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What are the consequences of evolutionary theory for the epistemic standing of our beliefs? Evolutionary considerations can be used to either justify or debunk a variety of beliefs. This paper argues that evolutionary approaches to human cognition must at least allow for approximately reliable cognitive capacities. Approaches that portray human cognition as so deeply biased and deficient that no knowledge is possible are internally incoherent and self-defeating. As evolutionary theory offers the current best hope for a naturalistic epistemology, evolutionary approaches (...) |
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One of the contentious philosophical issues surrounding the cognitive science of religion (CSR) is whether well-confirmed CSR theories would debunk religious beliefs. These debates have been contentious in part because of criticisms of epistemic principles used in debunking arguments. In this paper I use Ernest Sosa’s respected theory of knowledge as fully apt belief—which avoids objections that have been leveled against sensitivity and safety principles often used in debunking arguments—to construct a plausible debunking argument for religious belief on the assumption (...) |
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Resumen Recientemente la ciencia cognitiva de la religión ha permitido desarrollar argumentos evolutivos desacreditadores, los cuales buscan poner en entredicho no solo la racionalidad sino la verdad del teísmo. Dado que hay dos formas de concebir la racionalidad y la justificación epistémicas, a saber, la internalista y la externalista, cabe preguntarse ¿de qué modo tales argumentos afectan al teísmo? El objetivo de este artículo es responder a esta cuestión mediante una reconstrucción y evaluación de tres argumentos evolutivos desacreditadores subproductistas contra (...) |
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According to The Debunking Argument, evidence from the cognitive science of religion suggests that it is epistemically inappropriate to persist in believing in the theistic God. In this paper, I focus on a reply to this argument according to which the evidence from cognitive science says nothing about the epistemic propriety of belief in the theistic God, since God may have chosen to create human beliefs in God by means of precisely the systems identified by cognitive scientists. I argue that (...) |
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Stephen Law has recently offered an argument against the rationality of certain religious beliefs that he calls the X-claim argument against religious beliefs. The argument purports to show that it is irrational to believe in the existence of extraordinary beings associated with religions. However, the X-claim argument is beset by certain ambiguities that, once resolved, leave the argument undifferentiated from two other common objections to the rationality of religious belief: the objection from religious diversity and the objection from unreliable sources. (...) |
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Problem one: why, if God designed the human mind, did it take so long for humans to develop theistic concepts and beliefs? Problem two: why would God use evolution to design the living world when the discovery of evolution would predictably contribute to so much nonbelief in God? Darwin was aware of such questions but failed to see their evidential significance for theism. This paper explores this significance. Problem one introduces something I call natural nonbelief, which is significant because it (...) |
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Whether or not it is coherent to place hope in a future life beyond the grave has become a central question in the larger debate about whether a materialist view of human persons can accommodate Christian belief. Hud Hudson defends a four-dimensional account of resurrection in order to avoid persistent difficulties experienced by three-dimensionalist animalism. I present two difficulties unique to Hudson’s view. The first problem of counterpart hope is a manifestation of a general weakness of four-dimensional views to accommodate (...) |
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This article has its origins in a 2013 proposal by the author that the concept of ‘spiritual care’ in clinical settings might fruitfully be grounded in the findings of the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR). In a recent paper, John Paley rejects the central arguments and asserts his conviction that a model for ‘spiritual care’ cannot be derived from the insights of evolutionary psychology. In this article, the author employs a modified form of Fichtean dialectic to examine the contrasting positions (...) |
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This paper is an invitation to reflect on the advisability of analysing philosophy from a naturalistic perspective. That is, from a perspective that considers philosophy as if it was one more cultural object, which can be studied using the tools that we have available to us today and that are provided by disciplines such as evolutionary psychology or anthropology oriented by a distinctly cognitivist approach. A central concept in the analysis is that of “intuitive ontology” – closely linked to intuitive (...) |
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“Divine hiddenness”, as the phrase suggests, refers, most fundamentally, to the hiddenness of God, i.e., the alleged fact that God is hidden, absent, silent. In religious literature, there is a long history of expressions of annoyance, anxiety, and despair over divine hiddenness, so understood. For example, ancient Hebrew texts lament God’s failure to show up in experience or to show proper regard for God’s people or some particular person, and two Christian Gospels portray Jesus, in his cry of dereliction on (...) |
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Recent work in the cognitive science of religion has challenged some of the explanatory assumptions of previous research in the field. Nonetheless, some of the practitioners of the new cognitive science of religion theorize in the same skeptical spirit as their predecessors and either imply or explicitly claim that their projects undermine the warrant of religious beliefs. In this article, I argue that these theories do no additional argumentative work when compared to previous attempts to debunk religious belief and that (...) |
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In this paper, I discuss what Cognitive Science of Religion is and what its implications are for theism and the veracity of religious belief. Findings in CSR, and its counterpart Evolutionary Psychology, aim to explain the origin of religious belief. Some critics of religion, however, brandish the findings of CSR in support of their agenda. Their arguments attempt to either argue against the truth of religion or the justification for religious belief. I will argue that neither of these two kinds (...) |
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