Jason at the Sci Phi Show is hosting an interview he conducted recently with Alvin Plantinga. When asked how he managed that, his reply was simple: He emailed Dr Plantinga with the request, and Plantinga said yes. Who’da thought?
The interview is on the subject of Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism.
James
First of all congratulations on getting Dr Plantinga to speak on your podcast. I was fairly astonished however at the ease with which he assumes that consistent cogintive faculties are of no benefit to us in an evolutionary sense. I don’t know about him but the fact that I have consistent cognitive faculties allows me to communicate with other people in a way that makes sense to me and the other person. As social beings this is a HUGE benefit. And benefits are maximised through evolution. Perhaps there is something strange about Naturalism that I am unaware of that makes it incongruent with evolution but if the good Doctor has come to this conclusion simply because he thinks that coherency is not evolutionarily beneficial then he is surely mistaken. There must be something I am missing, a man of his intelligence could not possibly think this…
Glenn
Hey James, welcome.
Actually I don’t have a podcast. As indicated in my post, the interview is at the podcast of the good people (person) at the Sci Phi Show. In fact, while I have read this argument and heard him present it before, I have not as yet listened to the interview. If the subject was the argument as I am familiar with it, the main focus is on the probability of causal and survival compatible beliefs being true, and whether or not causal and untrue beliefs could be survival conducive. His argument is that they could be. The argument is not that true beliefs could not be also, but merely that given the number of false belief sets that might do the job just as well, the probability of us having faculties that produced true beliefs would be relatively low.
Matt Tucker
Seriously, isn’t it awesome that Jason just *emailed* *him* and got an interview! roffle