Plantinga’s probability claims are hand-waving. He never gives a principled way to estimate them, and his examples of adaptive false beliefs (the man who wants to be eaten by tigers) are contrived.

The tiger example is contrived, and even Plantinga’s defenders often drop it. The stronger form of the argument does not need it. It observes that selection acts on behavior, that many behavior-producing belief systems could be adaptive, and that we have no independent way to know ours is the truth-tracking one if naturalism is true. The critics’ reply, that true beliefs are generally more adaptive, is the crux, and it is presented as such in the next exhibit. This is the weakest argument on the site by its own admission, and it should be held that way.