On the particular argument, you might want to take a look at the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_argument_against_naturalism
The "evolutionary argument against naturalism" seems to go back to CS Lewis, and Alvin Plantina attempted to formulate it in Bayesian terms. There is a rather devastating response from Fitelson and Sober. In particular:
For the fact of the matter is that our cognitive mechanisms are reliable on some subjects, unreliable on others, and of unknown reliability on still others. We should divide our beliefs into categories and associate a characteristic degree of reliability with each of them. Perhaps certain simple perceptual beliefs are very reliable, while beliefs about other subjects are less so...
Once we decompose ... into a conjunction of claims, it is far from obvious that evolutionary theory does a worse job of predicting this conjunction than traditional theism does. Plantinga says the traditional theist “believes that God is the premier knower and has created us human beings in his image, an important part of which involves his endowing them with a reflection of his powers as a knower (p. 237).” However, an influential point of view in cognitive science asserts that human reasoning is subject to a variety of biases. It isn’t just that people occasionally make mistakes, but that the human reasoning faculty seems to follow heuristics that lead to systematic error (Kahnemann, Tversky, and Slovic 1982). It would be no surprise, from an evolutionary point of view, if human beings had highly reliable devices for forming beliefs about practical issues that affect survival and reproduction, but are rather less gifted when it comes to matters of philosophy, theology, and theoretical science. Does traditional theology also predict this result? No doubt, a theology can be specified that makes any prediction one wants. However, it is not at all clear that Plantinga’s traditional theology does a good job predicting the varying levels of reliability that the human mind exhibits. Plantinga must address the same problem that Paley’s design argument faces: Why would an omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent deity produce organisms who seem to be so manifestly imperfect in the adaptations they exhibit (Sober 1993)?
So, a little background- I've just come out as an atheist to my dad, a Christian pastor, who's convinced he can "fix" my thinking and is bombarding me with a number of flimsy arguments that I'm having trouble articulating a response to, and need help shutting down. The particular issue at the moment deals with non-theistic explanations for human psychology and things like love, morality, and beauty. After attempting to communicate explanations from evolutionary psychology, I was met with amused dismissal of the subject as "speculation".
There's one book in particular he's having me read- The Reason for God by Timothy Keller. In the book, he brings up evolutionary psychology as an alternative to theistic explanations, and immediately dismisses it as apparently self-defeating.
"Evolutionists say that if God makes sense to us, it is not because he is really there, it's only because that belief helped us survive and so we are hardwired for it. However, if we can't trust our belief-forming faculties to tell us the truth about God, why should we trust them to tell us the truth about anything, including evolutionary science? If our cognitive faculties only tell us what we need to survive, not what is true, why trust them about anything at all?" -Timothy Keller
The obvious answer is that knowing the truth about things is generally advantageous to survival- but it hardly addresses the underlying assertion- that without [incredibly specific collection of god-beliefs and assorted dogmas], human brains can't arrive at truth because they weren't designed for it. And of course, I'm talking to a guy with an especially exacting definition of "truth" (100% certainty about the territory)- I could use an LW post that succinctly discusses the role and definition of truth, there.
Another thing Dad likes to do is back me into a corner WRT morality and moral relativism- "Oh, but can you really believe that the act of rape doesn't have an inherent [wrongness]? Are you saying it was justified for [insert historical monster] to do [atrocity] because it would make him reproductively successful?" Armed only with evolutionary explanations for their behavior, I couldn't really respond- possibly my fault, since I haven't read the Morality sequence on account of I got stuck in the Quantum Physics ultrasequence, and knowing that reality is composed of complex amplitudes flowing between explicit configurations or aaasasdjgasjdga whatever the frig even (I CAN'T) has proven to be staggeringly unhelpful in this situation.
In addition to particular arguments WRT the question posed, I could also use recommendations for good, well-argued and accessible books on the subject of evolutionary psychology, with a focus on practical experimental results and application- the guy can't be given a book and not read it, so I'm hoping to at least get him to not dismiss the science as "speculation" or a joke. It's likely he's aware that the field evolutionary psychology is really prone to hindsight bias and thus ignores it completely, so along with the book, a good article or study demonstrating the accuracy and predictive power of the evolutionary psychological model would be appreciated.
Thanks!