It is unfair to Descartes calls when some seriously its call to the truth of God. In fact, only by assuming a moral God, and always equal to itself as "truth" and the search for truth is a priori capable of having a sense of promise and success. If this God is put aside, it is permissible to ask whether being deceived is not part of the conditions of life .
Friedrich Nietzsche's posthumous fragments
It is important little off the monkey is essentially not to go back.
Richard Wagner
It is important little off the monkey is essentially not to go back.
Richard Wagner
In this holiday season preceding Christmas and New Year's Day, it should consider the favorite game for fans of the debunking of morality and religion. A favorite target is Christianity. Already in 2008, our national debunkers, Daniel Baril, there was a small air layman wanting that " Christmas is nothing religious, no longer fir ( Le Devoir, Saturday, December 4, 2008).
In the City "liberal" in which we live, we must recognize that the Christmas decorations, with their Christian symbolism, or even Catholic, let more than one uncomfortable. Political correctness demands that one no longer wishes "Merry Christmas", but "happy holidays". The Christmas tree, under which our ancestors lived nursery houses the "holy family" is now banned from the city as being hopelessly "sectarian."
The debunkers of Christianity rejoice since, campaigning for a secular society, they feed on the current state of advanced decomposition of Christianity. In terms of ecological science, they are "decomposers " (or "scavengers").
Our decomposers, therefore, the religious appeal to the full range of science to achieve their end which is to eradicate any trace of religion in the public sphere to be a purely secular society.
Our National decomposer, Daniel Baril, former president of the Secular Movement in Quebec, is one of the leading campaigners for secularism. It is known in the Brights Movement . (1) The author did an essay published in 2006, The grand illusion. How natural selection has created the idea of God (Multimondes), where, as the title indicates, the author tries to show that religion is a social phenomenon that is explained by evolutionary biology: "... Religion appears [...] as a set of cultural norms and moral laws rooted in observable biological and maximize the chances of survival and reproduction of the individual . "(p. 41).
Explanation of religion that offers Baril type evolutionary in that it relies on the theory of natural selection of Darwin. Obviously, Darwin initially sought only to explain the origin of species. Much water has flowed under the bridge since then, and many researchers, waving the program of "naturalization of epistemology" put forward by Quine, attempted to bring the natural selection of cultural phenomena, such as religion. These researchers have announced the death of religion, but the weed is tough, and today, "God takes the best " as Baril said (title of Chapter 1). How to explain the phenomenon of religious belief that, despite the development of science since the Enlightenment, still seems to be still alive and ineradicable?
Daniel Baril explained. Religion, indeed, a fortiori, religious belief, has a fitness advantage to the environment, and similar to Durkheim, religion is "an expression shortened life collective whole" (p. 41 ). In sum, " religion is an epiphenomenon of our social legislation and collective . (P. 101-102)
Baril immediately hastens to reassure his fellow atheists and explaining that religion has a biological basis based on natural selection, does not mean that religious belief is true .
... if religious belief is an advantage and it promotes the survival of the individual, does this mean that religion is a good thing, even that God exists? Do not worry. The evolutionary approach adopted no support for this logic. There is no natural religion, but of the natural foundations of morality and religion. (P. 5)
As seen, the explanation of religious phenomena that offers Baril wants that religion is a kind of illusion veil doing, she invites us to believe in something "transcendent" illusion that hides its true source in its social function adaptively. In short, the believer is a victim without his knowledge a kind of blindness created entirely by biology to ensure its survival. Apparently, the mechanism Baril debunks the "make-believe."
naturalists In all his attempts to explain religion by something other than itself, Also wishing the reductionist thesis that religion reflects something other than yourself, there is this recurrent thesis according to which the religious belief is not false as illusory, chimerical, deceptive, etc. .
For Freud, for example, "[religious beliefs] are illusions, achieving the desires of the oldest, strongest, most pressing of mankind the secret of their strength is the strength those desires. "(2) Moreover, " the illusion is not necessarily wrong, it's impossible to say or inconsistent with reality . "writes the founder of psychoanalysis. The belief in God would provide, according to Freud, to meet vital needs and powerful security, affection, protection, God Father is the illusion that the believer invented to satisfy human needs visceral. However, we can not, Freud says, prove that religious beliefs are false, " We can no more refute that evidence. "But we can explain the mechanism which makes them illusions. This is exactly the same epistemological passed by Baril against of religious belief.
Basically Addresses Daniel Baril objection to religious belief is that it is not produced by properly functioning cognitive faculties aimed the truth as they would be deflected as it their normal frame, to ensure the group life. Baril wrote elsewhere:
Intentionality believers see in life shows that we perceive and understand our environment through mental faculties that have been selected to manage social relations. This distorting prism us to see the office where there is none and is the source of our intuitive hardly repressible anthropomorphism. (3)
In sum, according to Baril, our cognitive faculties we play tricks encouraging us has a life given to God, then God is not. He would go without saying that when someone believes in God's cognitive faculties are not functioning properly. Thus the belief in God would present no guarantee since it is the product of cognitive impairments which the normal purpose is to generate true beliefs .
Barrel uses a biological mechanism which necessarily produces illusory beliefs, that is to say, false. This, however, a gratuitous statement using the belief that God can not exist .
To say in effect that is true that God is not requires that our cognitive faculties are functioning properly. How, then, Baril can assure him that adheres to the theory of Darwinian evolution, its cognitive function correctly? The problem is that because human beliefs produced by natural selection does not cover the truth, but the adaptability and, therefore, the survival , point line.
" The brain is a machine to generate beliefs," says Professor James Alcock, a specialist in the psychology of belief at York University in Toronto. " The brain continues psychologist, has evolved to promote survival of the species, not to seek the truth." (4)
Darwin was the first to worry about the problem: evolution ensures she true beliefs? In a letter written to a friend, William Graham, July 3, 1881, a year before his death, we read:
For me, the horrid doubt always arises as to whether the beliefs Rights, which developed in the minds of lower animals are of any value or reliable. Who would trust the beliefs of a monkey, even if beliefs exist in his mind? (5)
In sum, if one adheres to the theory of Darwinian evolution, as Baril, then the belief that naturalism is true and, therefore, that God is not , n is not at all assured.
So, basically, the objection that the powerful American Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga, addressed to naturalism. (6) The conclusion of the objection Plantinga admits that whoever wants to naturalism, should the abandon it also admits Darwin's evolutionism. It therefore follows that naturalism "self-defeating" and therefore it can not be rationally accepted.
The alternative to the Christian philosopher is to believe that human cognitive faculties are the result of an evolutionary process governed by God so that their function ensures that these schools produce beliefs not only adaptive but true. In sum, in a reliability based epistemology which adheres Plantinga, religious belief is more reliable that of naturalism because it offers a guarantee that the other does not (7).
can, if you will, fun to debunk (or "break") the Christian religion (or another) by showing that it relies on mechanisms that illusion. However, as we have seen, the combination of the theory of evolution and naturalism on the drawer pulls. The followers of this game double-edged sword should think twice before continuing their business, start by answering the objections of powerful Plantinga. Of course, followers of Darwin's evolutionism to take this theory as the best that is based in science. Without being a supporter of creationism or intelligent design, it has raised serious objections against the theory of Darwinian evolution. I think in particular Australian philosopher, David Stone, who, in Darwinian Fairytales (1995) (striking another book which I will in a future post), had fun before his death to debunk what he should regarded as the "religion" of modern man, namely Darwinian evolutionism.'s company unbolting, as shown, is played by two. On that note, Merry Christmas !
NOTES
(1) This movement consists of individuals who adopt a posture "naturalist," that is to say free of supernatural or religious component, and the brights base their ethics and their conduct in a naturalistic conception of the universe. The serious problem facing the proponent of naturalism is precisely to know what "naturalism." See Normand Baillargeon Up there, there is nothing. Anthology of unbelief and freethinking , PUL, collection When philosophy is pop!, 2010, p. 49-53. See also my account of Bailey's book in this blog .
(2) Sigmund Freud, The Future an illusion, PUF, 1971, p. 43. Originally published in 1927.
(3) Daniel Baril, Darwin and immortality (the idea) of God, " Le Devoir, 28-29 April 2007. I emphasize "distorting prism".
(4) Quoted in Quebec Science , Noemi Mercier, "Why do you believe", April 2008, p. 22.
(5) Quoted in James Beilby . Naturalism Defeated? Essays on Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism , Cornell University Press, 2002, p.3.
(6) Plantinga's argument was published in 1991 in the journal Logos under the title "An Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism." It is mentioned in the book of Beilby cited in the previous note.
(7) See Plantiga Alvin, Warranted Christian Belief ,
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