Retrospective evidentialism – can we avoid it?

In his recent debate with William Lane Craig, Christopher Hitchens accuses Craig, and apologists like him, of a sort of retrospective evidentialism. This accusation suggests that apologists use whatever evidence is on hand after the fact, where the fact is the cognitive event of believing in God. Hitchens’ related question is essentially, “What happens when the science changes?” This is a rhetorical question, suggesting that the Christian apologist will simply find ways to use whatever is the scientific evidence to prove various Christian propositions.

In some ways this argument is ad hominem. It finds a kind of moral fault with the apologist – that he is being in some way intellectually dishonest. The argument does not show that, say, an argument from fine tuning is in any way fallacious. But it does seem to undermine what we might, following Plantinga, call the warrant of the apologist’s beliefs, if not the validity of his arguments. Specifically, we might think that this “retrospective evidentialism” is not a reliable method of acquiring true or justified beliefs.

I think this line of argument is very interesting. It certainly cuts to the heart of something that is obnoxious about idealogues (in any context, not just theism). But what I think is more interesting is the implications it has for virtually all of our beliefs, even apart from evidentialism.

Do you think very many people come to their beliefs via evidence or reason-based argumentation? I suspect not. It seems to me that even in the case of philosophers, individuals seek to find grounds for beliefs they already have. In the course of this they may modify their beliefs, but very rarely do they reverse them. Imagine Dan Dennett setting out to write Breaking the Spell, and in the process coming to believe that religion is not a natural phenomenon. It seems to me that no one is even curious about whether this might happen. Why not? Because we have a very unflattering unconscious assumption about ourselves – that our evidence, reasons, and arguments are actually retrofitted to beliefs we already have.

There is nothing especially innovative about this idea, but I think it is at least another nail in the coffin of foundationalist ways of looking at epistemology. What is troubling, however, is that this is something we accept on large scales (daily life; philosophy; natural science) but consider intellectually dishonest on small scales (individual apologists). So: is it or is it not important to start from the ground up any time we examine new evidence and reasons? Is it or is it not intellectually dishonest to tend toward the incorporation of new evidence into already existing belief systems? Or even to seek such new evidence to support these systems? It seems to me that the latter options are perfectly natural, reflecting how our cognitive tools work. But it creates at least minor dissonance in my thinking when isolated cases of retrospective evidentialism are showcased, because they seem so irritating and obviously dishonest.