Richard Dawkins (born 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and a prominent public intellectual who became one of the most visible proponents of the “New Atheist” movement in the early 21st century. As the former Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, his popular books, including The Selfish Gene (1976) and The God Delusion (2006), have been highly influential in shaping the public perception that Darwinian evolution is fundamentally incompatible with religious belief. In Where the Conflict Really Lies, Dawkins serves as a primary interlocutor whose claims exemplify the “conflict thesis” that Plantinga seeks to dismantle.

Dawkins’s central relevance to the book stems from his forceful assertion that natural selection is an unguided, random process with no end design. Plantinga quotes Dawkins’s famous declaration from The Blind Watchmaker (1986): “Natural selection, the blind, unconscious automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind” (14). This claim provides Plantinga with a clear target. He argues that Dawkins conflates the scientific theory of evolution with an added metaphysical premise—that the process is unguided. Plantinga’s method is to carefully separate the two, showing that one can fully accept the science of evolution without adopting the atheistic philosophy that Dawkins attaches to it. In refuting Dawkins, Plantinga establishes his core thesis: theism’s conflict is not with the science of evolution itself, but with the specific philosophical commitment to naturalism that Dawkins champions.

Daniel Dennett (1942-2024) was an American philosopher of mind and cognitive science and another leading voice of the “New Atheist” movement. A longtime professor at Tufts University, his book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995) argues that evolution is a universal, algorithmic process that explains the emergence of complexity, including consciousness and culture, without any need for a creator or guiding intelligence. Along with Richard Dawkins, Dennett serves as a key intellectual opponent for Plantinga, representing a sophisticated philosophical defense of scientific naturalism.

Dennett’s argument is significant because it extends Darwinian thinking beyond biology, treating natural selection as a universal acid that dissolves traditional concepts of purpose, meaning, and God. He argues that Darwin’s idea creates “Design out of Chaos without the aid of Mind” (31). This universalized, mindless, and algorithmic view of reality provides a direct challenge to theism, which positions God as the ultimate source of order and existence. Plantinga uses Dennett’s claims to illustrate what he sees as a common philosophical overreach, where a scientific mechanism is elevated into an all-encompassing metaphysical worldview.

Dennett’s work catalyzes some of the book’s most important philosophical analyses. His insistence on a purely algorithmic world prompts Plantinga to explore the concepts of divine guidance, miracles, and special intervention, arguing that they are not incompatible with scientific laws. Furthermore, Dennett’s naturalistic account of the mind becomes a key target for Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism.

Michael Behe (born 1952) is an American biochemist at Lehigh University and a leading proponent of the modern intelligent design (ID) movement. He is best known for his 1996 book, Darwin’s Black Box, in which he introduced the concept of “irreducible complexity.” Behe argues that certain biochemical systems, such as the bacterial flagellum and the blood-clotting cascade, are composed of multiple interacting parts, where the removal of any one part causes the system to cease functioning. He further implies that this biological complexity is best explained by intelligent design rather than by undirected evolutionary processes. Plantinga presents Behe’s work, not as conclusive scientific proof of God but as a central case study in Design Discourse as Modest Support for Theism.

By analyzing the intense scientific controversy surrounding Behe’s claims, Plantinga illustrates how his epistemological framework handles scientific challenges. For Plantinga, the criticisms against Behe may serve as partial defeaters, weakening but not necessarily eliminating the rationality of perceiving design. This analysis allows Plantinga to move beyond the simplistic notion that science either proves or disproves God, instead offering a more nuanced model of how scientific evidence interacts with rational belief.

Philip Kitcher (born 1947) is a distinguished philosopher of science at Columbia University, known for his work on the philosophy of biology and pragmatism. In books like Living with Darwin (2007), Kitcher presents a measured version of the naturalist critique of religion. Unlike the more polemical “New Atheists,” he argues not for a complete incompatibility but that Darwinian evolution poses significant challenges to what he calls “providentialist religion” (55)—the belief in a caring God who actively guides history and is concerned with humanity.

Kitcher’s relevance in Where the Conflict Really Lies is as a representative of a more thoughtful opposition. He raises substantive evidential challenges, such as the problem of natural evil made apparent by the wastefulness and suffering inherent in the evolutionary process. These arguments provide Plantinga with the opportunity to articulate his “superficial conflict, deep concord” thesis with greater nuance. Kitcher’s challenges are not easily dismissed, forcing Plantinga to develop careful replies concerning theodicy, the scope of divine providence, and the nature of design.

By engaging with Kitcher’s more refined arguments, Plantinga is able to demonstrate his framework for handling apparent science-religion conflicts. He argues that challenges like the one from evolutionary evil constitute, at most, a “superficial conflict” because they do not necessarily defeat theistic belief when considered within the believer’s total evidence base. Kitcher thus serves as an ideal intellectual foil, allowing Plantinga to show how his epistemological system can acknowledge scientific challenges without conceding that they are fatal to theism.

Paul Draper (born 1957) is an American philosopher of religion associated with Purdue University. He is influential for his work on the problem of evil and his use of probabilistic or Bayesian reasoning to assess theism. Draper is a key interlocutor for Plantinga, particularly in his argument that the fact of evolution is more probable under naturalism than under theism. This evidential argument presents a direct, technical challenge that Plantinga addresses at length.

Draper’s argument is relevant because it moves the debate from a simple question of logical compatibility to one of probabilistic evidence. He claims that evolution, with its apparent wastefulness and lack of clear direction, is precisely what one might expect in a naturalistic universe, whereas a theist has reason to expect God to use a more purposeful method. This forces Plantinga to engage in a technical philosophical discussion about the nature of evidence and probability.

In response to Draper, Plantinga develops and clarifies one of the book’s key methodological tools: his distinction between a limited scientific evidence base and a believer’s total evidence base. He argues that while evolution might seem more probable on naturalism when viewed in isolation, this does not hold when one considers the full scope of a theist’s knowledge and warranted beliefs. Draper’s challenge thus allows Plantinga to articulate his “defeater-deflector” strategy, claiming that core theistic beliefs can rationally deflect potential defeaters arising from scientific evidence.

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and philosopher-theologian whose work, particularly the Summa Theologica (1274), is often associated with the pinnacle of scholastic thought. He integrated Aristotelian philosophy with Christian doctrine, creating a comprehensive framework for understanding faith, reason, divine action, and creation. For Plantinga, Aquinas is a foundational authority for the classical theism he defends. Aquinas’s thought provides the theological scaffolding for Plantinga’s “deep concord” thesis.

Plantinga frequently draws on Aquinian concepts to argue for The Deep Concord Between Theism and Science. The most crucial of these is the doctrine of the imago dei, or the image of God. Plantinga quotes Aquinas to establish that humanity’s rational nature is a reflection of God’s intellect: “rational creatures seem somehow to attain a representation of [that] type in virtue of imitating God not only in this, that he is and lives, but especially in this, that he understands” (4). From this, Plantinga argues that theism explains why our cognitive faculties are reliable and why the universe is intelligible. The belief that a rational creator made both our minds and the world ensures the “adequation of the intellect to reality” (269) that makes science possible.

Aquinas’s enduring influence on doctrines of natural law, divine providence, and the inherent order of creation connects medieval theological insights to the success of modern science. For Plantinga, Aquinas represents a historical and intellectual tradition in which faith and reason are not in conflict but are complementary paths to understanding a rationally ordered universe created by God. This provides a counter-narrative to the modern assumption that science and religion are inherently at odds.

John Calvin (1509-1564) was a French theologian and a principal figure in the Protestant Reformation, whose seminal work is the Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536). Plantinga draws on Calvin’s theological framework, particularly his concept of the sensus divinitatis (sense of the divine), to build his own system of reformed epistemology.

Calvin’s relevance to Plantinga’s argument is primarily epistemological. He argued that human beings have an innate, natural awareness of God, a sense that is not the product of inference or argument but is implanted in the human mind by God. This idea, along with Calvin’s emphasis on the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit, forms the basis for Plantinga’s claim that belief in God can be “properly basic”—that is, it can be rational and warranted without being based on other beliefs. This move is crucial for Plantinga’s defense of theism against scientific challenges.

By grounding his epistemology in Calvin’s thought, Plantinga can argue that the demand for scientific or philosophical “proof” for God’s existence is misplaced. If belief in God arises from a properly functioning cognitive faculty (the sensus divinitatis), then it does not need external validation from science. This allows Plantinga to frame his response to scientific defeaters: a scientific theory cannot automatically overturn a belief that is warranted through this independent, God-given faculty. Calvin’s theological legacy thus provides the philosophical tools for Plantinga to defend the rationality of faith in a scientific age.

William Paley (1743-1805) was an English Anglican clergyman and philosopher best known for his work Natural Theology (1802), which presents the famous “watchmaker analogy.” This classic teleological argument posits that just as the complexity of a watch implies a watchmaker, the complexity of biological organisms implies a divine Creator. In the post-Darwinian era, Paley’s argument is often cited as a prime example of a pre-scientific idea decisively refuted by evolution.

Plantinga, however, revisits Paley not to defend the watchmaker argument as a formal proof, but to reinterpret its underlying epistemic move. He argues that Paley’s real insight is not in the structure of his analogy but in his appeal to the immediate perception of design. Plantinga quotes Paley: “when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive […] that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose” (238). For Plantinga, the key word is “perceive.”

This reinterpretation allows Plantinga to shift the discussion from a “design argument” to what he calls “design discourse.” Instead of an inference, the recognition of design can be a direct, basic belief. Paley’s watchmaker analogy, then, serves as a template for this more immediate, perceptual model of design recognition. By adapting Paley’s strategy, Plantinga presents design discourse as modest support for theism. He argues that encountering biological complexity can rationally and directly elicit a belief in design, a belief that is not necessarily defeated by the mere existence of an alternative evolutionary explanation.