God, Freedom, and Evil
I've recently finished an amazing philosophy book: Alvin Plantiga's God, Freedom, and Evil. It was incredible! Alvin Plantinga is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He's heralded on the back of the book as "one of the top Christian philosophers in the world today" (which, it should be noted, is different from a "Christian ( Read more... )
In the introduction to God, Freedom, and Evil, Plantinga makes it clear that "the natural theologian does not, typically, offer his arguments in order to convince people of God's existence; and in fact few who accept theistic belief do so because they find such an argument compelling. Instead the typical function of natural theology has been to show that religious belief is rationally acceptable" (p.2). His goal is not to evangelize Christianity to the general public, and he concedes at the start that this is not the best way to go about doing that. Like I said, the scope of his arguments very very narrom - his only aim in the part that I've discussed here is to show that Mackie has not succeeded in establishing that set A is inconsistent.
All argument seems to follow this sort of thrust and parry structure common to fencing or other kinds of battle. Mackie made the positive assertion that theism is irrational by presenting the "Logical Problem of Evil". This was a thrust. Plantinga's aim in this first part of the first half of God, Freedom, and Evil that I've written about is to parry - to show that Mackie's argument fails to establish his conclusion. Plantinga makes his own thrust - a positive assertion that theistic belief is indeed rational - in the rest of the book. So, all he is trying to show now is that Mackie's argument doesn't work.
The "Logical Problem of Evil" is a strong argument in the sense that the common man often finds it convincing. However, it is not strong in the purely rational sense because it is logically invalid, which Plantinga has successfully shown. Mackie failed to provide a logical path from his premises to his conclusion. Plantinga explains why very thoroughly, and I reviewed his arguments above, so I won't repeat them here. It's really not a matter of opinion - either each step in the argument necessarily follows from the premises, the previous steps, and the axioms of logic, or the argument is logically invalid. (This doesn't mean that it can't be reformulated in a logically valid way.)
By showing that Mackie has failed to show that set A is inconsistent, Plantinga succeeds in showing theistic belief to be less irrational. Later, when he shows that set A is positively consistent, he succeeds in showing theistic belief to be positively rational.
The prima facie adversion to admitting that unipedalism is logically consistent seems to be based on the confusion that everything logically consistent must be non-ridiculous. Logical consistency is a very weak claim. The existence of unicorns is logically consistent. So is the possibility that you are currently in the matrix or a similar brain-in-vat scenario. It is also logically consistent that if you stand in the path of a speeding bus, it will pass right through you and leave you unscathed. Of course, I'm not about to go out and try that - it's also logically consistent that the bus crushes me to death!
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Has Plantinga demonstrated that it is *rational* to believe in God after hearing the 'Logical Problem of Evil'?
In the same way , that I used his methods to show that it is 'rational' to believe people only have one leg?
No. Plantinga just showed that his beliefs were logically consistent, just as a beliefs in the sun going around the earth and beliefs in one-legged people are logically consistent.
Plantinga never attempted to defend against the charge of irrationality.
As you pointed out, logical consistency is a very weak claim. Just showing that a belief in one-legged people is 'positively consistent' does not mean that it is 'positively rational'
Perhaps that is why Mackie wrote in 'The Miracle of Theism' that Plantinga was missing the point.
And Plantinga's Transworld Depravity defense is hopeless flawed.
For one thing, it is contradictory for Plantinga to say that all creatures are depraved in this world and also state that many angels in this world have never committed evil.
And the 'near-identical twins' argument also works against it.
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