Thinking Christian offers a review of Alvin Plantinga’s new book, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism,, titled “Plantinga: There’s No Good Argument For Design, But Who Needs One?”:
… he comes to a surprising conclusion about Intelligent Design. To put it perhaps somewhat “inaccurately but suggestively,” borrowing one of his own phrases from another context (p. 331), there’s no really good argument for ID, but there are persuasive reasons to believe it’s true regardless.
To understand that, one must understand how Plantinga thinks: For example,
… if there is no design argument, does that mean no design, and no designer? No. For Plantinga it’s much simpler than an argument. Design is just apparent in the world. We can see it, as we can see that the world wasn’t created intact in its current form just five minutes ago, that our memories are at least somewhat trustworthy, that there are other people (other minds) in the world besides ourselves. No argument that could prove these things true, yet we know them with trustworthy knowledge regardless. These are “basic beliefs:” things we know without having to call upon a string of inferences to support that knowledge.
Of course, the problem is, there are people out there who would rather believe in multiverses, giant sims, or holograms, and they insist that what they are doing is science.