Abstract
According to The Debunking Argument, evidence from the cognitive science of religion suggests that it is epistemically inappropriate to persist in believing in the theistic God. In this paper, I focus on a reply to this argument according to which the evidence from cognitive science says nothing about the epistemic propriety of belief in the theistic God, since God may have chosen to create human beliefs in God by means of precisely the systems identified by cognitive scientists. I argue that this reply can be extended to a variety of non-theistic contexts, and consequently that if the reply is sound, then the scope of The Debunking Argument is surprisingly limited.
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Notes
Two systems seem especially important. First, researchers have noted that the cognitive systems that allow us to quickly and automatically detect agency in our environment tend (for adaptive reasons) to give false-positives; that is, we tend to see agency where there is none (rather than vice versa). Second, researchers have drawn attention to humans’ natural ability to attribute mental states to other people—a capacity known as Theory of Mind. However, the capacity to attribute mental states to others extends beyond humans; it turns out that we also quickly and easily attribute goals and intentions to inanimate objects as well. For an overview, see Barrett (2004).
The agents subsequently conceptualized as filling this role need not be understood as permanently or essentially invisible, but only to invisibly create effects at certain times. Thus, a spirit might be visible in some contexts but not others, and an ancestor is a being that was once visible, but is no longer.
There are other ways of developing the naturalistic origins story into an objection to the rationality of religious belief. Perhaps the most prominent alternative is a simplicity argument. For a discussion of this objection, see Clark and Barrett (2011).
It is not surprising that these authors all answer in this way, since this reply is, more or less explicitly, an application of Alvin Plantinga’s strategy for replying to what he calls ‘de jure’ objections to theistic belief. See Plantinga (2000), Chapter 5.
For a discussion of this view among indigenous peoples of North America, see Radin (1992) [1924].
Thanks to Dan Doviak and Cathy Ouellette for helpful comments, questions, and conversations.
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Robinson, T. The Prospects for Debunking Non-Theistic Belief. SOPHIA 60, 83–89 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-019-00750-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-019-00750-y