Member-only story
The Charade of Alvin Plantinga’s Philosophical Theism
Even sophisticated theism is child’s play, compared to secular philosophy
If anyone’s a sophisticated Christian thinker, it would be the philosopher, Alvin Plantinga. He was educated at Harvard and Yale, he knows all the philosophical jargon, and he’s used his expertise to argue for theism.
But judging from his 2014 New York Times interview with Gary Gutting, when Plantinga was admittedly in his early 80s, Plantinga was just as confused about atheism and religion as the average Western theist.
The atheist’s burden of proof
Regarding the atheist’s burden of proof, for instance, Plantinga says,
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…
