1. Per Plantinga, and some forms of natural selection, ceteris paribus, life selects for organisms that adapt towards survival cues, not for truth. Plantinga frames this as an argument against evolutionary naturalism. This is not false, but could be true in other cases than have nothing to do with theism.
2. The survival vs truth dichotomy is exaggerated, however, since there are many, if not most, factors that both satisfy survival and truth criteria. Bartering the correct number of bushels of strawberries for the correct quarter of cow ensures my survival because it involves food and mathematically falls within the going rate of strawberry-bushels-to-meat in the local market—both survival and (arithmetical) truth criteria are satisfied.
3. Additionally, in this bartering scenario, there is a runoff benefit of social stability because both sides of the transaction are gaining something, don’t feel as though they are being cheated, etc. This nudges the even more towards survival benefits than truth benefits.
4. The “meat” of the survival vs truth Venn diagram is biggest when we can confirm phenomena that are falsifiable, which favors first-hand sensory accounts over most other ways of gaining knowledge. I may make a habit of relieving myself in Swamp A instead of Swamp B because my parents told me there are hungry alligators in Swamp B. I definitely survive by gracing Swamp A with my unwanted matter, yet the truth of Swamp B’s alligatorness is undetermined until I begin to take frequent slashes into Swamp B and determine there are no alligators at all. I still survive and know a bit of truth, though the truth was irrelevant to my survival.
5. The “meat” gets skinnier and skinnier—the truth and survival protocols (diagram circles) separate more and more—as the epistemic certainty of an event goes down. News of civilian unrest a village over from Town A would more likely cause folks to prepare for possible conflict, though its likelihood of conflict spreading to Town A is not likely or impossible.
6. To continue with this analogy, those in Town A who are epistemically convinced that they are safe from a spreading conflict may “join in” in preparing for a defense on the border, since not doing so could cause internecine conflict in Town A. In such a case, survival cues can be met over truth cues at multiple levels.
7. However, adherence to truth cues can overcome survival cues, if the person holds to a certain truth (with its consequences) to such a degree that it acts as an epistemic defeater for survival. This is most notable in political and religious martyrdom. The saint or revolutionary holds his truth and its consequences strongly enough to maintain them through bodily harm. Thus, there can be some truths that can produce great enough sentiment to risk not just social ostracism but death. This is seen in a less dramatic degree in the conservative professor who has to keep his political beliefs hush-hush to avoid being targeted, or the atheist going to church with his highly-religious family on Sundays.
8. Truth, therefore, is less important to individual survival than survival cues—though that is tautological. In cases where interpersonal social bonds are more crucial to survival—probably more in societies where there is less labor-saving technology. Thus, we can see that beliefs of remote phenomena, like national politics, are more oriented with interpersonal agreement—”we vote party A in this town because party B is xyz and that’s not in our best interests”—even though party B is not xyz at all. The social bonds created in voting for part A and maligning party B are stronger than the bonds created in voting according to the truth.
9. This phenomena is likely more prevalent the further away the people and events in question are, and unrelated to the technological level the society enjoys, since the truth about the phenomena after a certain epistemic distance is unknowable. Example conclusion from this: 100% of any news report of a national political event or politician have nothing to truth but can be used a social bonding mechanism.
7 Comments
I am great at kids’ parties.
Yeah, I suppose you could work on making it less jargon-filled. I think the audience that would understand it as is would be less than 10% of random readers.
I can see that. This was really stream-of-consciousness; these points have been in my head for months and it kinda came out like this.
I need to read again to ascertain more, but I’m liking point 7. I should read more Plantinga; if it wasn’t for him, I might have never come across the hilarious term, “peeping Thomist.” Also, #bookJayforkidsparty2k17
#reasonableRates
🙂
I haven’t read too much of him, but Warranted Christian Belief was a big leap in my thought development. He maintains that religious belief is a-rational, and basic in the same way things like sense data or other axiomatic things are. It doesn’t need to rest on other beliefs, or as a conclusion in a logical proof, for it to be considered “legitimate” in a philosophical sense. That idea kinda butts heads with a lot of different folks.
Sounds like a good book, though a little different than I had suspected. I remember William Lane Craig saying that arguments alone can’t make someone come to Christ but that the Holy Spirit must be involved in that process. Plantinga’s approach sounds different, though neither seem to wager that Christian belief is entirely an intellectual affair, which is encouraging. Kind of seems to hit that sweet balance between intellect and mysticism, or at least, I’d call it sweet. 🙂
It looks like the A/C model is in that book … did you ever see that news clip where Alvin Plantinga’s air conditioning unit broke down? Pretty funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nDOxLh6AbQ
That video is pretty funny. They didn’t even put the “Dr.” in front of his name in the attribution graphic.
Plantinga does invoke Aquinas and Calvin a lot…some people say he abuses them, but those people tend to be purists who don’t like their idols tarnished.
Honestly, I wouldn’t say true Christian belief (to borrow from Plantinga) isn’t intellectual at all; how we personally express God’s demands on our lives might be intellectual, because we use the intellect as a toolkit to interact with the material world. It can be talked about intellectually, but that’s just communication, and philosophy is a certain language (a very technical language, in my opinion), but the faith itself precedes the intellect. Rationally, faith is already decided a priori, before the intellect is engaged, by the very nature of faith, because the intellect doesn’t have the correct tool to apprehend it. That goes for atheists as well. It’s a mistake, to put it lightly, to come at faith intellectually. Things may have been different before the fall, where our intellect existed in perfect concurrency with faith, whatever that looked like.
Not saying you’re necessary incorrect, but maybe I just want to clarify a little. 🙂