Alvin Plantinga

thumb|Plantinga in 2009 Alvin Carl Plantinga (born November 15, 1932) is an American philosopher and holder of the Jellema Chair in Philosophy at Calvin College. He is known for his work in philosophy of religion, epistemology, metaphysics and Christian apologetics. Quotes Now God can create free creatures, but He can't cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren't significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so. As it turned out, sadly enough, some of the free creatures God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evil. The fact that free creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither against God's omnipotence nor against His goodness; for He could have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good. 1974 The Nature of Necessity Oxford Clarendon Press 0198244045 5102674M Perhaps Paul very much likes the idea of being eaten, but when he sees a tiger, always runs off looking for a better prospect, because he thinks it unlikely the tiger he sees will eat him. This will get his body parts in the right place so far as survival is concerned, without involving much by way of true belief. (Of course we must postulate other changes in Paul's ways of reasoning, including how he changes belief in response to experience, to maintain coherence.) Or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a large, friendly, cuddly pussycat and wants to pet it; but he also believes that the best way to pet it is to run away from it. Or perhaps he confuses running toward it with running away from it, believing of the action that is really running away from it, that it is running toward it; or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a regularly occurring illusion, and, hoping to keep his weight down, has formed the resolution to run a mile at top speed whenever confronted with such an illusion; or perhaps he thinks he is about to take part in a sixteen-hundred-meter race, wants to win, and thinks the appearance of the tiger is the starting signal; or perhaps. . . . Clearly there are any number of belief-cum-desire systems that equally fit a given bit of behaviour. 1993 Warrant and Proper Function New York Oxford University Press 9780195078640 1700198M 225-226 http://books.google.com/books?id=zMwzvXbH3RYC&pg=PA225 To show that there are natural processes that produce religious belief does nothing, so far, to discredit it; perhaps God designed us in such a way that it is by virtue of those processes that we come to have knowledge of him. 2000 Warranted Christian Belief 9780195131925 145 http://www.ccel.org/ccel/plantinga/warrant3.v.iii.i.iv.html At present and especially in academia, there is widespread doubt and agnosticism with respect to the very existence of God. But if we don't know that there is such a person as God, we don't know the first thing (the most important thing) about ourselves, each other and our world. This is because (from the point of view of the model) the most important truths about us and them, is that we have been created by the Lord, and utterly depend upon him for our continued existence. We don't know what our happiness consists in, and we don't know how to achieve it. We don't know that we have been created in the image of God, and we don't grasp the significance of such characteristically human phenomena as love, humor, adventure, science, art, music, philosophy, history, and so on. 2000 Warranted Christian Belief 9780195131925 217 http://www.ccel.org/ccel/plantinga/warrant3.vi.ii.iv.ii.html Aquinas believes that human beings (even in our earthly condition here below) can have knowledge, scientific knowledge of God's existence, as well as knowledge that he has such attributes as simplicity, eternità, immateriality, immutability, and the line. In Summa Theologiae Aquinas sets out his famous Five Ways or five proofs of God's existence: in Summa Contra Gentiles he sets out the proof from motion in much greater detail; and in each case he follows these alleged demonstrations with alleged demonstrations that God possesses the attributes just mentioned. So natural knowledge of God is possible. [...] So most of those who believe in God do so on faith. Fundamentally, for Aquinas, to accept a proposition on faith is to accept it on God's authority; faith is a manner of "believing God" (ST, IIa, IIae, ii, 2) "for that which is above reason we believe only because God has revealed it" (SCG, I, 9). The Analytic Theist: An Alving Plantinga Reader, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1998. ISBN 9780802842299. Ch. "Reason and Belief in God: Reformed Epistemology, pp. 125-126 I fully realize that the dreaded f-word will be trotted out to stigmatize any model of this kind. Before responding, however, we must first look into the use of this term 'fundamentalist'. On the most common contemporary academic use of the term, it is a term of abuse or disapprobation, rather like 'son of a bitch', more exactly 'sonovabitch', or perhaps still more exactly (at least according to those authorities who look to the Old West as normative on matters of pronunciation) 'sumbitch'. When the term is used in this way, no definition of it is ordinarily given. (If you called someone a sumbitch, would you feel obliged first to define the term?) Still, there is a bit more to the meaning of 'fundamentalist' (in this widely current use): it isn't simply a term of abuse. In addition to its emotive force, it does have some cognitive content, and ordinarily denotes relatively conservative theological views. That makes it more like 'stupid sumbitch' (or maybe 'fascist sumbitch'?) than 'sumbitch' simpliciter. It isn't exactly like that term either, however, because its cognitive content can expand and contract on demand; its content seems to depend on who is using it. In the mouths of certain liberal theologians, for example, it tends to denote any who accept traditional Christianity, including Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and Barth; in the mouths of devout secularists like Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett, it tends to denote anyone who believes there is such a person as God. The explanation is that the term has a certain indexical element: its cognitive content is given by the phrase 'considerably to the right, theologically speaking, of me and my enlightened friends.' The full meaning of the term, therefore (in this use), can be given by something like 'stupid sumbitch whose theological opinions are considerably to the right of mine'. 2000 Warranted Christian Belief 9780195131925 244-245 http://books.google.com/books?id=BypSHmoozV0C&pg=PA244&dq=%22I+fully+realize+that+the+dreaded+f-word%22 Well, I don't think there are any methodological conflicts either. As for those social conflicts, those aren't conflicts—in my opinion—between science and religion. They're conflicts between Christians and atheists or Christians and secularists: Christians want to do things one way, secularists want to do things another way. But that's not a science/religion conflict at all. You might as well say it's a science/secularism conflict. In each case, each group wants to do science and then use it in a certain way. 2011-12-13 Interview with Alvin Plantinga on Where the Conflict Really Lies Paul Pardi Philosophy News http://www.philosophynews.com/post/2011/12/13/Interview-with-Alvin-Plantinga-on-Where-the-Conflict-Really-Lies.aspx Posed question: Are you mainly trying to show that there's no logical conflict even though there might be a methodological conflict? Like I say, you gotta have a PhD in engineering just to use your thermostat. And that seems over the top to me. [...] It’s not real nice, you know. If you live in Arizona, you get used to it, but we don’t. And it’s right after a really cold, kind of wet, spring. So we weren’t really up for that at all. [...] You know, there are worse things. I mean, if it were like, say, ten below zero, that would be worse. 2011-06-08 How To Keep The Cool Air Flowing Dani Carlson WOOD-TV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nDOxLh6AbQ Interviews I am honored to receive the Templeton Prize. The field of philosophy has transformed over the course of my career. If my work played a role in this transformation, I would be very pleased. I hope the news of the prize will encourage young philosophers, especially those who bring Christian and theistic perspectives to bear on their work, toward greater creativity, integrity and boldness. Alvin Plantinga, 2017 Templeton Prize Laureate. Plantinga: We moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan where we have children and grandchildren, and a brother, and old friends, and Calvin College. PN: What do you plan on doing in retirement? Do you have any specific plans? You’re a rock climber, correct? Plantinga: I’m a rock climber but I’m getting a little long in the tooth for rock climbing. I am going to go climbing this August [2011] with my friends Ric Otte and Bas van Frassen in California. We’ll see—I’m not sure if I’ll be climbing after that. I am going to be teaching next year at Calvin, part time. PN: That’s where you started, at Calvin, many years ago, correct? Plantinga: Yes, that’s right. PN: You have four children and two of them are at Calvin, correct? Plantinga: Yes, two of them are Calvin profs and their wives are too. PN: And you have a daughter in the mission field and a daughter here in the Seattle area? Plantinga: Yes, right. Quoted in Paul Pardi, Interview with Alvin Plantinga on where the conflict really lies, December 13, 2011. If 62 percent of philosophers are atheists, then the proportion of atheists among philosophers is much greater than (indeed, is nearly twice as great as) the proportion of atheists among academics generally. (I take atheism to be the belief that there is no such person as the God of the theistic religions.) Do philosophers know something here that these other academics don’t know? What could it be? Philosophers, as opposed to other academics, are often professionally concerned with the theistic arguments — arguments for the existence of God. My guess is that a considerable majority of philosophers, both believers and unbelievers, reject these arguments as unsound.. Still, that’s not nearly sufficient for atheism. In the British newspaper The Independent, the scientist Richard Dawkins was recently asked the following question: “If you died and arrived at the gates of heaven, what would you say to God to justify your lifelong atheism?” His response: “I’d quote Bertrand Russell: ‘Not enough evidence, God! Not enough evidence!’” But lack of evidence, if indeed evidence is lacking, is no grounds for atheism. No one thinks there is good evidence for the proposition that there are an even number of stars; but also, no one thinks the right conclusion to draw is that there are an uneven number of stars. The right conclusion would instead be agnosticism.. In the same way, the failure of the theistic arguments, if indeed they do fail, might conceivably be good grounds for agnosticism, but not for atheism. Atheism, like even-star-ism, would presumably be the sort of belief you can hold rationally only if you have strong arguments or evidence.. The failure of arguments for God would be good grounds for agnosticism, but not for atheism. As quoted in Gary Gatting, Reading: An Interview With Alvin Plantinga, February 9, 2014. The so-called “problem of evil” would presumably be the strongest (and maybe the only) evidence against theism. It does indeed have some strength; it makes sense to think that the probability of theism, given the existence of all the suffering and evil our world contains, is fairly low. But of course there are also arguments for theism. Indeed, there are at least a couple of dozen good theistic arguments. So the atheist would have to try to synthesize and balance the probabilities. This isn’t at all easy to do, but it’s pretty obvious that the result wouldn’t anywhere nearly support straight-out atheism as opposed to agnosticism. As quoted in Gary Gatting, Reading: An Interview With Alvin Plantinga, February 9, 2014. Russell’s idea, I take it, is we don’t really have any evidence against teapotism, but we don’t need any; the absence of evidence is evidence of absence, and is enough to support a-teapotism. We don’t need any positive evidence against it to be justified in a-teapotism; and perhaps the same is true of theism. I disagree: Clearly we have a great deal of evidence against teapotism. For example, as far as we know, the only way a teapot could have gotten into orbit around the sun would be if some country with sufficiently developed space-shot capabilities had shot this pot into orbit. No country with such capabilities is sufficiently frivolous to waste its resources by trying to send a teapot into orbit. Furthermore, if some country had done so, it would have been all over the news; we would certainly have heard about it. But we haven’t. And so on. There is plenty of evidence against teapotism. So if, à la Russell, theism is like teapotism, the atheist, to be justified, would (like the a-teapotist) have to have powerful evidence against theism. As quoted in Gary Gatting, Reading: An Interview With Alvin Plantinga, February 9, 2014. I should make clear first that I don’t think arguments are needed for rational belief in God. In this regard belief in God is like belief in other minds, or belief in the past. Belief in God is grounded in experience, or in the sensus divinitatis, John Calvin’s term for an inborn inclination to form beliefs about God in a wide variety of circumstances. Nevertheless, I think there are a large number — maybe a couple of dozen — of pretty good theistic arguments. None is conclusive, but each, or at any rate the whole bunch taken together, is about as strong as philosophical arguments ordinarily get. As quoted in Gary Gatting, Reading: An Interview With Alvin Plantinga, February 9, 2014. Lack of evidence, if indeed evidence is lacking, is no grounds for atheism. No one thinks there is good evidence for the proposition that there are an even number of stars; but also, no one thinks the right conclusion to draw is that there are an uneven number of stars. The right conclusion would instead be agnosticism. In the same way, the failure of the theistic arguments, if indeed they do fail, might conceivably be good grounds for agnosticism, but not for atheism. Atheism, like even-star-ism, would presumably be the sort of belief you can hold rationally only if you have strong arguments or evidence. Quoted in Amy K. Hall, Plantinga Interview: Is Atheism Irrational?, Stand to Reason, 2 December 2014. I suppose your thinking is that it is suffering and sin that make this world less than perfect. But then your question makes sense only if the best possible worlds contain no sin or suffering. And is that true? Maybe the best worlds contain free creatures some of whom sometimes do what is wrong. Indeed, maybe the best worlds contain a scenario very like the Christian story. Think about it: The first being of the universe, perfect in goodness, power and knowledge, creates free creatures. These free creatures turn their backs on him, rebel against him and get involved in sin and evil. Rather than treat them as some ancient potentate might—e.g., having them boiled in oil—God responds by sending his son into the world to suffer and die so that human beings might once more be in a right relationship to God. God himself undergoes the enormous suffering involved in seeing his son mocked, ridiculed, beaten and crucified. And all this for the sake of these sinful creatures. I’d say a world in which this story is true would be a truly magnificent possible world. It would be so good that no world could be appreciably better. But then the best worlds contain sin and suffering. Quoted in Amy K. Hall, Plantinga Interview: Is Atheism Irrational?, Stand to Reason, 2 December 2014. Some atheists seem to think that a sufficient reason for atheism is the fact (as they say) that we no longer need God to explain natural phenomena—lightning and thunder for example. We now have science. As a justification of atheism, this is pretty lame. We no longer need the moon to explain or account for lunacy; it hardly follows that belief in the nonexistence of the moon (a-moonism?) is justified. A-moonism on this ground would be sensible only if the sole ground for belief in the existence of the moon was its explanatory power with respect to lunacy. (And even so, the justified attitude would be agnosticism with respect to the moon, not a-moonism.) The same thing goes with belief in God: Atheism on this sort of basis would be justified only if the explanatory power of theism were the only reason for belief in God. And even then, agnosticism would be the justified attitude, not atheism. Quoted in Amy K. Hall, Plantinga Interview: Is Atheism Irrational?, Stand to Reason'', 2 December 2014. Quotes about Alvin Plantinga is arguably the greatest philosopher of the last century. 2001-06-11 Mind Over Skepticism John G. Stackhouse John G. Stackhouse, Jr. Christianity Today http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2001/june11/19.74.html Category:Philosophers from the United States Category:Theologians from Michigan Category:1932 births Category:Living people Category:Christian apologists Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society Category:Yale University alumni Category:Philosophers of mind Category:Templeton Prize laureates Category:University of Notre Dame faculty