This is a recording of a Norton Lecture delivered by Dr. Alvin Plantinga on October 25 of last year. Here he lays out why there is deep discord between science and naturalism, or atheism. The argument goes (in super-simplified form) that, while Christians believe that one of the signal characteristics of being a creature made in the image of God is the ability to know , to discern the really real, those who deny a Creator can only assume that evolution has outfitted humans with this capacity. Evolution may just as well have inculcated a propensity for self-deception as a survival mechanism. (Plantinga’s quotation from Darwin, in which the father of evolutionary science expresses a “horrid doubt” about whether the “convictions of men’s minds, which have been developed from the lower animals,” are in the end “trustworthy,” says it all.)
I see Plantinga’s argument emerging time and again in Christian apologetics today, especially contra the New Atheism. (See Timothy Keller’s upcoming The Reason for God —about which more in the next couple of weeks.)
By way of ChristianThinker.net .
While I have you, can I ask you something? I’ll be quick.
Twenty-five thousand people subscribe to First Things. Why can’t that be fifty thousand? Three million people read First Things online like you are right now. Why can’t that be four million?
Let’s stop saying “can’t.” Because it can. And your year-end gift of just $50, $100, or even $250 or more will make it possible.
How much would you give to introduce just one new person to First Things? What about ten people, or even a hundred? That’s the power of your charitable support.
Make your year-end gift now using this secure link or the button below.
