Science, theism, and different types of belief

Thomas Nagel has a review in the New York Review of Books of Alvin Plantinga's latest, Where the Conflict Really Lies. Nagel says the book's overall claim is that, quoting Plantinga, "there is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism."

As Nagel explains, Plantinga justifies apparent contradictions between empirical, scientific claims and theological ones by distinguishing between different "basic types" of warrented belief--perception, memory, rational intuition, induction, and some others--each of which is sufficient by itself to give us what can rightly be called knowledge, without any evidentiary support from the other basic types. So for example, if I remember that I took a shower this morning, then I can safely say that I know (in the epistemological sense of the word) I took a shower, without any further appeal to any other authority than memory, a basic type. With this in place, Plantinga goes on to argue that theistic claims--e.g. that there is a God--is another basic type of warrented belief alongside all the others, and as such does not require any further appeal to perception or rational intuition in order to be warrented.

Now, I'm not sure if I'm understanding or summarizing that correctly, and I haven't read Platinga's book, BUT I like the general approach of trying to distinguish between types of belief,  and the attempt to find compatability between scientific and theological beliefs by arguing that they are both primitive types, ultimately on equal epistemological footing.

However, to me it's interesting to note how very different the two types are in terms of the role they play for humans. The basic types of belief entailed by science and naturalism--perception, induction, maybe others--are in some sense a mere means to an end, for all we're really interested in when we perceive and make inductions and so forth is to get to a point where our actions make sense and have efficacy in the world around us. For example, if I'm in a room and I see a sofa against the west wall, what matters to me isn't whether the sofa is on the east or north wall or whatever--what matters is that the belief is true, whatever wall it might be, so that if I decide to go sit down I don't fall on the floor, and if I decide to move about the room I don't go stumbling over it. So these scientific beliefs are just messengers, and if we're uninterested in the message--for example, a precise description of the downtown area of Canton, OH--then the messenger, the set of beliefs about downtown Canton, are quickly dropped from our mind entirely, and we care little whether or not the beliefs were true or false. So our scope of interest in scientific beliefs is a function of what we're interested in, what our future plans and intentions are, what are goals are. Certainly, for example, the city developer in Canton will be very interested in the downtown schematics, because of his particular set of goals and interests.

Theological belief, however, is entirely different: we don't need them as a means to move around and enact our will on the world, but rather to fill some spritual void in ourselves that, for whatever reason, needs filling. Thus what matters for these beliefs isn't whether or not they are "true", but whether the subtance of the belief itself is spiritually fulfilling. Unlike the sofa, the actual physical position of which was arbitrary to us--and in which our only concern was simply that, whatever the coordinates of the sofa, they were the correct coordinates--in theological belief the substance of the belief itself is the crucial, important point--does God love me? Does he forgive me?--for simply the act of believing these beliefs is sufficient to get what we want from them, for the beliefs to serve their purpose as spiritual relief from existential dread. And similarly to scientific beliefs, the area of interest in theological questions is a function of our spiritual deficits, our dread, our need for meaningfulness in our lives. In the same way that we are uninterested in the description of downtown Canton because it has nothing to do with our future plans, intentions, and goals, we are also uninterested in, say, whether God prefers the Dodgers, because that question is of no spiritual significance to us. However we are very interested in things like being loved and being good and there being some significance to our lives, and those are at the very core of theistic belief systems.

Another way to put it is to ask: what makes this type of belief fail? For scientific beliefs, the point of failure occurs when our will gets frustrated when we've based our actions on those beliefs--for example, tripping over the couch. That's a result of a misperception of where the couch is, and what you need is a different perceptive belief, specifically, the one that is true and will therefore not lead you to trip on the couch.

For theistic beliefs, however, the point of failure is if you are in a state of misery, existential dread or boredom, or some other thing like that, having based your lifestyle and worldview on those beliefs. So for example if you are a Christian and find your life lacking meaningfulness, then that's like misfaith, or a bad theistic belief. Similarly if you are an atheist and are suffering from a profound sense of amorality in the world, then it seems that you would need to toss out those beliefs and find a different set that sets you to spritual rights.

I acknowledge that this sounds something like the argument you hear from atheists, which is that, "Look, if having religious beliefs makes you feel better, then by all means have those beliefs", reducing religious belief to something exactly like a placebo pill--something that essentially fools the person into feeling better but has no real efficacy in the world. However, I think this really misses the point, for it merely applies the standard of scientific beliefs to theistic beliefs and reasserts the central premise of materialistic naturalism, which is that the only things that exist are those that are described by science.

But I think that, really, the epistemological space opened up by scientific belief and the epistemological space opened up by theistic belief are separate spaces, and they hang together, sometimes harmoniously and sometimes with much dissonance, an organic part of our strange, fragmented animal selves--and it is unclear to me by what standard or criteria you can metaphysically rank one space above the other, and say the one is real and the other is not, as the materialistic naturalist argues. We're animals that need to eat and move around and plan ahead and sit on sofas, but we're also animals that need meaningfulness in our lives and sundry other spiritual salves, and to each of these needs there must be a way of deciding if the need is satisfied, and it is to this end that beliefs, at the most general level, are used. Maybe the best way to think about ourselves is as many different animals crammed into a single vessel, all existing in parallel, each one complete with its own metaphysics. We are large, we contain multitudes....