Heterodoxy

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This is a follow-on, in a sense, to the JP sequence.  “JP” is a friend of mine who has some issues with the climate change science and – perhaps more so – the reporting of it.  It’s not just the reporting though, since he has repeatedly expressed his admiration of “heterodoxy” – which he seems to define as having the intellectual bravery to position oneself outside the straitjacket of conventional, “consensus” thinking.

 

Now, I am well aware that many people are heterodox when it comes to one issue or another.  For example, the standard view of cosmological evolution includes a period of inflation.  I have a model which does not include that (see posts about the FUGE model).  Some very famous scientists have been heterodox on one issue or another, and were subsequently proven right.

 

Look at that last sentence and consider what, for a scientist and their subsequent fame, was the major contributing factor.  It was not being heterodox per se, it was being proven right.  That’s rare enough to make the scientist famous.

 

The problem with heterodoxy is that it is almost always the wrong approach, particularly in a scientific context – despite it being very much the right approach in the rare situation when everyone else is wrong.  I may well be wrong about the FUGE model, quite likely entirely, but certainly in some key detail.

 

I’ve written before about my world view, and how I prefer that things that I hold true to be true.  I’m not necessarily bothered with whether the things that I hold true are also held to be true by other people.  I am, however, aware that if many people hold a thing to be true, for a suite of good reasons, then it’s more likely that they are true.  The more things that a person holds to be true that I also hold to be true, so long as they don’t also hold a number of incompatible things to be true, then the more likely it is that I might be able to rely on their judgement on something.  And if everyone does something like this, we can all – as a group – develop a “consensus”.

 

I don’t want to suggest that a having consensus means total agreement on all things.  It’s entirely possible to agree on issues in one area and disagree violently in others (for example, we might both agree that rum and raisin dark chocolate is delicious, but you might be insane enough to think that Turkish vomit [often mislabelled known as “Turkish delight”] is not totally disgusting).

 

To be fair to JP, he was once involved (on the periphery) with a cult-like church denomination with a leader who held great sway over the youthful congregation.  In that environment, everyone was encouraged to think alike and also to overlook the inconsistencies involved (it was a Christian thing, so there were plenty of them).  Anyone daring to differ, a heterodox, was subjected to some pretty major pressure to conform – with a threat of being cast out of the friendship group if they didn’t.  (Even having a conversion-resistant atheist like me as a friend was looked down on.)

 

Being a heterodox in that situation was (to my eyes) a good thing.  Challenge what you are being asked to believe, ask for proof, critically examine any evidence provided, acknowledge the fallacies.

 

I think, however, that heterodoxy – for its own sake – can be taken too far.

 

As I explained to someone recently, there are (at least) six levels of “facts” that we can be presented with:

• Actual facts
• Scientific research into facts
• Interpretation of scientific research into facts
• Journalistic reporting of interpretation of scientific research into facts
• Headlines
• Half-remembered expositions on what might be any of the above (or combinations thereof).

 

We can’t usually access actual facts (outside of mathematics), so I am always recommending that we go back to the original scientific research into facts.  However, it’s entirely possible that research is done poorly, or in a biased manner to reach a predetermined result, and that should be kept in mind during an assessment of any research.  But the best research is not a single entity, the best research is a conglomeration or synthesis of multiple lines of research around actual facts, such that the actual facts can be triangulated.

 

I see it a bit like this in normal circumstances:

 

The circles indicate research results which don’t necessarily precisely match the underlying fact, but (generally, if conducted competently and honestly) cluster around the fact.  A heterodox, by rejecting the consensus, may well end up a long way from the fact – especially if guided by vested interests (like someone who wants you to believe in their version of a sky-fairy, or to not worry about potential human effects on the climate).

 

I certainly do agree that we should be wary of ideological conformity, where we might be tempted to look for other facts if the facts that we are faced with won’t play the game.  However, it always seems relatively easy to identify when ideology is the driving factor.  If someone is trying to argue you into accepting their viewpoint but won’t properly explain their position and is resistant to providing any evidence, willing to jump into an “apologetics” or fallacy-based mode of defending their position, then – in my humble opinion – they are likely driven by ideology, rather than facts. 

Climate Emergency? What Climate Emergency?

Climate Emergency?  What Climate Emergency? (Defining our terms)

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There’s been a little bit of back and forth on the Climate Emergency that I’ve noticed lately.  The first that came to my attention was the warning of a climate emergency put out the Alliance of World Scientists, a large proportion of whom appear to be biologists.  More recently I noticed something by a Netherlands based group called CLINTEL, who put out something from another perspective, saying that there is no climate emergency.  In neither case was the term “climate emergency” made perfectly clear.

There’s another Australia-centric organisation that tracks those who have declared a climate emergency, noting as of 18 December 2019 that 1261 jurisdictions in 25 countries have done so, and has links to the Climate Emergency Summit planned for mid-February 2020.  They get close to defining the term, albeit via comments of various people such as “We are in a kind of climate emergency now… It is becoming more and more urgent. Time has almost run out to get emissions down. That’s the real emergency” and an emphasis that we are (nearly) out of time.

The Oxford Dictionary made the term their word of the year for 2019 (cheating a bit since it’s two words), so we do have some sort of formal definition: “a situation in which urgent action is required to reduce or halt climate change and avoid potentially irreversible environmental damage resulting from it”.

Therefore, we have a basis on which to compare the claims of the two organisations that seem to have started it all, the Alliance of World Scientists and CLINTEL.

These two organisations take quite different approaches.  The AWS provide evidence, summarised as below:

To go with this is a supplemental file that provides the sources and additional detail for each variable.  There is no mention of models per se although there is reference to IPCC 2018 which, inter alia, does report on the results of various models.  Note however that the AWS consider that our observations outstrip the predictions of the IPCC, predictions based on the model outputs.

CLINTEL, on the other hand, in their letter to the UN Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, provide no evidence whatsoever.  They merely claim that the models are inadequate.  There are a few truisms presented as arguments for example: there are non-anthropogenic factors affecting climate, and CO2 is used by plants for photosynthesis.

Basically, it seems as though the AWS are relying on evidence to support their case while CLINTEL is relying on little more than authority of being a “global network of more than 500 knowledgeable and experienced scientists and professionals”.  Every “ambassador” as listed has a history of climate denial and/or links to the fossil fuel industry.

• Guus Berkhout – (the founder) – engineer who worked for Shell before focussing on seismic research for oil and gas companies
• Richard Lindzen – atmospheric physicist – urged the Bush Administration to not ratify the Kyoto Protocol which was effective as of February 2005
• Reynald Du Berger – geological engineer focussed on seismology – petitioned against the Kyoto Protocol
• Ingemar Nordin – philosopher (of science and technology as well as politics) – was writing at The Climate Scam blog in 2010
• Terry Dunleavy – journalist (with no discernible expertise in the area) – set up a climate denialism organisation in New Zealand in 2006
• Jim O’Brien – electrical engineer, energy consultant and lobbyist (there’s a guy with the same name who is far more qualified which was a bit confusing) – has been blogging climate denialism since 2007
• Viv Forbes – geologist with a background in coal mining
• Alberto Prestininzi – geologist – was a signatory to a letter defending fossil fuels earlier in 2019, otherwise there’s not much historically on this guy
• Jeffrey Foss – philosopher of science – was attending climate denialism symposia in 2012
• Benoît Rittaud – mathematician – wrote The Climate Myth in 2010 (the translation in the article for <<Le mythe climatique>> is incorrect)
• Morten Jødal – biologist – was apparently writing to newspapers about the climate debate going off the rails in 2008
• Fritz Vahrenholt – chemist who was on the board of directors for Deutsche Shell
• Rob Lemeire – “energy specialist” and publicist (according to CLINTEL) – has been involved with a  denialist site since 2016
• Christopher Monckton – hereditary peer, journalist – has been a climate denialist since at least 2006

If this is the authority that you are relying on, there are problems.  There’s only one person who has relevant qualifications, Richard Lindzen, and they don’t have a completely monolithic view of what is going on.

• Guus Berkhout – as the founder of CLINTEL, we can probably take the CLINTEL letter to the UN as indicative of his position: climate change scientists exaggerate their findings, there’s more the climate change than CO2 (almost certainly true), the world is warming more slowly than originally predicted (maybe), the models are inadequate (not true from my own investigations), CO2 is “plant food” (yes, sort of, but no-one was suggesting that we take it all away), global warming has not contributed to natural disasters (questionable) and climate policy must respect scientific and economic realities (scientific yes, (politico-)economic realities perhaps)
• Richard Lindzen – has criticised the IPCC since 2001 (after contributing to an IPCC report), he has a pet theory (iris hypothesis) which would have the planet effectively counteracting the effect of CO2 via a reduction in cirrus clouds in the tropics allowing more heat to escape.  Testing of the hypothesis found either no evidence in support of the hypothesis or evidence of an effect, but in the opposite direction (increased warming).  I haven’t seen any explanation by Lindzen as to why there is nevertheless observed global warming
• Reynald Du Berger – no clear statement or summary of position, but appears to be a general denier of fact (ie temperature has not risen in the past 20 years, the sea levels aren’t rising, etc)
• Ingemar Nordin – believes that climate research is a corruption of science
• Terry Dunleavy – founded a group that believes that claims of anthropogenic global warming are unfounded, “(t)he climate is always changing and the nation (New Zealand) may well benefit from moderate global warming” and “that New Zealand has not warmed significantly in the last fifty years” (apparently it’s risen about 0.75C using a 5-year running average, that’s a bit less than the global which is somewhere between 0.8 and 0.9C, and “significantly” was not defined)
• Jim O’Brien – founded a group that believes “that observed climate variability is caused by some combination of low-sensitivity GHG and solar/natural influences, where the relative contributions of these are still open to ongoing observation and research”
• Viv Forbes – believes (or believed) that over 1901 to 2000, the average surface temperature rose only 0.6C (which is true) and that, as of 2007, “there has been NO increase in temperature since 1998” (which is not precisely true, between 1998 and 2007, there was a 0.2C increase – however, if you look only at 1997 (which was abnormally warm) and 2008 (which was a bit cooler than the years around it), you can say that the temperature had cooled.  Since then though the temperature has risen 0.3 to 0.5C (depending on the year that you cherry-pick as your starting point).  He does not believe that high levels of carbon in the atmosphere are a problem
• Alberto Prestininzi – no clear statement or summary of position
• Jeffrey Foss – no clear statement or summary of position, but appears to be saying that the sun rules the climate and we are going into a cooling phase, and in any case the cost of mitigating global warming would be catastrophic
• Benoît Rittaud – believes that the climate has always changed and that models are inadequate
• Morten Jødal – belongs to a group that believes that “climate is dominated by natural variations”, particularly the sun, and that “CO₂ is … a harmless and vital gas that is essential for all life on Earth”
• Fritz Vahrenholt – believes (or believed) that climate change is due to variations in solar activity, and is about to cool, but in 2012 suggested there would be a cooling of 0.2 to 0.3C by 2035, which would require a cooling from today of 0.5 to 0.6C since there was a 0.3C rise between 2012 and 2019
• Rob Lemeire – no clear statement or summary of position, but appears to be saying that mitigating climate change is too expensive (at least not without including a nuclear power option)
• Christopher Monckton – believes that there’s no causative link between CO2 levels and global temperatures, but accepts the greenhouse effect exists and CO2 contributes to it

The thing with the denialist umbrella is that it covers a range of people from those who deny that there’s any significant warming at all (Terry Dunleavy), those who think there is some warming but it’s all natural, those who think that we are not warming at all but are in fact going into a cooling phase, those who don’t deny warming but think that doing anything about it is too expensive, those who just think that the risks associated with warming are overblown and we should just chill, those who think that global warming is a positive thing (hello Tropical Canada, with all its beaches!), those who think that there’s a conspiracy (for monetary gain, or due to ineptitude and or ideological corruption on the part of the IPCC), those who think that the authorities are meddling with the data to make it fit the predictions, those who have alternate theories (like the iris hypothesis), those who are denying climate change out of vested interest or political allegiance or a hatred of greenies and so on.

On the other side, you have a preponderance of evidence of that there is warming in line with the increasing concentration of atmosphere CO2 (and methane).  One single message.  It’s getting warmer, generally in line with the models and the consequences are unlikely to be good.  Sufficiently bad, in fact, to be considered by some to be an emergency.

Seems Implausible

I've often been curious as what precisely is meant by the term “plausible” in apologetics.  WLC and his ilk* frequently bang on about how their arguments build a cumulative case based on their being "more plausible than not".  I wondered whether they have looked a dictionary (my emphasis):

plausible (google)

adjective

(of an argument or statement) seeming reasonable or probable.

"a plausible explanation"

(of a person) skilled at producing persuasive arguments, especially ones intended to deceive.

"a plausible liar"

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plausible (merriam webster)

1:  superficially fair, reasonable, or valuable but often specious <a plausible pretext>

2:  superficially pleasing or persuasive <a swindler… , then a quack, then a smooth, plausible gentleman — R. W. Emerson>

3:  appearing worthy of belief

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plausible (dictionary.com)

adjective

1. having an appearance of truth or reason; seemingly worthy of approval or acceptance; credible; believable:

a plausible excuse; a plausible plot.

2. well-spoken and apparently, but often deceptively, worthy of confidence or trust:

a plausible commentator.

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plau·si·ble (thefreedictionary)

adj.

1.    Seemingly or apparently valid, likely, or acceptable; credible:

a plausible excuse.

2. Persuasive or ingratiating, especially in an effort to deceive.

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It seems odd to me that the term "plausible" should be used so frequently by WLC when it is so tightly linked to the mere appearance of truth, validity and reason and also to deceptiveness.

Why not avoid that problem by using the phrase "more likely than not" or "more reasonable than not" or "more consistent with the facts than not"?

And yes, I know, Blackwell gives "plausible" a specific philosophical meaning, but even that should be read carefully (my emphasis again):

A claim is plausible if it subjectively seems worthy of belief even if we have not necessarily studied its objective ground

This doesn't really do much more than say that something is plausible if it's superficially convincing or comes from a subjectively credible authority.  And it includes a caveat such that when we have a claim that is “plausible”, we have not fully (or properly) investigated the evidence in support of it.  A claim that is completely wrong can still be plausible, and an (apparently) implausible claim can be right.

This doesn't, subjectively speaking, seem to be the best of grounds on which to argue for the existence of one’s god.  Belief in maybe but, honestly, is minimal justification for belief all the theist is after?  This doesn’t seem plausible.

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Examples of use of the phrase “more plausible than not” but WLC and his ilk:

William Lane Craig - apologist

William Dembski and Bruce Gordon - IDiots

Steven Dunn – apologist

WLC actually seems to be one the most frequent users of the phrase.  Here’s what he had to say in a booklet, Five Arguments for God:

In fact, if the premises, taken together, are more plausible than not, then the conclusion is guaranteed to be more plausible than not, and so you should believe it.

Apparently, WLC believes that there is an obligation to believe that which is plausible.

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There’s an interesting effect of negation in English which I suspect sneaks past many people.  Naively it seems that the use of “not” or negating prefixes such as “im-” imply some sort of negative reflection of the concept in question.  But this is not the case.  Consider the words “possible” and “impossible” in the following context:

It is ____________ that X (where X = (X is true)).

If we think of a phase space, mapping out the modalities of X, there might be only a very small area in which X is possible meaning that everywhere else in that phase space, X is impossible.  If there is no part of the phase space in which X is necessary (where is it not possible for X to be impossible), then across the entirety of that phase space, it is possible that not-X = (X is not true).  In other words, impossible, or not possible, is a much stronger concept than a “possible not”.

This imbalance in the strength of a term and its negation applies also to plausible (and implausible), perhaps even more so.  Because the bar for being plausible is set so low, it becomes a major issue if a claim fails to clear to that bar – so that a claim is “implausible” is a very strong statement.  When saying that a claim is “implausible”, you are not implying that it’s plausible that the claim isn’t true, you’re not even implying that the claim doesn’t seem reasonable or probable, but rather you are implying that it’s not possible for the claim to seem reasonable or probable.

I note that WLC does not shy away from appealing to the (apparent) implausibility of competing hypotheses, sometimes saying they are “extraordinarily implausible”.  I suspect that these sorts of claims are quite effective as rhetoric, in part because of an implicit understanding of how strong an appeal to implausibility actually is.

That all said, I detect a bit of manoeuvring on the part of WLC to avoid any problematic claims to certainty.  For example, from the WLC-Tooley debate:

Now I'm not claiming that I can prove that God exists with some kind of mathematical certainty. I’m just claiming that on balance the evidence is such that theism is more plausible than not. Let me present, therefore, six reasons why I think it’s more plausible that God exists than that atheism is true.

I think what WLC is doing here, consciously or not, trying to eat his cake and eat it too.  He first claims to not achieve an unrealistic standard of proof (some kind of mathematical certainty) and then he compares a plausibility claim with an implausibility claim.  Such a comparison is a rhetorical cheat.

The theist should not really be comparing the plausibility of her belief claims again their implausibility.  She should instead be digging deeper into those claims and going beyond questions of plausibility, beyond questions of appearance, seeming and subjectivity and looking at the objective grounding of her particular form of theism.  But of course, this is unlike to be an approach that an apologist would promote.

Where a World View Leads

There are far too many people labouring under the misapprehension that either atheism is a world view (it isn't) or that atheists derive their world view from their atheism (which I don't think they do, but I guess I can be convinced that some might, if any atheists can argue that case from personal experience).

Here's my position.  I'm generally a sceptical and evidential type of person.  The first means that I don't immediately accept anything as true, whether that be what someone tells me (irrespective of the medium: voice, writing, video ... I might be a little unsettled by telepathy, given that is something I consider to not exist).  I have evidence to support such scepticism given that I know people to hold false beliefs, to misunderstand situations, to be susceptible to illusions and delusions and to misrepresent the truth (whatever "the truth" may be).  The second merely means that I go where the (compelling) evidence leads, and if there is no evidence, I don't go anywhere.  If evidence points towards a number of options, then I might move towards those options, but I don't choose one of them and go all the way with it (at least not based on that one point of evidence).

This scepticism and evidentialism is what lies behind my world view: that people are often deluded, that claims without compelling evidence are almost always erroneous (and even more so when there have been thousands of years in which compelling evidence could have been collated if it in fact existed) and that good intentions are not sufficient.  (That's not the entirety of my world view, but the currently relevant elements are there.)  Out of that falls my overt and explicit atheism, as opposed to the neutral atheism that I had from birth.

Do other atheists recognise something of their position in this?

Do any theists comprehend the difference between this position and the concept that an atheist's world view might be driven by their atheism?

Planting a Special Plea for Warrant

Putting out a Warrant for Plantinga

If William Lane Craig were the Crown Prince of Christian Apologists then Alvin Plantinga would be one of his key advisors.  A couple of times now I have found that arguments coming out of WLC’s mouth had actually originated in the brain of Plantinga.  Given the damage that could be wrought by an apologist with some intelligence and formal training, I thought that Plantinga might be worth a closer look.

This led directly to me listening to a couple of longer presentations by Plantinga, for example an Unbelievable interview hosted by Justin Brierly in which Stephen Law also took part and a “debate” between Plantinga and Daniel Dennett.   This article draws quite heavily on the latter.

The engagement between Plantinga and Dennett was titled “Debate: Science and Religion: Are they compatible?” but it was not really a debate.  It was structured like this:

·         Plantinga (43 minutes) – defence of the proposal that science and religion are compatible, consisting in the main of a basic sketch of his Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism together with a reference to the Irreducible Complexity argument of Michael Behe.

·         Dennett (35 minutes) – attack on the proposal that science and religion are compatible, basically by indicating that religion can only be considered compatible with science if one accepts gratuitous claims and that any compatibility that religion has with science exists only to the extent that the claims of religion are not testable

·         Plantinga (10 minutes) – response to Dennett

·         Question and Answer session (17 minutes)

Plantinga spent a lot of time going over his probability theory, a version of which I have already addressed elsewhere, but I want to focus on two things he said.  The first is this little chunk of Christian goodness:

…if theistic belief is true then it probably doesn’t require propositional evidence for its rational acceptability.  As I argued in this book, Warranted Christian Belief, if theistic belief is true, then very likely it has both rationality and warrant in the basic way; that is not on the basis of propositional evidence.  If theistic belief is true then very likely there is a cognitive structure something like John Calvin’s sensus divinitatus, an original warranted source of theistic belief.  This way, belief in God, like belief in other minds, has its own source of rationality and warrant and doesn’t rely on arguments from other sources for these estimable qualities.  The demise of the theological argument, if indeed evolution has compromised it, is perhaps little more of a threat to rational belief in God than the demise of the argument from analogy for other minds is to rational belief in other minds.

To put this in context, you might want to know what Plantinga means by “warrant”:

According to Plantinga, warrant involves four factors:

·         the mechanisms producing the belief must be functioning properly;

·         they must be operating in a cognitive environment for which they are suited;

·         they must be operating according to a design plan or aspects of a design plan aimed at arriving at the truth; and

·         the objective probability must be high that operating in this manner will reach the truth.

(James B. Freeman in Acceptable Premises: An Epistemic Approach to an Informal Logic Problem p44)

Plantinga has argued for a new definition of knowledge, being warranted true belief as opposed to justified true belief (although it could be argued that Plantinga is merely arguing that “warrant” is a better form of justification to those in traditional theories of justification).  I touched on “justified true belief” when discussing my world view (when I did so, I was describing an empirical variant of coherentism, not that I would necessarily consider myself an “empirical coherentist”).  Because Plantinga wants to replace standard forms of justification with warrant, we might be justified in looking more closely at what both mean.

KNOWLEDGE
Warranted True Belief	Justified True Belief
That which is known is believed	That which is known is believed
That which is known is true	That which is known is true
The belief in that which is known is warranted	The belief in that which is known is justified

Comparing warrant and justification:

Warrant	Justification
Belief is generated correctly	The believer is not deluded
Belief is generated in a suitable environment	The believer is using suitably collated data
Belief generation must be operating according to a “design plan” aimed at arriving at the truth	The believer is using an appropriate method for processing available data to reach a conclusion
Objective probability that the truth will be arrived at via the belief generation mechanism is high	If the believer is not deluded, is using suitably collated data and is using an appropriate method to process available data, then the probability of the believer arriving at the truth will be high

 Plantinga doesn’t really seem to be adding anything to justification, unless his use of the term “design plan” is meant to be literal (which he denies) or if his fourth point is intended to be more than a summation of the previous three.  He does, however, seem to be taking two things away.

It’s difficult to take Plantinga at his word when he writes:

it is perhaps possible that evolution (undirected by God or anyone else) has somehow furnished us with our design plans

and also refers to “belief-forming and belief-maintaining apparatus of powers … working the way it ought to work”.  He could mean this usage to be figurative, in the sense that a materialist atheist with cancer might say “my body isn’t dealing with this problem the way it ought to” meaning “certain cells in my body are reproducing without limitation, leading to the growth of tumors which are not recognised as alien and thus not removed by my body’s defences and this state of affairs will lead to my dying earlier than otherwise would be the case – an outcome which I consider to be suboptimal”.  However, I don’t think so.  I think Plantinga means for the four factors underlying warrant to be understood (by the right audience) approximately as follows:

·         Warranted true belief is generated using a design plan which is intended to arrive at the truth, if

·         the design plan was well crafted so as to lead to a high probability that truth will be arrived at, when

·         the belief is generated according to that design plan, and

·         the belief is generated in an environment which is appropriate for the design plan

If I am correct, Plantinga’s warrant can be summed up as “Warranted true belief is a belief that God expressly designed humans to have”.  Now, iff knowledge (which is defined as warranted true belief) is defined as God given, then the existence of God is a fundamental fact, a basic truth, because without God there is no knowledge.

Note that I used “iff” deliberately, rather than “if”.  The term “iff” means “if and only if”.

This is what we atheists call a theological argument.  Plantinga, on the other hand, calls this a “philosophical” argument.

Try reading through the extract from Plantinga’s presentation again.  I’ll help by converting the phrase “if theistic belief is true” to “if God exists” (see Plantinga’s definition of naturalism as discussed in Planting a Tiger for a justification).  The word “it” becomes “belief in God” in two instances.

…if God exists then belief in God probably doesn’t require propositional evidence for its rational acceptability.  As I argued in this book, Warranted Christian Belief, if God exists, then very likely belief in God has both rationality and warrant the basic way; that is not on the basis of propositional evidence.  If God exists then very likely there is a cognitive structure something like John Calvin’s sensus divinitatus, an original warranted source of belief in God.  This way, belief in God, like belief in other minds, has its own source of rationality and warrant and doesn’t rely on arguments from other sources for these estimable qualities.  The demise of the ontological argument, if indeed evolution has compromised it, is perhaps little more of a threat to rational belief in God than the demise of the argument from analogy for other minds is to rational belief in other minds.

Now some readers might divine from this that Plantinga is saying that you don’t need evidence to believe in God and that believing in God, even in the absence of evidence, would be “very likely” rational.  Some might just read it as saying that logical arguments (resulting in propositional evidence) don’t affect the existence or non-existence of God.  The latter is of course true.

I might have a very good argument that Kim Kardashian does not exist, for example, no-one I know has ever met her.  The brilliance of this argument, however, has no effect whatsoever on the existence or otherwise of Kim (or indeed any other possible form of Kardashian).

However, I suggest that Plantinga really means the former – the very weak claim that iff God exists, then believing in such a God would be rational even in the absence of evidence.  But he goes further.  Time for the second chunk of Christian goodness from that “debate”:

And even if contrary to fact, there were scientific evidence for unguided evolution and hence for atheism, that would by no means settle the issue.  Suppose there is scientific evidence against theism, it doesn’t follow that theism is false or that theists have a defeater for their beliefs, or that theistic belief is irrational, or in some other way problematic.  Perhaps there is also scientific evidence or otherwise for theism.  But second and more important, as I mentioned, if theism is true, it is likely that it has its own intrinsic and basic source of warrant …

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Plantinga said, in a “debate” in which he was arguing that religion and science are compatible, that if there is scientific evidence against theism (noting that evidence against a hypothesis is the only scientific evidence worth having, since hypotheses only survive in their original form as long as there is no evidence against them), then the theist can just ignore that inconvenient scientific evidence and instead rely on the possibility that there might possibly be some evidence for theism or, alternatively, rely on a completely hypothetical sense (sensus divinitatis), for which there is absolutely no scientific evidence at all, as your basic source of “warrant”.  Remembering of course that a warranted true belief looks like this:

“I believe that God made me in such a way that I will believe that God exists, therefore God exists”.

This is, in context, an admission that religion is fully compatible with pseudoscience, but not actual science.

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Just in case anyone is in any doubt, in science if you have evidence against your hypothesis (and by that I mean proper evidence, not false evidence), then your hypothesis is false.  End of story.

You can have evidence which does not support your hypothesis which might not necessarily be a hypothesis killer, but this is usually due to poor framing of the hypothesis or difficulty with obtaining experimental data.  Years of not finding evidence for the Higgs Boson did not disprove the hypothesis that it exists because no evidence against existence of the boson was obtained either.

If you only accept evidence which supports your hypothesis and you ignore any other sort of evidence, then you have pseudoscience.  That approach puts you in the same category as the 9/11 Truthers, Alien Abduction enthusiasts, Loch Ness Monster spotters, astrologers, mediums, water dowsers, shamans, homeopathy practitioners, homotoxicologists, quantum healers, moon landing hoaxers, Holocaust deniers, millenarianists, flat earthers, Nibiru cataclysmists, rumpologists and theists.

Many of the claims of a pseudoscience are not strictly testable but sometimes theists, like the Intelligent Design crowd, make outlandish claims and these can be shown to be false:

God must exist because the eye cannot have evolved naturally – shown to be false

God must exist because irreducible complexity is impossible via evolution – shown to be false

God must exist because evolution is false since it’s ridiculous to imagine that humans evolved from monkeys – shown to be false (the subordinate claim about human descent from monkeys being ridiculous is agreed but it’s irrelevant to the evolution argument since monkeys and humans have a common ancestor – the link isn’t actually proof, per se, but an explanation)

What science can do, and does, is chip away at all the “God must exist because ...” arguments.  Eventually, the theist is left with no undefeated claim for the necessity of God.

What the average theist can then do, and obviously does, is retreat into a form of special pleading (“my hypothesis is special and has God in it, therefore it doesn’t need evidence”).