The materialist's dilemma

Two days ago, I attended a lecture by Dr. Alvin Plantica -- the famed Philosopher from Notre Dame. In this lecture he argued that naturalism and evolution were self-referentially incoherent. It is a bold claim, but it seems that it might work.

In a brief nutshell he argued that the ability to come to true beliefs is not developed in evolution. Evolution could perhaps develop physical states of the brain that would help a being to react in an appropriate manner to live longer, but the actual belief has nothing to do with survival. A sort of content epiphenomenalism if you will. Only electro-chemical properties need to develop, not beliefs. Even if beliefs Do develop, they might be entirely wrong. To take the classic tiger example, a man sees a tiger and runs away, thus helping him to survive longer. But, what is the belief that causes him to run away? It could be because he thinks the tiger will eat him, but it could also be that he believes the tiger is playing hide and go seek with him. Both beliefs result in similar behavior and help the person to survive, so evolution would do nothing to encourage the true belief. So, if this is granted, then if we evolved from naturalistic evolution, then we have no good way of coming to true beliefs. This, however, means that our belief in naturalism and evolution are also not true beliefs, and thus the system is a defeater to itself and irrational.

So, there was a reception afterwards, and I got involved with some people with a materialist, or at least a good devil's advocate. He hypothesized that every belief is just an electro-chemical state of the brain--like a good materialist. He then went on to admit that our beliefs then are merely efficient. We have no way of knowing that they are true, but they work well. Once he bit that bullet, it sort of left me scratching my head...What does one do with someone like that?

The next day I carried on this conversation with my lovely, brilliant wife, and we came to a couple of interesting conclusions. If a materialist is willing to be consistent this far, then they are likely being inconsistent in the way they live. For such a person, reason is merely whatever helps man to progress further in evolution, at least that is how it would have to have developed so far. Now, this brings into question some other issues with regards to morality...Where did that come from and why does man have it? It seems that evolution needed man to live in communities in order to survive, and so ethics is merely an efficient way for humans to keep on living. But, once we realize this, it sort of destroys the power of ethics. Reason has trumped ethics. But if one drops ethics, what is one to do? Either the person must try to develop a better method, based off of this new understanding of reason and the world to further one's progeny, or one is doomed to be left out of the evolutionary gene pool.

It seems there are three options: Those who believe in materialism etc, will die out and the theists will continue to live, those who believe in materialism will win (see Lewis's Abolition of Man) and the human race will kill itself off and evolution will try a different branch other than intellect, or the materialists need to start living longer and having lots of babies...The third option has seemed to be a dismal failure, if it was ever tried. All "enlightened" nations have negative birth rates. It requires a strong purpose of life and ethic that comes from religion to have lots of progeny. And thus, the most reasonable thing for a materialist to do, is to whole-heartedly accept Christianity (since it is the most reasonable of religions).

So, next time I come across a serious materialist, I'll ask him how many children he has had, or why he hasn't become a Christian.