Theism and Explanation - Appeared-to-Blogly

176 Notes
104. Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 141.
105. Lipton, Inference to Best Explanation, 24.
106. To take Swinburne’s example (Existence of God, 78), we can explain the
operation of Newton’s laws by reference to Einstein’s theories.
107. If such an explanatory regress is to end at all, it will have to end with a brute
fact, that is to say, a contingent fact of which we have no explanation. For
one cannot invoke a necessary fact to explain a contingent state of affairs.
(See Le Poidevin, Arguing for Atheism, 40–41.)
NOTES TO CHAPTER 4
1. Kim, “Events as Property Exemplifi cations,” 160.
2. Psillos, Causation and Explanation, 79.
3. Swinburne, Existence of God, 160–66.
4. Swinburne suggests that there is much more order in the universe than a universe
needs to have (Existence of God, 156). I have no idea how Swinburne
could know this to be true. But it must be true if the question of why the
universe has the amount of order it does is to be kept distinct from that of
why there exists a universe.
5. Clayton, Explanation, 129.
6. Amar, “G–d is Angry,” para. 3.
7. For a discussion of what he calls the “orgy of theodicy” that followed the
tsunami, see Rosenbaum, “Disaster Ignites Debate.”
8. Psillos, Causation and Explanation, 67.
9. For this symbolization, and its ambiguities, see Lewis, “Causation,” 162.
10. Psillos, Causation and Explanation, 233.
11. Ducasse, “Causation: Perceivable? or Only Inferred?” 178.
12. Schoen, Religious Explanations, 84.
13. Astin, Harkness, and Ernst, “The Effi cacy of ‘Distant Healing,’” 908–10.
14. Benson, Dusek, Sherwood, et al., “Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory
Prayer,” 941.
15. For theological objections, see Cohen, Wheeler, Scott, et al., “Prayer as
Therapy,” 42–43. For a broader set of objections, see Flamm, “Faith
Healing,” 10–14.
16. Steven Nadler, “Malebranche on Causation,” 115–16.
17. Fakhry, Islamic Philosophy, 53–55, 209–17.
18. Copleston, History, 4:196; Jolley, “Introduction,” xxiii.
19. Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, 149. Thomas Aquinas
anticipated this objection (Summa Theologiae 1a 2.3; Selected Philosophical
Writings, 199); the “fi ve ways” are his response.
20. Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, 189. An early modern thinker such as
Malebranche had further reasons for adopting the occasionalist view. For
a Cartesian thinker (such as Malebranche), the Aristotelian doctrine that
created beings had causal powers of their own was barely respectable. It
suggested that they possessed “occult qualities,” which could not be reduced
to matter in motion (Jolley, “Introduction,” xxii; Nadler, “Malebranche on
Causation,” 130).
21. Nadler, “Malebranche on Causation,” 131.
22. Malebranche, Search After Truth, Elucidation 15 (662).
23. McCann and Kvanvig (“The Occasionalist Proselytizer,” 558, 611) agree that
occasionalism is incompatible with what they call “event causation,” if this
is understood as “a relation in which one event is responsible for the existence
of another.” But they claim that occasionalism is compatible with some