5 Debunking Arguments against Theistic Belief
Hans Van Eyghen
Introduction
Most arguments against theistic belief argue on the metaphysical level.[1] They argue that one or more phenomena (e.g. evil, the hiddenness of God, etc.) are incompatible or very hard to reconcile with God’s existence (see Chapter 4). The arguments I discuss below, however, are epistemological arguments.[2] They do not conclude that God does not exist, but that belief in God is not rational or not justified. In other words, if one of these arguments is successful, then even if God does exist, it still would not be rational for us to believe that he does. As all debunking arguments do, the arguments I discuss below aim to show that religious belief is (often) based on bad evidence or bad grounds. The arguments I discuss refer to new scientific developments. The science can be taken to show that there is something fundamentally wrong with how theistic beliefs are formed.
Below, I first explain some key terms. In section 3, I explain the general pattern debunking arguments against theistic belief follow. In section 4, I discuss the science to which debunking arguments refer, i.e. Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR). In section 5, I discuss a number of ways existing debunking arguments give content to the general argument. I end with some possible replies in section 6 and a summary in section 7.
Key Terms
Some general key terms I will use below are:
- Belief-forming faculty (BFF): Any human mechanism or ability that gives rise to beliefs. Examples are visual perception or reasoning.
- Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR): The discipline that offers explanations of how and why humans form religious beliefs, have religious experiences or manifest religious behaviors in terms of human cognitive processes or evolutionary processes.
- Debunking argument: An argument that aims to undermine the rationality or credibility of a class of beliefs. It usually does so by showing that a class of beliefs is based on false evidence or is badly formed. Well-known examples of debunking arguments are arguments against conspiracy theories.
- Epistemic deficiency: Any quality of a belief indicating that the belief suffers from some defect. Examples are being not rational, being unjustified or being unsupported by evidence.
- Theistic belief: Belief about the existence or nature of God or gods.
The Pattern of Debunking Arguments
As we will see below, debunking arguments attack the epistemic status of theistic beliefs in a number of ways. But all of these arguments follow roughly the following pattern of claiming that human belief-forming faculties (BFFs) are prone to produce erroneous or false beliefs. The shared pattern is the following:
- (1) Science shows that theistic beliefs are formed by BFFs that are prone to error.
- (2) Beliefs formed by BFFs that are prone to error suffer from a serious epistemic deficiency.
- (3) Therefore theistic beliefs suffer from a serious epistemic deficiency.
I will discuss the science to which debunking arguments refer (in premise (1) above) in the next section. Here, I take a closer look at premise (2) and the conclusion (3).
All defenders of debunking arguments argue in some way that our BFFs are not properly related to reality or produce many false beliefs. A BFF that is not properly related to reality is called “insensitive.” A BFF that produces many false beliefs is called “unreliable.”
Jonathan Ichikawa and Matthias Steup define “sensitive belief” as follows:
S’s [a subject’s] belief that p is sensitive if and only if, if p were false, S would not believe that p. (Ichikawa and Steup 2018)
For example, my belief that the door to my office is open right now is sensitive because the door is in fact open and I can see that it is. If the door were not in fact open, but shut, then I would not believe it was open. Contrast this with, say, almost every parent’s belief that their child is the smartest in her class. Even though, for most of them, that isn’t true, their belief probably won’t change. Their beliefs are not sensitive to reality.
Some defenders of debunking arguments argue that BFFs that produce theistic beliefs are such that they would produce theistic beliefs whether those beliefs were true or not. BFFs for theistic belief are thus not sensitive to reality like proper BFFs should be, and the beliefs they produce are not sensitive. In their arguments, “sensitivity” is considered a property of BFFs rather than of beliefs.
A belief is unreliably formed if:
The process by means of which S forms a belief that p produces, on average, more false beliefs than true beliefs.[3]
Some debunking arguments state that BFFs that produce theistic beliefs produce a lot more false beliefs than true beliefs. Therefore, the BFFs are unreliable.
BFFs that are insensitive or unreliable are generally considered bad guides for truth.[4] As a result, the beliefs they produce are not in a good epistemic position. Those who offer debunking arguments disagree about exactly what they show, and how bad the result is for theistic beliefs. Some arguments conclude that theistic beliefs are debunked (shown to based on bad evidence). Others that they are unwarranted (meaning roughly, just lucky). Still others conclude that theistic beliefs should be held with less confidence. While defenders differ over how severe the impact of debunking arguments is (losing confidence is less severe than being debunked), they agree that the impact is serious. If successful, religious believers could not continue to carelessly judge their theistic beliefs as true.
The Debunking Science, Cognitive Science of Religion
Most recent debunking arguments refer to theories from Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR). CSR consists of a large number of rather different theories that probe the mental or cognitive mechanisms that produce theistic and other religious beliefs. They nonetheless converge on some claims. Two claims in particular are important for debunking arguments. They are:
- (i) BFFs for theistic belief were selected for by natural selection.
- (ii) BFFs for theistic belief are not mere transmitters of input but actively shape theistic beliefs.
If a particular CSR-theory accepts both of these claims, then it can be used as part of a debunking argument.
Let’s consider claim (i) first. Most CSR-theories agree that BFFs for theistic beliefs were transmitted as a response to adaptive challenges. Two camps can be distinguished. The first camp argues that theistic beliefs have adaptive value in themselves. A notable example is the Broad Supernatural Punishment Theory (Bering and Johnson 2005). Defenders of this view argue that believing in moralizing, punishing gods encouraged cooperation among individuals. Subjects who believe in a god who (a) cares about human social behavior and (b) punishes or rewards people in accordance with their behavior, are more likely to act cooperatively and less likely to take advantage of others’ work without contributing anything themselves. Since cooperation is hugely important for human survival, having theistic belief would be an evolutionary advantage.
The second camp argues that theistic beliefs do not have adaptive value in themselves. Instead, they evolved as a by-product of other adaptive traits. For example, Stewart Guthrie argues that humans evolved a hypersensitivity towards detecting agency (Guthrie 1993). For most of human history, it was safe to be on guard for predators or other humans. Because predators posed a great threat, subjects who quickly jump to the conclusion that an agent is out there will have better odds of survival than subjects who do not. Subjects who jump to the conclusion that a snake is out there based on very limited evidence, like a curly branch that vaguely resemble a snake, will often jump in the air for no reason. They are, however, far less likely to miss an actual snake than subjects who are not as easily triggered. Missing one snake is all it takes to die and not be able to transmit one’s genes. For this reason, natural selection would have favored people who are hypersensitive over people who are not. Hypersensitivity for agents would in turn have favored theistic beliefs. People who frequently have hunches that some agent is around (because of their adaptive hypersensitive agency detection) could easily grow to believe that invisible agents are around. This in turn can lead to belief in spirits and gods. This tendency towards forming beliefs in spirits and gods is itself not evolutionarily beneficial, but evolved along with a hypersensitivity for agents.
Another example of a by-product theory sees theistic beliefs as a by-product of “mind-reading” (Bering 2002). Many psychologists argue that humans cannot directly see mental states in others. Instead, they make hypotheses about what someone else might be thinking or feeling based on her external behavior and facial expressions as evidence. These hypotheses can be revised or expanded if necessary.[5] Being able to build hypotheses about other people’s mental states is itself adaptive. It allows people to preempt human attacks and to select partners for cooperation. Bering argues that “mind-reading” of this kind is so important for humans that it spills over into other domains. Humans also regard non-human behavior or phenomena as evidence for mental states. People are prone to see meaningful events, like a natural disaster or the birth of a child, as evidence for a supernatural mind. Bering thus argues that theistic beliefs are formed as a by-product of ordinary mind-reading. While ordinary mind-reading is adaptive, applying mind-reading to things and events that are in fact inanimate is not. If natural selection selects for minds capable of mind-reading, it will, however, also easily select for minds that apply mind-reading to things and events too.
In both cases—whether theistic beliefs are an adaptation or a by-product—BFFs for theistic beliefs are the way they are because of selective pressures. In one case, natural selection selected for BFFs that produce theistic beliefs because they served an adaptive purpose themselves. In the other, natural selection selected for some other adaptive trait and BFFs for theistic beliefs arose as its by-product.
Next, claim (ii) is (almost) universally accepted by CSR-theorists. BFFs for theistic beliefs would be triggered by sensory input and actively build a representation of what that input could be. We already saw that on Guthrie’s theory subjects would sometimes process input like noises, patterns and movement as caused by an invisible agent. On Bering’s theory, meaningful events are processed as signs of a supernatural mind. Much of the information that the representation (i.e. of an invisible agent or a supernatural mind) contains is not given in the sensory input, but is added by the operations of the BFF.
Varieties of Error-Proneness
We now have a general pattern for debunking arguments and some grasp of the science to which they refer. Debunkers differ considerably in how they argue for premise (1), the claim that theistic beliefs are formed by BFFs that are error-prone. In this section, I discuss 3 ways in which they argue for this claim. The first (evolutionary debunking) argues that BFFs for theistic belief are insensitive to reality. The second and third (false beliefs and misattribution) argue that they are unreliable.
Evolutionary Debunking
A first way of arguing for premise (1) draws on claim (i) above.[6] Debunkers argue that natural selection would have selected for BFFs that produce theistic beliefs whether they produced true beliefs or not and are therefore insensitive. This is the case because theistic beliefs evolved as a response to an adaptive problem that was unrelated to truth.
Proponents of evolutionary debunking arguments note that natural selection above all selects for fitness and not for having true beliefs. For BFFs, this means that they are selected for because the beliefs they produce increase a subject’s odds of survival or reproduction. This does not mean that having true beliefs is irrelevant to natural selection. Having true beliefs can be selected for if it gives an evolutionary advantage. For example, subjects with the true belief that humans cannot walk on water have better odds at survival than subjects with the belief that they can. This logic applies to most of our common sense beliefs because having (approximately) true common sense beliefs helps humans to better navigate their environments. Being able to better navigate one’s environment increases one’s odds of survival. In this way, having (approximately) true common sense beliefs is an evolutionary advantage.
According to proponents of evolutionary debunking arguments, having (approximately) true theistic beliefs does not increase one’s odds of survival. Most CSR-theories claim that BFFs for theistic beliefs were selected for because of other reasons than truth. On some theories they were selected for because they aided cooperation (see section 3). If the theory is true, natural selection would have selected for BFFs for theistic belief whether they were true or not. This suffices to show that BFFs for theistic belief are not sensitive to truth and hence are prone to error.
A similar claim can be made if by-product theories are taken into account. Here, BFFs for theistic beliefs arose as a by-product of another adaptive trait. Natural selection arguably would have selected for this adaptive trait regardless of whether its by-product, i.e. BFFs for theistic beliefs, were aimed at truth or not. Therefore, if a by-product theory is true, BFFs for theistic beliefs are insensitive to reality as well. For a response to this debunking claim see section 6.2.
False Belief Debunking
A second way to argue for premise (1) is by arguing that BFFs for theistic beliefs produce many false beliefs. Because they do so, they have proven unreliable guides to truth. I discuss two ways to argue for this claim.[7]
The first way argues that BFFs for theistic beliefs produce many false beliefs from different perspectives. Defenders of this version note that BFFs for theistic beliefs produce both monotheistic and polytheistic beliefs. For most of human history, polytheistic beliefs were dominant.[8] All religions of the ancient Near East, ancient Rome, ancient India and ancient Mesoamerica had a large pantheon of gods. With the rise of Abrahamic religions, monotheism grew dominant. Today most religious believers adhere to a monotheist religion (Hackett, et al. 2012).
Monotheists believe that there is only one god. Polytheists believe that there are multiple gods. Naturalists believe that only natural phenomena exist and nothing supernatural like gods do. So, from the perspective of monotheism, the polytheistic beliefs are judged as false. From a polytheist perspective, all monotheistic beliefs are judged as false. From a naturalistic perspective, both monotheistic and polytheistic beliefs are judged as false. Therefore, everyone (monotheists, polytheists and naturalists alike) should judge that BFFs for theistic beliefs produce many false theistic beliefs and are therefore unreliable.
A second way need not take any perspective (religious or naturalistic). By noting that they produce both monotheistic and polytheistic beliefs, it is clear that BFFs for theistic beliefs produce mutually incompatible beliefs. If monotheistic beliefs are true, polytheistic beliefs are false and vice versa. Since among mutually incompatible beliefs, at most one can be true, a BFF that produces many mutually incompatible beliefs will produce many false beliefs. Therefore it should be judged unreliable as well. For a response against both false gods arguments, see section 6.3.
Misattribution Debunking
A third argument for premise (1) draws on claim (ii). Many theories argue that BFFs actively shape how input is registered when they produce theistic beliefs. This argument then adds the claim that the input is registered wrongly. In particular, the input on which BFFs for theistic beliefs operate would be natural but BFFs for theistic beliefs mistakenly register it as supernatural.[9]
Defenders of misattribution arguments sometimes refer to Stewart Guthrie’s theory of hypersensitive agency detection (see section 3). Guthrie unambiguously claims that detection of invisible agents results from false positives. False positives (sometimes called “type 1 errors”) are errors in data reporting when a test wrongly indicates the presence of something when it is in fact not present. Well-known examples are found in medical screening. For example, a positive result on a mammography test means that a patient roughly has a 10% chance of breast cancer. This implies that 9 out of 10 patients with positive results do not have breast cancer. Their positive results are false positives. According to Guthrie, theistic beliefs are formed when subjects identify vague patterns or noises as the activity of an invisible agent. He claims that these patterns or noises are in fact caused by natural phenomena like wind or erosion. Because subjects are highly sensitive for cues of agency, they mistakenly regard the patterns or noises as caused by an invisible, supernatural agent.
A BFF that misidentifies input is clearly unreliable. It produces an inaccurate representation of reality and thereby produces false beliefs. Theistic beliefs therefore stem from wrongful representations of reality. If BFFs for theistic beliefs suffer from this defect, they not only produce a lot of false beliefs, they produce nothing but false beliefs. This shows that BFFs for theistic belief are vastly unreliable. See section 6.4 for a response against this argument.
Questions to Consider
- Should truth always have a role in the evolution of BFF’s for them to be reliable? Why?
- Can one sometimes rely on a BFF that produces many false beliefs? Why?
- When is a subject (or her BFF’s) misidentifying input?
Replies
A number of replies have been stated against debunking arguments. We can distinguish two broad strategies.[10] One strategy more or less accepts the debunking argument and its conclusion but adds that theistic beliefs can regain a positive epistemic status by adding additional reasons. The second strategy does not accept the debunking arguments and argues that the case for insensitivity or unreliability is not sufficiently strong.
Additional Reasons
A response in terms of additional reasons is the most popular response. Jonathan Jong and Aku Visala argue that debunking arguments conflate the context of discovery with the context of justification.[11] The context of discovery pertains to how a subject comes to hold a belief (by means of BFFs), and the context of justification pertains to how a subject justifies her beliefs (by means of evidence or reasons). Whether theistic beliefs merit a positive or negative epistemic status hinges largely on how they fare in the context of justification, according to Jong and Visala. They add that an explanation of theistic belief that only takes the way it is formed (by a BFF) into account does not do justice to the role reasons play. Therefore, BFFs as discussed by CSR-theories do not fully explain theistic belief (Jong and Visala 2014).
As examples of additional reasons, Jong and Visala refer to arguments from natural theology like the fine-tuning argument (see Chapter 2).[12] They, however, concede that their response does not aid all theistic beliefs equally. For a religious subject who does not have additional reasons available, her theistic belief is fully explained by the operations of her BFFs for theistic beliefs. If the BFFs prove to be insensitive or unreliable, her theistic beliefs will not have a positive epistemic status (Jong and Visala 2014).
The concession shows how vulnerable this response is. It is likely that a majority of religious believers do not know about most reasons for theistic belief Jong and Visala cite—like the fine-tuning argument—or have not seriously studied them.[13] Since their theistic beliefs are not salvaged by reasons, a debunking argument can seriously harm the majority of theistic beliefs. Furthermore, most (if not all) additional reasons for theistic belief are controversial. The philosophical discussion over arguments for God’s existence is far from settled, and other reasons, like reliance on authority or religious experience have also been disputed (see Chapter 2 and Chapter 3).
BFFs for Theistic Belief are Sensitive to Something
Another response is directed against the insensitivity claim in evolutionary debunking arguments. It argues that theistic beliefs are not insensitive to reality but that they instead appear to be shaped by contact with some reality. Because theistic beliefs appear to be shaped by some reality, having sensitive BFFs for theistic beliefs could have been selected for by natural selection.[14]
The response draws on an empirical claim about theistic beliefs. If BFFs for theistic beliefs would be insensitive, we would expect theistic beliefs to be different than they are. Beliefs produced by insensitive BFFs can be expected to be rather rigid. A clear example of an insensitive BFF is the self-serving bias. The self-serving bias produces the belief that success can be attributed to oneself while failure can be attributed to others. The self-serving bias would aid in preserving an individual’s sense of worth and value. Because the bias is not aimed at truth (success should often be attributed to others and failure to oneself), it has a rather fixed outcome. It will on most occasions produce the belief that a subject is responsible for success herself. That belief will not be subject to much change, since it is usually easy to find a way to attribute one’s failures to the interference of others.
Many theistic beliefs do not resemble beliefs produced by an insensitive BFF (like the self-serving bias). Theistic beliefs do change over a subject’s lifetime. In extreme cases, believers adopt new theistic beliefs. More often, believers experience smaller changes in what they believe. Often, believers attribute these changes to some putative religious experience. For example, some believers report a change in religious outlook after participating in religious festivals or after sustained religious practices like praying or meditation.
BFFs for theistic beliefs therefore appear to respond to some reality. Religious believers often claim that this reality is God or another supernatural being. A debunker could respond that this reality that alters the outputs of BFFs for theistic beliefs is not in fact God or anything supernatural. This, however, requires additional argumentation.
The response can also go one step further and argue that BFFs for theistic beliefs could be selected for by natural selection because they respond to some reality. We saw how natural selection can be expected to select for reliable perceptual BFFs. The response argues that a sensitive BFF for theistic beliefs also yields an evolutionary benefit over insensitive BFFs for theistic beliefs. That benefit is increased flourishing. On most religious traditions, engaging with God or other supernatural beings has mostly good consequences for humans.[15] Engaging with (benevolent) supernatural beings would lead to better behavior, lower levels of stress and more existential security in the here and now.[16] Having these benefits increases the odds of human survival.
Having a BFF that is sensitive to a supernatural reality will likely lead to more human flourishing than a BFF that is not. If there is a God, being able to engage God leads to benefits for humans. Natural selection could therefore have selected for BFFs that are sensitive to that supernatural reality.
Broadening BFFs for Theistic Belief
A further response can serve to respond to false-god debunking arguments, which claim that BFFs for theistic beliefs are unreliable because they produce many polytheistic and finite god beliefs. This response argues that debunking arguments have too narrow a conception of BFFs for theistic beliefs. The debunking argument over-emphasizes the role of the cognitive architecture of humans and under-emphasizes how the operations of that cognitive architecture can be adapted or mended by other processes like upbringing or culture. In this way, defenders of monotheistic belief could accept that BFFs for theistic beliefs produced many polytheistic beliefs in the past and in some present-day cultures, but argue that because of cultural changes the BFFs have changed.
Defenders of this response argue that BFFs for theistic beliefs never operate in a cultural vacuum. While the cognitive architecture of humans can make them prone to form both polytheistic and monotheistic beliefs, subjects will form more monotheistic beliefs in a culture where monotheism is dominant and more polytheistic beliefs where polytheism is dominant. By proper education and socialization, the operations of BFFs are altered to only (or mainly) produce monotheistic or polytheistic beliefs.
The role of culture is regarded as constitutive for the operations of BFFs for theistic beliefs. The cultural setting is an intrinsic part of a BFF. When the BFF is assessed globally across cultures, debunkers are in fact assessing multiple different BFFs. We can apply this to the evolutionary theory we discussed in section 3. We saw how one theory argues that natural selection favored belief in moralizing gods because it fostered cooperation. If the theory is true, humans evolved a BFF for theistic belief that makes them prone to form the belief that one or more moralizing gods exist that watch their every move. In North America or the Middle East, this BFF will likely produce the belief that there is only one moralizing God. In Sub-Saharan Africa or Polynesia, the BFF will likely produce the belief that there are multiple moralizing gods. According to this response, people in North America and the Middle East have a different BFF than people in Sub-Saharan Africa and Polynesia. Because of the large impact of cultural setting on what beliefs people form, cultural setting cannot be separated from cognitive architecture. The reliability of both BFFs should therefore be assessed separately.
Methodological Naturalism
A final response is directed mainly against misattribution arguments (the arguments that claim theistic belief results from wrongfully identifying natural input as supernatural input). It argues that the case for misattribution is underdetermined because of certain presuppositions in the scientific evidence. The scientific study of BFFs for theistic beliefs would assume that they make misattributions because its methodology does not allow any reference to supernatural entities. As a result, scientists do not take the possibility of supernatural input seriously, and debunkers only have a weak case for misattribution claims.
When discussing misattribution arguments, we saw that Stewart Guthrie sees theistic beliefs as the result of false positives in agency detection. Defenders of this reply argue that Guthrie (and others who make similar arguments) do not give sufficient evidence to show that BFFs for theistic beliefs draw on mere natural input. Guthrie gives some examples of natural input (patterns, noises) that could trigger agency detection but does not consider whether agency detection could also be triggered by actual invisible agents. Bering also does not consider whether meaningful events could be caused by an actual supernatural mind.
In general, scientific theories do not refer to anything supernatural to explain phenomena. This practice is often called “methodological naturalism,” the view that the scientific method or practice does not allow any reference to anything supernatural. Philosophers differ as to whether methodological naturalism is an a priori limitation of scientific practice, or is the result of the higher explanatory power of natural explanations over supernatural explanations. In any case, the claim that BFFs produce theistic beliefs by misidentifying natural input is unsupported by the evidence. If methodological naturalism prevents scientists from taking the possibility of supernatural input seriously, they need to provide a stronger case that theistic belief is triggered by natural input.
Questions to Consider
- When is giving additional reasons a good response to a debunking argument?
- Are there other ways to connect religious BFF’s to truth? When is such a connection stronger?
- How could a misattribution argument avoid the charge of methodological naturalism?
Conclusion
In this chapter, I laid out what debunking arguments against theistic belief are and what common features they share. I also discussed three debunking arguments against theistic belief based on CSR and four potential responses.
References
Bering, Jesse. 2002. “The Existential Theory of Mind.” Review of General Psychology 6: 3-24.
Bering, Jesse and Dominic Johnson. 2005. “‘O Lord . . . You Perceive My Thoughts from Afar’: Recursiveness and the Evolution of Supernatural Agency.” Journal of Cognition and Culture 5: 118-43.
Braddock, Matthew. 2016. “Debunking Arguments and the Cognitive Science of Religion.” Theology and Science 14: 268-87.
Goldman, Alvin and Bob Beddor. (2008) 2016. “Reliabilist Epistemology.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/reliabilism/
Guthrie, Stewart Elliott. 1993. Faces In the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hackett, Conrad, Brian J. Grim, Marcin Stonawski, and Vegard Skirbekk. 2012. “The Global Religious Landscape: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Major Religious Groups as of 2010.” Pew Research Center.
Ichikawa, Jonathan and Matthias Steup. (2001) 2018. “The Analysis of Knowledge.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/knowledge-analysis/.
Jong, Jonathan and Aku Visala. 2014. “Evolutionary Debunking Arguments Against Theism, Reconsidered.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 76: 243-58.
Launonen, Lari. 2017. “Cognitive Science of Religion and the Debunking Debate.” In The Origin of Religion: Perspectives from Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies, eds. Hanne Appelqvist and Dan-Johan Eklund. Helsinki: Luther-Agricola Society.
Law, Stephen. 2016. “The X-Claim Argument Against Religious Belief.” Religious Studies, 1-21.
Nola, Robert. 2018. “Demystifying Religious Belief.” In New Developments in the Cognitive Science of Religion: The Rationality of Religious Belief, eds. Hans van Eyghen, Rik Peels, and Gijsbert van den Brink, 71-92. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Van Eyghen, Hans. 2018. “Is Supernatural Belief Unreliably Formed?” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, May: 1-24.
Wilkins, John S. and Paul E. Griffiths. 2013. “Evolutionary Debunking Arguments in Three Domains: Fact, Value, and Religion.” In A New Science of Religion, eds. Gregory Dawes and James Maclaurin, 133-46. London: Routledge.
Further Reading
Overviews of Cognitive Science of Religion
Barrett, Justin L. 2011. “Cognitive Science of Religion: Looking Back, Looking Forward,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 50(2): 229-39.
De Cruz, Helen and Johan De Smedt. 2015. A Natural History of Natural Theology. The Cognitive Science of Theology and Philosophy of Religion. Cambridge/London: MIT Press.
White, Claire. 2018. “What Does the Cognitive Science of Religion Explain?” In New Developments in the Cognitive Science of Religion: The Rationality of Religious Belief, eds. Hans van Eyghen, Rik Peels, and Gijsbert van den Brink, 35-49. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Defenses of Various Debunking Arguments
Braddock, Matthew. 2016. “Debunking Arguments and the Cognitive Science of Religion.” Theology and Science 14: 268-287.
Galen, Luke. 2017. “Overlapping Mental Magisteria: Implications of Experimental Psychology for a Theory of Religious Belief as Misattribution.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 29: 221-67.
Goodnick, Liz. 2016. “A De Jure Criticism of Theism.” Open Theology 2.
Law, Stephen. 2016. “The X-Claim Argument Against Religious Belief.” Religious Studies 54(1): 1-21.
Wilkins, John S. and Paul E. Griffiths. 2013. “Evolutionary Debunking Arguments in Three Domains: Fact, Value, and Religion.” In A New Science of Religion, eds. Gregory Dawes and James Maclaurin, 133-46. London: Routledge.
Responses
Jong, Jonathan and Aku Visala. 2014. “Evolutionary Debunking Arguments Against Theism, Reconsidered.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 76: 243-58.
McBrayer, Justin P. 2018. “The Epistemology of Genealogies.” In New Developments in the Cognitive Science of Religion: The Rationality of Religious Belief, eds. Hans van Eyghen, Rik Peels, and Gijsbert van den Brink, 157-169. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Murray, Michael J. 2008. “Four Arguments That the Cognitive Psychology of Religion Undermines the Justification of Religious Belief.” In The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, and Critiques, eds. Joseph Bulbulia, Richard Sosis, Russell Genet, Cheryl Genet, Erica Harris, and Karen Wyman, 393-398. Santa Margarita: Collins Foundation Press.
Van Eyghen, Hans. 2019. “Is Supernatural Belief Unreliably Formed?” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 85(2): 125-48.
- Metaphysical arguments deal with whether something actually exists. ↵
- Epistemological arguments deal with whether a belief is rational or justified. ↵
- My definition is drawn from Goldman and Beddor (2015). ↵
- Some have argued that there are insensitive or unreliably formed beliefs that do not suffer from serious epistemic deficiencies. Giving a thorough overview of the criticisms lies beyond the scope of this chapter. Overall, it does seem as if the responses can only salvage a limited number of insensitive or unreliably formed beliefs. Therefore, it is not clear whether the responses can salvage theistic beliefs. ↵
- This theory is known as the "theory-theory." ↵
- A similar argument was defended by John S. Wilkins and Paul E. Griffiths (2013). W&G do not use the term "insensitive," but argue that CSR shows that theistic beliefs are "unconstrained by reality." ↵
- The argument was made by Matthew Braddock who discusses both ways (2016). ↵
- Defenders of this argument draw support for this from archaeology and written records. ↵
- Arguments of this kind were put forward by Robert Nola and Stephen Law (Law 2016; Nola 2018). ↵
- The distinction was drawn from Lari Launonen (2017). Launonen calls the first strategy a "reasons response" and the second a "reliabilist response." ↵
- Philosophers of science often make the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification. The former refers to how scientists formulate theories. The latter refers to the arguments they provide for the theories. ↵
- The fine-tuning argument states that God’s activity is the best explanation for the precise fine-tuning of cosmic constants that were needed for life to emerge. ↵
- Subjects can also have other reasons for theistic belief that are not drawn from natural theology like religious testimony or evidence from sacred texts. Reasons like these are arguably more widespread. ↵
- This reply was put forward by myself elsewhere (Van Eyghen 2018). ↵
- Some traditions also believe in malevolent supernatural beings like demons. Contact with these is regarded as disadvantageous. ↵
- Some religious traditions also claim that engaging with supernatural beings has beneficial effects in the afterlife. These obviously have no effect on evolutionary fitness. ↵
Any human mechanism or ability that gives rise to beliefs. Examples are visual perception or reasoning.
The discipline that offers explanations of how and why humans form religious beliefs, have religious experiences or manifest religious behaviors in terms of human cognitive processes or evolutionary processes.
An argument that aims to undermine the rationality or credibility of a class of beliefs. It usually does so by showing that a class of beliefs is based on false evidence or is badly formed. Well-known examples of debunking arguments are arguments against conspiracy theories.
Any quality of a belief indicating that the belief suffers from some defect. Examples are being not rational, being unjustified or being unsupported by evidence.
Belief about the existence or nature of God or gods.
A Latin phrase literally meaning "from what comes before." In this context, what is a priori is what is presupposed at the outset before one even begins looking at the evidence. For example, things that are true by definition or simply truths of logic or basic math would normally be taken to be known a priori, whereas what's in today's newspaper could only be known a posteriori (that is, after looking at the evidence).