Theism and Explanation - Appeared-to-Blogly

7 Successful Theistic Explanations
“That Accounts for a Good Deal,” said Eeyore gloomily.
“It Explains Everything. No Wonder.”
A. A. Milne
Once again, let me begin by summarising my argument. There exists a bare,
theoretical possibility that appeal to the action of God might constitute a
potential explanation of some fact. However, such an explanation cannot
merely invoke the existence of a divine agent. The theist would need to posit
a particular divine intention and to show that the fact in question was the
best way in which that intention could have been realised. This “optimality
condition,” as I called it in Chapter 5, sets the bar very high. It may be that
if it were consistently applied (as it rarely is), it would disqualify most if not
all proposed theistic explanations. On close examination, they may turn
out to be not even potential explanations of the facts in question.
However, this is not something I can demonstrate here, for it would
require a case-by-case analysis of the proposed theistic explanations on
offer. So for the sake of the argument, let’s give the theist the benefi t of the
doubt. Let’s assume that the theist has satisfi ed the optimality condition,
and has shown her account of divine action to be a potential explanation
of some fact. What chance is there that it could be regarded as the actual
explanation (2.1.2)? In other words, are we likely ever to encounter a successful
theistic explanation, one that would warrant our acceptance?
In Chapter 6, I set out how this question should be answered. We should
ask if a theistic explanation could ever be regarded as the best explanation
of some observable fact. And I have also suggested how we might make
this judgement: by assessing the proposed explanation against some list of
explanatory virtues. The virtues are best thought of as desiderata rather
than (jointly) necessary conditions: we need not demand of an explanation
that it display all of these virtues. 1 And any theory choice will have
to balance these various desiderata against each other, for they can come
into confl ict. As William Lycan writes, “our preference for any one of the
[explanatory] virtues always comes qualifi ed by ‘other things being equal,’
and the ‘other things’ are the respective degrees of the other virtues.” 2
Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any algorithm that would guarantee
a correct balance in any particular case. (Once again, one can see why
people are attracted by the apparent precision of the alternative, Bayesian
approach.) But the lack of a clear decision procedure does not count against