detecting agency detection

This post is a response to an interesting debate between Joanna Collicutt McGrath and Martyn Frame on Unbelievable? -- a debate regarding the claim that humans have evolved "agency detection" (AD) and that AD is responsible for our belief in God, so that belief in God is therefore without a rational basis:

Before my criticism of the use of AD to defeat theism, first a criticism of a premise of that just sketched argument: the premise that use a "theory of mind (TOM) " to infer the existence of other agents in the world about us. TOM is integral to Frame's argument, as it characterizes reasoning that leads to God as something like a conjecture about a hidden cause of phenomena... a conjecture for which he finds no adequate warrant.

Now my criticism of TOM: it is ultimately agnostic about the existence of other minds in the way a Popperian is agnostic about the truth of any scientific theory. TOM language strongly suggests that a human being first reasons alone with himself as his own interlocutor, using language all the while to reason about this, and conjectures that there must be a reason for the sounds coming out of others' mouths, and that reason must be the intent to communicate, etc.

Furthermore, anyone who actually thought about other individuals in that fashion would live a thoroughly impoverished personal life. And this consequence illustrates a more general pattern of atheism, which is, in order to propose arguments that get rid of God, one must first conjure up premises that get rid of human dignity.

Of course, a defender of TOM will say, "Of course I didn't mean it that way. Right. And the more I apply the analogy, the more you will have to deny its applicability. Thus the analogy will undergo, as Anthony Flew might say, death by a thousand qualifications.

Alternative to TOM: we discover ourselves as distinctively human agents together with our discovery of others' agency. Particularly as we recognize our pursuit of and enjoyment of a common good: in such situations, the communicative nature of ourselves and others is discovered.

Relevance of this alternative to the present controversy: it may be the case that we discover ourselves at a deeper level by being open to the possibility of God's existing. In other words, communion (with God) is liberation (has someone else already said that?)

Now a criticism of agency detection. First repeat "Rev. Mrs. McGrath's" criticism (okay, she's the wife of Alaistir McGrath but may have kept her own last name) that she gave on the Unbelievable? podcast (don't know the date) while in a friendly debate with an atheist who, like her, teaches psychology. She points out that the story of how we developed agency detection for survival benefit is just that: a story, albeit an interesting one.

I would add that it is not a full blown theory until one can conceive of a way of testing it--which test would have to take seriously OTHER possible explanations. Of course, if one makes it axiomatic that there is no other, then the proposer may be lacking imagination OR at least arguing in a methodological circle (if they take it as axiomatic that because the scientific method cannot find God, then God does not exist). The focus should be, then, on whether they are arguing in a circle of this sort.

My own reply would be that there can be another NATURAL explanation for our belief in God: that is: God is present... in truth, goodness, love, etc. These don't consist so much of imagining that there might be a God or demi-god, as recognizing that a higher reality IS present... not necessarily miraculously... but naturally. In other words, St. Thomas's five ways, combined with his analysis of those five ways, gives us what we need in a manner that remains untouched by the AD argument against God. The fact that there is an evident dimension to reality that can be reduced to atoms pinging about makes our reasoning toward God's existence more than the imagining of a kind of super-man and the conjecturing (think of phlogiston theory) that such an entity must be acting behind the scene (ala Wizard of Oz).

Dialectical argument against the use of AD to defeat theism (with an obvious Giussanian flavor): could you remove the component of AD that makes it natural for us to suspect that there is an ultimate personal being without removing that part of our humanity that we most love? Isn't the openness part of what is noblest about our humanity? Can we separate agency detection from beauty detection? from meaning detection? Don't we want these to be robust? Don't we wither inside if we keep them suppressed?