Jeff one of the most powerful ways that atheists would attack religion is to use evolutionary psychology to show that some of the things that people used to assume was required by religion and by a divine creation such as morality or human uniqueness can be in fact explained through the evolutionary process do you think that evolutionary psychology undermines religion Mary Midgley has this funny comment she says in recent years we've seen the breakdown of a precarious truce between human scientists and evolutionary biologists where previously human scientists had agreed not to question the truth of evolutionary theory
so long as nobody attempted to make any serious use of it and you know just in the last several decades we've seen an explosion of work into morality the question of human uniqueness the evolution of religious cognition from evolutionary biology as a result in the development of new new empirical tools but also theoretical approaches and I think it does raise questions in in all these areas theologically salient questions I think some of the the deliverances are potentially challenging and some of them are potentially confirming or at least concordant with traditional religious belief okay let's understand
the issue of those categories so so let's take one area particular the evolutionary accounts of religious cognition and there there are several challenges that the critics of religions say these approaches raise and and actually the challenges depend on which particular theory you're looking at so one of the theories the dominant theories is the by product or spandrel theory that says that our dispositions toward belief in supernatural agents is an eight it's not just the cultural overlay but it's not an adaptation it's an a byproduct evolution is call it a spandrel of other cognitive dispositions that
are then are not a patient's so the Yale psychologist Paul bloom had an article in the Atlantic awhile ago called he's got an accident and he says that belief in God is the the result of a byproduct gone awry now the the problem there the reason I don't think that works his is demonstrating the Orionis of the byproduct so the fact that something is not been the target of natural selection it doesn't have anything to say about its whether it's if it's a cognitive disposition doesn't have anything to say necessarily about its fidelity to truth
so for example the capacity to do higher mathematics in the view of many biologists may be a byproduct but then that doesn't make the deliverances of mathematics questionable and on the other hand by the way some defenders of religion want to say that there'd be a difference between mathematics which certainly would be a byproduct of evolution and and a tendency or a sense to believe in God because if there is a God then God has will and intention and God would have made a an intentional effort to make that happen or not whereas mathematics is
is in art at least from a causative point of view yeah and actually from that point of view might you might even say if you start with the assumption of theism there's greater warrant to believe that these cognitive dispositions do but deliver beliefs that are warranted but my only point might was that the cognitive dispositions that are not adaptations there's no epistemic reason to to question their veracity and on the other hand cognitive dispositions that are adaptive may have systematic biases that deviate from truth so there's a fair amount of work for the placebo effect
or the generation of overconfidence in certain situations of conflict so my response to this first objection that products deliver beliefs that are unwarranted is that the adaptive or non adaptive status of a cognitive disposition in and of itself doesn't have any implications for warrant so if we compare the situation today understanding evolutionary psychology where you're saying it does not have an absolute disposition one way or another that though by itself moves it away from where we were previously where most theists would believe that God made an affirmative decision to put this in so now you
have ambiguity before you had certainty if you're a theist well I'm not sure that's I'm not sure that's true here's why first of all and this would be a different discussion but it's not there are a number of contending theories for how and why we would have innate dispositions in fact there isn't even a agreement about whether we have these innate dispositions so you know Richard Dawkins argues that religious belief is a virus that in infects us and that it may not be a reflection of how our minds and 8ly work right now I think
this is one of the most exciting areas of research and evolutionary biology and cognitive science but in a sense we have a an embarrassment of riches there are a variety of theories and not all of them are even usually consistent so it's a good sign it's a good sign I mean it's it it's a it's a it's a new area of research and as with as it's typical in science with new areas research the theoretical resources are not completely fully pruned by by data and yet you did your doctorate in evolutionary theory and you are
a believer so what's your conclusion woody where do you see it where do where do you see God's role because you believe in God in the process of evolution knowing all you do about evolutionary psychology well I I believe that as with gravity in the law of thermodynamics and evolutionary theory that God created a universe that is regulated by natural law that the outcomes in this process are not surprising to him and and we're here creatures on earth exist who have the capacities to to believe in him yeah I don't see a conflict there now
the question is whether the fact that we have the capacities to form religious beliefs subverts our warrant or for confidence in the truth in those movies and I don't think it does work because the situation of the dialogue Tate has try economic Liggett ations how many that's the best explanation I've heard recently well I mean why wouldn't an explanation for a disposition to religious beliefs that Bert warrant for truth in that belief two responses that I mean first of all superficially it face value that's no news to most pious mostly us at least in the
biblical tradition and certainly in the Christian tradition the writings of Paul for example believe that we're created with an innate disposition to believe in God Calvin called it the the census the vini taught us it's not an inerrant it's not immune to the overlays of culture but the fact that there are innate dispositions toward belief in the supernatural is completely concordant with the view of human nature that most theists have had now some people even take that to be a demonstration and try to do a natural theology based on that think that works but at
face value there's no conflict there is a deeper question here or though and the deeper question would be and this would be hold true for either religious or moral beliefs the the general challenge and it makes sense at face values if we have a causal account of a belief that somebody has that functions whether or not the belief is true then the belief may be true but the person holding it doesn't have any warrant or any justification for continuing to hold it Richard Joyce talks about a belief bill he says imagine somebody took a pill
that caused him to believe that Napoleon lost at Waterloo would you do which he did so the belief is true but if the person knows they took that pill they wouldn't be justified in continuing to believe it yeah now my response to that and he says that natural selection is a belief pill which means that because natural selection exists which everybody almost everybody accepts that means that if you believe in God you do not have warrant or you're not justified even if there may be a god you're not justified because of evolution that will stop
and and same with moral beliefs so so my response to that I mean some people say well yeah but that's that's true of all beliefs so now if natural selection is a belief killed then how plan again for example says then our warrant for believing in the deliverances of reason in science and evolution itself is supported unless there's a God whose structures the natural law it's an interesting argument I think there's some problems with it but my response would be to full first of all natural selection is not a belief bill at least in terms
of our current proposals we don't have one currently accepted account of how natural selection causes in this case not just general the generic capacity to believe but specific beliefs which would be necessary it's not that there aren't promising proposals it's that we suffer from an embarrassment of riches there are a lot of proposals right now so I want to say you know look me up when you get there first of all but but I think that the the challenge is real if if we get there secondly though even if we got there let's say we
had a selection of count in terms of natural selection Vinick that could explain proposed in terms of a causal genealogy specific beliefs in ways that were insensitive to the truth of those beliefs here and there I would want to say up there I'd want to say this reminds me of this story where a group of atheist scientist challenged God and said we can create life no problem no big deal out of inert matter and so they showed up and asked God for some dirt and you keep your dirt and God says oh no bring your
own dirt and so what I want to say to that is okay yes given the existence of a universe fine-tuned with the necessary preconditions for life given the fact that life emerges given the fact that there's an evolutionary trajectory that out of which creatures with minds emerge we might have an explanation for the disposition of belief in God but we don't have all those other Givens yet either to return to the belief pill let's say somebody did take the belief pill that caused them to believe that Napoleon lost at Waterloo but there were independent evidence
that the pill for napoleon's existence in exile that the contents of the pill contains certain herbs that were only growing at the spot of his exile during certain years they discovered journals of napoleon so if there are independent evidence that the pill itself were concocted by napoleon well then there might be warrant so even if we have an evolutionary account of the native dispositions toward religious belief that within the context of that theory doesn't involve the target of belief God in a causal account that in and of itself doesn't demonstrate that the system that gave
rise to creatures and evolutionary structures that make creatures and and mental cognitive creatures possible is completely insensitive to cause Olympics from God including the initial conditions
