends up being testable. That will help us determine if our minds our reliable in their deductive abilities.
For instance, our minds tell us that every time we drop a large stone on earth under normal conditions, it will fall. We could doubt that it is true – our minds could be tricking us – but that is why we test it. And we find that every time we test it, it happens. So that would lead us, after thousands of years of testing and theorizing and philosophizing, that our faculties are not all that bad after all, – which allows us to put more trust in them to go to higher levels of thinking.
So in the end, I think the naturalist has every right to trust their mental faculties just as much as a theist. Both the theist and the atheist can be mentally tricked and lead astray, and both have explanations on why that can happen. And both recognize that and seek to minimize it through methods.
In the end, the theist believes that man is able to reason. So does the atheist. And the atheist believes the theist can reason, and the theist believes the atheist can reason. So it ends up they can start at the same place to begin building methods, which is why theists and atheists can both be scientists and come to the exact same conclusions when running the same test. (And why they are able to argue about it if they come to different conclusions!)
I couldn't get the links to launch on Nov. 1. Is there a trick to it? Thanks.
I uploaded them to my site in case anyone is still having trouble downloading them from SBTS:
Science and Religion: Why Does the Debate Continue?
Divine Action in the World
Ph.D. Graduate Club luncheon
Evolution vs. Atheism
I don't know if the last lecture included Q&A, but there was a very interesting exchange at the end of the lecture. Dr. Kurt Wise challenged Plantinga regarding his presentation of evolutionary science...and pushed him to admit that natural selection, correctly understood, would certainly include the possibility of naturalists who can trust their own reasoning faculties. Dr. Wise is diametrically opposed to any old earth theory (though he received his masters and doctorate at Harvard in paleontology under Dr. Stephen J. Gould,...world famous North American evolutionist...probably as influential as Dawkins).
Dr. Wise seemed to state that Plantinga misrepresented evolutionary theory/science and therefore was unsuccessful in his argument. A very interesting given that Dr. Wise rebuked Plantinga's argument as flawed on both philosophical and empirical grounds.
Plantinga responded with difficulty and simply restated his position phrasing it with symbolic logic (syllogistic shorthand).
At a certain point Dr. Wise waived Plantinga off in frustration and sat down unhappy with the exchange. This came as Plantinga replied, "No, what you are saying is..."
Dr. Wise, who joined the faculty at SBTS last year, strangely enough was not a part of the festivities that brought Dr. Plantinga to speak on evolution.
Could it be because Plantinga indicates acceptance of an old earth (accepting evolutionary science) whereas Dr. Wise is clearly opposed to this on what he sees as biblical and scientific grounds?
MOre on Dr. Wise here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Wise
And Richard Dawkins writes about him saying, ""we have it on the authority of a man who may well be creationism’s most highly qualified and most intelligent scientist that no evidence, no matter how overwhelming, no matter how all-embracing, no matter how devastatingly convincing, can ever make any difference."
See Dawkins article here:
"Sadly, an Honest Creationist"
http://www.scepsis.ru/eng/articles/id_2.php
Josh S. comes very close to making a very good point, which might correlate with the point Dr. Wise was making to Plantinga.
Kelly B.
Kelly B.
Do you think you could supply some reference to the exchange between Plantinga and Wise? I for one, have done a great deal of research on Plantinga's argument and would be rather impressed if someone found a rebuttal. Especially one which could be presented in the short period of time allowed in a Q&A context.
I am also curious as to why it has not been published given that such a rebuttal would be rather welcome to many, and much has been published on this very issue. Also, the only other references to the exchange I can find are from students attending the lecture who claim that contrary to Plantinga conceding that his argument fails when natural selection is correctly understood, actually state that Plantinga said he was not aware of any successful rebuttals to the argument and that "someone in the audience" stood up, complained and tried to talk over Plantinga rather than allowing him to respond, and then threw his hands up in frustration when Plantinga did attempt to respond and left. Doesn't sound like the decisive victory you paint here.
Also, you portrayed Plantinga as an advocate of evolutionary science, which is actually not true. Plantinga's evolutionary argument does seek to show a conflict between naturalism and evolution, but Plantinga has been an open critic of evolution.
Also, in response to John S (whose response you claim is similar to that of Dr. Wise):
Your objection misses the mark in that it fails to recognize the significance of unreliable cognitive faculties. Any verification of faculties, even through scientific method, presupposes the accuracy of those faculties. How else could one judge reliablility of their faculties, unless those faculties were reliable enough to make such a judgement? If Plantinga's argument is sound, then method has little to provide by way of support for naturalism. Afterall, those convictions by which we judge reliability would be just as much in question as any others.
If one considers the implications of Plantinga's argument, then there is a foundational problem between reliable faculties and naturalistic evolutionary origins of those faculties. To argue, then, from method to reliability would be much like trying to build a foundation starting at the roof.
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