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Darwin's doubt or Plantinga's conviction? Some failures in Plantinga's attempt to debunk naturalistic evolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 July 2023

L. H. Marques Segundo Open the ORCID record for L. H. Marques Segundo [Opens in a new window]
L. H. Marques Segundo*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
*
Email: luizhelveciosegundo@gmail.com
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Abstract

Darwin's Doubt (DD) – a thesis according to which the probability of the human cognitive mechanism's reliability given non-guided evolution is low – is central to Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism and his suggestion that the adoption of guided evolution thesis is preferable from a theory choice point of view. In this article I'll argue that there are three fundamental failures in Plantinga's argument. First, I argue that Plantinga's argument for DD is question-begging. Second, I point out that this very same argument is not in accordance with the way the evolutionary scientists usually reason. And finally I argue that the replacement of non-guided by guided evolution violates some reasonable belief-revision procedures in the history of science.

Keywords

Darwin's doubtreliabilityevolution of cognitionnaturalistic evolutionguided evolution
Type
Original Article
Information
Religious Studies , First View , pp. 1 - 16
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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