Very interesting! I find that a lot of these sort of arguments for God emphasise a certian informal ‘it makes sense’ approach, where questioning our judgement on what makes sense and exploring why it’s there is probably the most meaningful approach. Some are more formalised, though: Plantinga’s, for instace, relies on a series of very explicit arguments with clearly defined premises, chains of logic and conclusion. But as far as I’ve ever been able to make out, these suffer from fairly stark fallacies, and I imagine most theists prefer the informal ones in any case.
It’s an interesting project, but worth bearing in mind that the most likely response (possibly after ‘evolutionary psychology is just so stories’, something which I sympathise with in several cases I’ve seen) is to come up with similar cognitive arguments for why we’re predisposed to believe in natural selection or a godless universe. The classics like ‘wanting to do whatever you want’ and ‘not being able to come to terms with nasty things in the world’ will loom large, but it might be worth someone looking at it from a more scientific point of view.
Even if analysing the psychological roots of a belief is seen as only necessary where it can’t be explained by the truth of said belief, I think you need to argue for that case and look at why people believe the truth, which isn’t always for strictly scientific reasons.
Very interesting! I find that a lot of these sort of arguments for God emphasise a certian informal ‘it makes sense’ approach, where questioning our judgement on what makes sense and exploring why it’s there is probably the most meaningful approach. Some are more formalised, though: Plantinga’s, for instace, relies on a series of very explicit arguments with clearly defined premises, chains of logic and conclusion. But as far as I’ve ever been able to make out, these suffer from fairly stark fallacies, and I imagine most theists prefer the informal ones in any case.
It’s an interesting project, but worth bearing in mind that the most likely response (possibly after ‘evolutionary psychology is just so stories’, something which I sympathise with in several cases I’ve seen) is to come up with similar cognitive arguments for why we’re predisposed to believe in natural selection or a godless universe. The classics like ‘wanting to do whatever you want’ and ‘not being able to come to terms with nasty things in the world’ will loom large, but it might be worth someone looking at it from a more scientific point of view.
Even if analysing the psychological roots of a belief is seen as only necessary where it can’t be explained by the truth of said belief, I think you need to argue for that case and look at why people believe the truth, which isn’t always for strictly scientific reasons.