Ironically, this points to a powerful argument against Christian belief in a number of ways.
1) Evolution and Christian failure. I grew up believing in creationism because that is what I was taught, according to the beginning of Genesis. But nowadays even Christians cannot deny the certainty of aspects of evolutionary theory, and Christian scholars like William Lane Craig even go so far as to say that Genesis 1-11 is "mytho history."
Why does this matter? Because Christians (in my tradition at least) were confidently wrong about evolution! If they were confidently wrong about evolution, then what else are they confidently wrong about? Christians and churches are not an infallible source of truth. The Holy Spirit is supposed to be a guide in truth, right? So what gives? Why are Christians, endowed with the Holy Spirit, so bad at reliably arriving at true beliefs?
This points to the more general point—one I credit to Graham Oppy—that Christians aren’t products of an evolutionary process designed by God to generate highly reliably true religious beliefs. How can we tell? Because of all the religious disagreement within Christianity! If God guided evolution so that humans would arrive with a strong sensus divinitatis, then why is there so little belief in the right God? Why is there so much disagreement over what God is? And at the very least, among Christians who are supposed to be products of a guided evolution aimed for truth AND endowed with the Holy Spirit who is meant to guide believers in truth, wouldn’t we expect to see a convergence onto a single denomination? Instead we find schisms, schisms, and more schisms—exactly what you would expect if naturalism were true.
2) If Christians admit that it’s likely we descended from ancestral species a hundred or so thousand years ago as a product of millions of years of evolution, then Christians admit that millions of years’ worth of starvation, predation, parasitism, and all manner of horrors were used by God to create us. Why? Why not create us in a better way?
3) Evolutionarily convenient beliefs (ECBs) are a problem for Christians too if evolution is true. If Christians admit that evolution is true, then they admit that they may believe in Christianity not because it’s true, but because religious belief is selected for. It is correct that we ought to be suspicious of ECBs, and that includes religious beliefs!
Indeed, thanks to evolution, naturalism has access to a beautifully simple theory that unites all religious belief under one explanation. Humans are religious for the following reasons such as the following:
a) Humans are fundamentally biological;
1) Evolution and Christian failure. I grew up believing in creationism because that is what I was taught, according to the beginning of Genesis. But nowadays even Christians cannot deny the certainty of aspects of evolutionary theory, and Christian scholars like William Lane Craig even go so far as to say that Genesis 1-11 is "mytho history."
Why does this matter? Because Christians (in my tradition at least) were confidently wrong about evolution! If they were confidently wrong about evolution, then what else are they confidently wrong about? Christians and churches are not an infallible source of truth. The Holy Spirit is supposed to be a guide in truth, right? So what gives? Why are Christians, endowed with the Holy Spirit, so bad at reliably arriving at true beliefs?
This points to the more general point—one I credit to Graham Oppy—that Christians aren’t products of an evolutionary process designed by God to generate highly reliably true religious beliefs. How can we tell? Because of all the religious disagreement within Christianity! If God guided evolution so that humans would arrive with a strong sensus divinitatis, then why is there so little belief in the right God? Why is there so much disagreement over what God is? And at the very least, among Christians who are supposed to be products of a guided evolution aimed for truth AND endowed with the Holy Spirit who is meant to guide believers in truth, wouldn’t we expect to see a convergence onto a single denomination? Instead we find schisms, schisms, and more schisms—exactly what you would expect if naturalism were true.
2) If Christians admit that it’s likely we descended from ancestral species a hundred or so thousand years ago as a product of millions of years of evolution, then Christians admit that millions of years’ worth of starvation, predation, parasitism, and all manner of horrors were used by God to create us. Why? Why not create us in a better way?
3) Evolutionarily convenient beliefs (ECBs) are a problem for Christians too if evolution is true. If Christians admit that evolution is true, then they admit that they may believe in Christianity not because it’s true, but because religious belief is selected for. It is correct that we ought to be suspicious of ECBs, and that includes religious beliefs!
Indeed, thanks to evolution, naturalism has access to a beautifully simple theory that unites all religious belief under one explanation. Humans are religious for the following reasons such as the following:
a) Humans are fundamentally biological;
b) So humans are fundamentally sexual;
c) So humans are fundamentally social;
d) Humans need resources to survive and obtaining those resources alone is difficult if not impossible in most cases, so for this reason too humans are fundamentally social;
e) So social success is a massively valuable commodity;
f) Religions provide social success in a number of ways, including:
g) Confidence leads to reproduction. So anything that threatens our confidence will be selected against. Ways religious belief wards off a loss of confidence in oneself and one’s future:
Not only is this theory plausible in its own right (and I’d say undeniably true at least in some respects), it explains all religions in a unified way.
If Christians go for this explanation to explain the existence of competing religions, but not their own, then they risk committing special pleading.
So Christians are motivated to reject this theory of religion and lose out on all its theoretical advantages to opt for something far more crude and ad hoc, like that other religions are caused by demons or by Molinism and God’s providence.
In my own personal journey, waking up to the fact that Christian beliefs were evolutionarily convenient was a major moment leading up to my loss of faith.
4) The argument from reason says that the naturalist has no reason for thinking that his beliefs aim toward truth, only survival.
The alleged advantage of the Christian view is that if God guided evolution then he could aim our beliefs toward survival and truth. But naturalists do not have access to this divine guidance, and so naturalists have no reason to think that their beliefs are formed by a reliable truth-preserving mechanism.
First, there is no such advantage of Christian belief for reasons mentioned. Second, evolution does NOT provide any tension with naturalism in this way.
Why not? Because
f1) A common worldview,
f2) A common way of speaking and thinking,
f3) Common rituals and social activities,
f4) A way to congregate and meet spouses and for one’s children to find future spouses,
f5) Motivations for helping the less fortunate,
f6) A favorable view of those less fortunate (this doesn’t always apply, as Christians will look down on those they view to be recipients of God’s judgment),
f7) A favorable view of human nature (Imago Dei, salvation, love of God for the world), warding off misanthropy,
f8) Emphasis on forgiveness, empathy, love, and other attitudes that help interpersonal relationships;
f2) A common way of speaking and thinking,
f3) Common rituals and social activities,
f4) A way to congregate and meet spouses and for one’s children to find future spouses,
f5) Motivations for helping the less fortunate,
f6) A favorable view of those less fortunate (this doesn’t always apply, as Christians will look down on those they view to be recipients of God’s judgment),
f7) A favorable view of human nature (Imago Dei, salvation, love of God for the world), warding off misanthropy,
f8) Emphasis on forgiveness, empathy, love, and other attitudes that help interpersonal relationships;
g1) God loves me, so I’m pretty great,
g2) God loves the world, so the world is worth fighting for,
g3) Great Commission — I have a higher purpose, smoothing over the common frustrations of life,
g4) Death is not the end — hope for the future prevents despair, depression, and pessimism,
g5) There is ultimate justice — God will judge and set the record straight. If this weren’t the case, then it might be overwhelming how unjust our world is, promoting misanthropy and pessimism,
g6) There are spiritual rewards for your struggling and perseverance. Without that promise, the pains of life might not seem worth it.
g7) God is watching over you and protecting you supernaturally — you will be successful. If instead you believe you could die at any moment for no reason, then you might feel anxious, paranoid, and dread the future.
g8) Giving up on life is not an option, as that would mean facing God’s wrath.
g2) God loves the world, so the world is worth fighting for,
g3) Great Commission — I have a higher purpose, smoothing over the common frustrations of life,
g4) Death is not the end — hope for the future prevents despair, depression, and pessimism,
g5) There is ultimate justice — God will judge and set the record straight. If this weren’t the case, then it might be overwhelming how unjust our world is, promoting misanthropy and pessimism,
g6) There are spiritual rewards for your struggling and perseverance. Without that promise, the pains of life might not seem worth it.
g7) God is watching over you and protecting you supernaturally — you will be successful. If instead you believe you could die at any moment for no reason, then you might feel anxious, paranoid, and dread the future.
g8) Giving up on life is not an option, as that would mean facing God’s wrath.
Not only is this theory plausible in its own right (and I’d say undeniably true at least in some respects), it explains all religions in a unified way.
If Christians go for this explanation to explain the existence of competing religions, but not their own, then they risk committing special pleading.
So Christians are motivated to reject this theory of religion and lose out on all its theoretical advantages to opt for something far more crude and ad hoc, like that other religions are caused by demons or by Molinism and God’s providence.
In my own personal journey, waking up to the fact that Christian beliefs were evolutionarily convenient was a major moment leading up to my loss of faith.
4) The argument from reason says that the naturalist has no reason for thinking that his beliefs aim toward truth, only survival.
The alleged advantage of the Christian view is that if God guided evolution then he could aim our beliefs toward survival and truth. But naturalists do not have access to this divine guidance, and so naturalists have no reason to think that their beliefs are formed by a reliable truth-preserving mechanism.
First, there is no such advantage of Christian belief for reasons mentioned. Second, evolution does NOT provide any tension with naturalism in this way.
Why not? Because
1) Accurate beliefs are selected for on a basic level (credit again to Graham Oppy for this point). If we didn’t have highly accurate beliefs about what is food and what is not, what is a predator and what is not, how to obtain the necessities of food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and so on, then we would have died off. Intelligence is required for these basically accurate beliefs, and so intelligence is selected for (and you could argue that humans in particular, due to their extreme dependence on socialization for survival, adapted a higher intelligence for language). Then, as the theory goes, once intelligence reaches a certain point, abstract thinking and critical thinking skills are unlocked.
So 2) with this comes self-evident beliefs. Because of my self-evident beliefs, I have certainty—direct sight—that my belief-forming processes are somewhat reliable at arriving at the truth, even abstract truths of logic, argument, and math. If they weren’t, then self-evident beliefs like that there are no married bachelors wouldn’t be possible.
But God and the resurrection of Jesus are not among those self-evident beliefs. So the starting point does not lie—cannot lie—with God and the heavy metaphysical commitments of any religion. A better starting point is with these self-evident beliefs, like: "The belief that none of our beliefs are reliably true cannot itself be reliably true." More basic principles of critical thinking—that’s where we start, and so trying to start with God and other religious commitments and from there build these basic building blocks of critical thinking is backwards.
There are many secular ECBs. Racism, tribalism, emotionally convenient beliefs, the ignoring of uncomfortable truths that might erode one’s confidence, and delusional levels of confidence are all selected for by evolution. All ECBs absolutely should be subjected to scrutiny, regardless if they are religious or not. ECBs can be perfectly rational, but only after having subjected them to the appropriate scrutiny independent reasons to believe in their truth were discovered.
To be an atheist, you don’t have to believe all atheists are right about all things all the time. Quite the contrary: an atheist can believe most atheists are dreadfully mistaken about a great many things! Christians are in the same boat. Catholics and Protestants believe the other’s side is mistaken despite being Christian.
But God and the resurrection of Jesus are not among those self-evident beliefs. So the starting point does not lie—cannot lie—with God and the heavy metaphysical commitments of any religion. A better starting point is with these self-evident beliefs, like: "The belief that none of our beliefs are reliably true cannot itself be reliably true." More basic principles of critical thinking—that’s where we start, and so trying to start with God and other religious commitments and from there build these basic building blocks of critical thinking is backwards.
There are many secular ECBs. Racism, tribalism, emotionally convenient beliefs, the ignoring of uncomfortable truths that might erode one’s confidence, and delusional levels of confidence are all selected for by evolution. All ECBs absolutely should be subjected to scrutiny, regardless if they are religious or not. ECBs can be perfectly rational, but only after having subjected them to the appropriate scrutiny independent reasons to believe in their truth were discovered.
To be an atheist, you don’t have to believe all atheists are right about all things all the time. Quite the contrary: an atheist can believe most atheists are dreadfully mistaken about a great many things! Christians are in the same boat. Catholics and Protestants believe the other’s side is mistaken despite being Christian.
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