From a brief exchange I had with atheist philosopher Stephen Law on Facebook:
Law
This doesn't sound like your vision of apologetics, Jonathan - which is to follow reason wherever it leads: be it towards or away from faith.
Hays
Speaking for myself, I don't subscribe to following reason wherever it leads: be it towards or away from faith. Reason doesn't have the same status in naturalism that it has in Christianity. According to Christian theology, we're endowed with reason by a wise, benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent creator. According to naturalistic evolution, reason is a byproduct of a mindless process. So why suppose reason is trustworthy if it leads you away from the very basis for trusting in reason in the first place? That's a paradox of naturalism. If it's true, it can't be trusted–in which case it can't be trusted to be true.
There's a problem when atheists as well as some Christian apologists both treat reason in the abstract, as if the nature of reason is independent of your worldview. But reason isn't normative in naturalism. Reason can't be normative in naturalism. According to naturalistic evolution, human intelligence is the incidental product of an unintelligent process.
Christianity and naturalism have different backstories for reason. And that makes quite a difference for how we should regard reason. Indeed, eliminative naturalists dismiss mental states as folk psychology.
Edit or delete this
Law
No that's a poor argument run by Alvin Plantinga called the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. It doesn't work - even many theists reject it (e.g. Michael Bergmann). BTW, reason is potentially just as much a problem for theism because theism says: your reason can be trusted, but then reason the threatens to undermine theism. So that's the paradox of theism, then! Of course, you do generally follow wherever reason leads, except perhaps when it threatens your faith.
Hays
Sure about that?
For a more technical analysis:
Law
Yeh, I know. I have published academic papers on this stuff, particularly the versions aimed at showing naturalism is 'self-defeating' - which is your line. You can even still hear me discussing it with Plantinga in an episode of Unbelievable, I think. As I say, IMO the argument fails. And there are leading theists who agree with me.
Hays
And there are non-Christians who agree with me (see above).
Law
Yes we know. But don't go away with the impression you've got some sort of killer argument that deals with any atheist suggesting reason is a threat to theism, or that allows you to discount any such argument. You'd be kidding yourself.
Hays
I'm quite capable of dealing with atheists who allege that reason poses a threat to theism. I do that on a regular basis.
Law
BTW also don't assume atheists are naturalists - I am the former but not the latter (except on Plantinga's rather weird use of 'naturalism').
Hays
Well, as Paul Draper points out,
Many writers at least implicitly identify atheism with a positive metaphysical theory like naturalism or even materialism.
Likewise:
Many ontological naturalists thus adopt a physicalist attitude to mental, biological and other such “special” subject matters. They hold that there is nothing more to the mental, biological and social realms than arrangements of physical entities.In the final twentieth-century phase, the acceptance of the casual closure of the physical led to full-fledged physicalism. The causal closure thesis implied that, if mental and other special causes are to produce physical effects, they must themselves be physically constituted. It thus gave rise to the strong physicalist doctrine that anything that has physical effects must itself be physical.
Law
Less than 15% of prof philosophers even lean towards theism. Yet only 50% are 'naturalists. So that's fully a third of them that are neither. Including me. PhilPapers survey.
Hays
About that:
