Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism by Alvin Plantinga

theists, God has designed and created the world; he intended that it take a certain form and then caused it to take that form. Further, Dennett claims that all minds have arisen out of matter; that “impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery” preceded the appearance of mind or mental phenomena. 8 But according to theists, of course, there is a mind that did not arise out of matter. It is mind that comes first; God, the premier instance of mind, has always existed, and has always had knowledge and intentions. God has not arisen from matter or anything else, and does not depend on anything else for his existence.
    Dennett apparently thinks that Darwin’s dangerous idea will come to dominate, and that religious belief is doomed to extinction. While he thinks this is a good thing, he also notes that it is always a bit of a pity to lose part of the biosphere’s diversity; he therefore suggests that we should keep a few Baptists and other fundamentalists in something like cultural zoos (no doubt with sizable moats to protect the rest of us right-thinking nonfundamentalists). We should preserve a few Baptists for the sake of posterity—but not, he says, at just any cost. “Save the Baptists,” says he, “but not
by all means
. Not if it means tolerating the deliberate misinforming of children about the natural world.” 9 Save the Baptists, all right, but only if they promise not to misinform their children by teaching them “that ‘Man’ is not a product of evolution by natural selection” and other blatantly objectionable views. 10
    Darwin’s dangerous idea as set out by Dennett is a paradigm example of naturalism. In this regard it is like Bertrand Russell’s famous essay of many years ago, “Why I am not a Christian,” except that where Russell appeals to physics, Dennett appeals to biology. 11 Now Dennett’s naturalism, like Russell’s, is of course inconsistent with theistic religion. But that doesn’t automatically make Darwin’s idea
dangerous
to theistic religion—theists might just note the inconsistency and, sensibly enough,
reject
the idea. Many propositions are inconsistent with theism (for example, “nothing but turtles exist”) but are not a danger to it. Darwin’s idea is dangerous to theism only if it is somehow
attractive
, only if there are good reasons for adopting itand rejecting theism. Why does Dennett think we should
accept
Darwin’s dangerous idea? Concede that it is audacious, with it, revolutionary, anti-medieval, quintessentially contemporary, appropriately reverential towards science, and has that nobly stoical hair-shirt quality Russell said he liked in his beliefs: still, why should we believe it? I
think
Dennett means to attempt an answer to this question (and isn’t merely preaching to the naturalistic choir).
    As far as I can see, Dennett proposes two lines of argument for Darwin’s dangerous idea. The first is a reprise of Dawkins: he claims that it is
possible
that all the variety of the biosphere be produced by mindless natural selection: “The theory of natural selection shows how every feature of the world
can
be the product of a blind, unforesightful, nonteleological, ultimately mechanical process of differential reproduction over long periods of time.” He also claims that “the power of the theory of natural selection is not the power to prove exactly how (pre)history was, but only the power to prove how it could have been, given what we know about how things are.” 12 But does the theory of natural selection really show what Dennett says it does—that every feature of the world, including mind itself “
can
be the product of a blind, unforesightful, nonteleological, ultimately mechanical process of differential reproduction over long periods of time”?
    No. Unlike Dawkins, Dennett at least quotes John Locke, who holds it impossible that “pure incogitative matter should produce a thinking intelligent being.” Locke