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This book is a long-awaited major statement by a pre-eminent analytic philosopher, Alvin Plantinga, on one of our biggest debates -- the compatibility of science and religion. The last twenty years has seen a cottage industry of books on this divide, but with little consensus emerging. Plantinga, as a top philosopher but also a proponent of the rationality of religious belief, has a unique contribution to make. His theme in this short book is that the conflict between science and theistic religion is actually superficial, and that at a deeper level they are in concord. Plantinga examines where this conflict is supposed to exist -- evolution, evolutionary psychology, analysis of scripture, scientific study of religion -- as well as claims by Dan Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Philip Kitcher that evolution and theistic belief cannot co-exist. Plantinga makes a case that their arguments are not only inconclusive but that the supposed conflicts themselves are superficial, due to the methodological naturalism used by science. On the other hand, science can actually offer support to theistic doctrines, and Plantinga uses the notion of biological and cosmological "fine-tuning" in support of this idea. Plantinga argues that we might think about arguments in science and religion in a new way -- as different forms of discourse that try to persuade people to look at questions from a perspective such that they can see that something is true. In this way, there is a deep and massive consonance between theism and the scientific enterprise.
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WHERE THE CONFLICT REALLY LIES
WHERE THE CONFLICT REALLY LIES Science, Religion, and Naturalism
Alvin Plantinga
Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2011 Oxford University Press Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Plantinga, Alvin. Where the conflict really lies : science, religion, and naturalism / Alvin Plantinga. p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-19-981209-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Religion and science. 2. Evolution (Biology)—Religious aspects— Christianity. 3. Naturalism—Religious aspects—Christianity. I. Title. BL240.3.P53 2011 231.7′65—dc22 2011002532
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
CONTENTS
Preface
PART I ALLEGED CONFLICT
1 Evolution and Christian Belief (1) I Preliminaries II Dawkins 2 Evolution and Christian Belief (2) I Dennett’s Argument II Draper’s Argument III Why Do People Doubt Evolution? IV Kitcher’s “Enlightenment Case” 3 Divine Action in the World: The Old Picture I The Problem II The Old Picture 4 The New Picture
I Quantum Mechanics II What is the Problem with “Intervention”? III What is Intervention? IV Intervention and Divine Action at the Quantum Level V A Couple of Other Alleged Conflicts PART II SUPERFICIAL CONFLICT
5 Evolutionary Psychology and Scripture Scholarship I Evolutionary Psychology II Evolutionary Psychology and Religion III