Help Needed with an argument against ToE

Okay, his argument would seem to go like this:(1) If evolution is correct, we shouldn't expect our brains to be perfect.(2) Therefore, if evolution is correct, we cannot completely trust our brains when they conclude the correctness of evolution.What he's missing here is that the intermediate conclusion that he draws from evolution, i.e. the imperfection of our brains, is in fact correct (as is usual with conclusions that can be drawn from evolution). Our brains are not perfect. People make mistakes. This is true whether it's a consequence of evolution or of God making us badly.Therefore, I offer the following rather simpler line of reasoning:(a) Our brains are not perfect.(b) Therefore, we cannot completely trust our brains when they conclude the correctness of anything at all.Evolution doesn't come into it, because premise (a) is not merely a logical consequence of accepting evolution, it is also an incontrovertible fact. And if this leads to (b), as it does, then this is not merely subversive of evolutionary conclusions, but of all conclusions, including creationist nonsense.---P.S: I believe that the argument originates with C. S. Lewis, if anyone can remember the reference and/or quote the passage for me, I'd be most grateful.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I note that Evidence is not on that list.

Yes, but Lewis thought of it first, that's why I said it "originates" with him.Do you know where it is in his oeuvre?---Islamic creationism is just a straight steal. So is Hindu creationism, except that they're Even Older Earth Than It Actually Is Creationists, and so, for example, they use the Paluxy tracks nonsense not to claim that dinosaurs are younger than scientists say, but that mankind is older.---Evolution and IslamI love the bit about abductive reasoning. OMG evolution is science!!! Who knew?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Now find an error in my counter-argument in Message #7.Of course every step of his argument is true, because our brains aren't perfect.Where he goes wrong is in trying to relate this to evolution in particular. The tendentious bit is saying: When what he should say is: That's where he messes up. Apart from that, he's merely noting that evolution successfully predicts the fact that our brains are not perfect. Score one for evolution, then.Do creationists claim that my brain is perfect and inerrant? If so, I have a little paradox for them, which is that I think creationism is crap.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Well, my epistemological standpoint already is that anything that can reasonably be described as "Philosophical Naturalism" is bunk, but I don't see how this follows from evolution. I'll have a look at the papers, thanks.

I've read Plantinga's talk. Well, these philosophers aren't so much, are they?Dear me, that was dumb.Here's the central silly bit. And here he's arrived at a reductio ad absurdum of his own argument. Because when we see a man running from a tiger, we do in fact conclude with a very high degree of certainty (and so would Plantinga) that he wishes to avoid the tiger, rather than dwelling on the absurd supposition that "he thinks the tiger is a large, friendly, cuddly pussycat and wants to pet it; but he also believes that the best way to pet it is to run away from it". The probability of any of Plantinga's hypothetical alternatives being true, combined, is not greater than 50%, it is utterly negligible.His speculation seems to be that one could survive, not by being reasonable, but by having delusions that cancel one another out. E.g. I see a tiger, I wish to pet it, I run away from it. I feel hungry, so I decide to kill myself by eating a cheese sandwich under the belief that cheese sandwiches are poisonous. When disease is rife, I wish to catch it, but I also believe that I'll maximize my chances of doing so by avoiding infected persons. And so forth. Yet a little introspection shows that this is not the case.And a little thought shows that the a priori odds of such a creature evolving are very low. What are the odds of a system of irrational beliefs resulting in rational behavior? They are slim, because there are infinitely many more ways of being irrational that are not pro-survival. Plantinga's speculation requires my delusions to be fine-tuned for survival. But how would such a system evolve?We may note that such a system of delusional belief would be "irreducibly complex", as the ID crowd say. If I have a desire to pet tigers but don't have the delusion that the best way to approach a tiger is to run away from it, I'm toast. It is hard to see how one can gradually arrive at such a system of pro-survival irrationality.In most cases, an increase in rationality is going to be pro-survival. Plantinga can imagine a belief system where this is not the case, but it's like a pin balanced on its point: it's an unstable equilibrium in the space of ideas, and is incredibly unlikely to arise as a result of natural causes.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

No, not really. His point seems to be that there are irrational systems of thought which are pro-survival, and so genes causing the formation of these irrational belief systems would be a trait favored by natural selection.I think we can grant him that; we can imagine someone thinking irrational thoughts such that his irrational beliefs "cancel out", as it were, with the net result that he behaves in a pro-survival way, and if such a system of thought existed, natural selection would make no distinction between this system and genuine rationality.The objection to Plantinga's argument is that, on a fitness landscape, the genetic traits leading to the formation of such a system of thought would be represented by an incredibly thin spire rising from the bottom of an incredibly deep valley; whereas rationality is a hill rising smoothly from a plain. Plantinga's speculations require people to be mad in just the right way; whereas rationality is a matter of degree and under almost every conceivable set of circumstances any increase in rationality is pro-survival.Hence the evolutionary expectation, contra Plantinga, is that pro-survival behavior is caused either by instinct (as you point out) or by rational thought; such a system as he postulates, where rational behavior springs from irrational thought, cannot evolve, even though we grant him that if it did, natural selection would smile upon it.In the words of the old joke: "You can't get there from here".Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

"If the book and my brain are both the work of the same Infinite God, whose fault is it that the book and my brain do not agree?" - Robert Ingersoll