Is God Deceiving Us? Evolution and Sound Decision-Making

Alvin Plantinga asks how we can have confidence in our conclusions if we reach them via a brain that is hardwired not for truth, but for survival purposes.

However, if our brains are not hardwired for truth, then what are they hardwired for? Are they hardwired for deception?

Humans are notoriously susceptible to both optical illusions and hypnosis.

If Plantinga is willing to admit that our brains are not hardwired for truth, then what is he acknowledging about the feasibility of a designer? Were our brains purposely set in motion to be deceived?

What is the best explanation? Would a benevolent god really have hardwired our brains for survival but not truth -- deception but not reality?

The god of the Bible may want our attention, our loyalty, our love, and our devotion, but such a god does not want us to perceive it clearly, if Christian and other theistic claims are to be accepted.

This would imply that any such god is either indifferent or malevolent.

If human beings are not wired for sound decision-making, then who could blame Adam or Eve for their transgresion in the Genesis story? Who could blame Lot's wife for looking back at the burning city? If human beings were intentionally wired for deception, then we are really the victims of the divine, if the apologists' claims are to be accepted.

A God who does not want human beings to see the truth is the inevitable result of this line of reasoning, and clearly possesses unacceptable consequences for many commonly-held religious beliefs.

Under this scenario, the Biblical god would be every bit as guilty of deception as Satan himself.

Natural Selection and the Haber Process

The Haber process is responsible for the synthetic mass production of ammonia.

The ammonia is used to make nitrogen fertilizers, which play a critical role in feeding about one third of Earth's population.

The ammonia from the Haber process is also used to make ammunition. Germany used the Haber process during WWI to do this. Some have speculated that Germany could not have waged WWI (or waged it for as long as it did) without the benefit of the Haber process.

So this technology is simultaneously responsible for preserving the lives of over a billion people...and could ultimately be responsible for the deaths of just as many?

Natural selection is comparable to the Haber process. It has led to us, for instance. However, almost all of the species that have ever existed are extinct.

Would an all-knowing, all-loving, all-good god use this kind of mechanism to bring us into existence?