Theism and Explanation - Appeared-to-Blogly

Notes 181
19. Swinburne, Is There a God? 52.
20. Swinburne, Existence of God, 70.
21. Maher, “Confi rmation Theory,” 1.
22. Sober, “Design Argument,” 29. It would be better to say that it is the observation
that is made likely by the hypothesis rather than (as Sober does) that
the hypothesis is made likely. The latter way of expressing the distinction
actually confuses the two issues.
23. Varying the fi gures shows that the higher the prior probability of the evidence,
the less signifi cance can be attributed to a likelihood calculation. Let’s
say that the probability of what we observe (E) is not so surprising a fact,
that its probability is, say 0.5. Then on the other fi gures I’ve given, the probability
of the hypothesis (H) is raised only marginally (to 0.18). This is worth
noting, since at least some of the facts which theists attempt to explain will
not be particularly surprising, particularly if they have well-corroborated
natural explanations (4.3.3.1).
24. In doing so, he allows the earlier arguments to lend cumulative force to the
latter (Existence of God, 12–13), a procedure to which I have no in principle
objection, but which I shall not discuss here.
25. Swinburne, Existence of God, 109.
26. Ibid., 53.
27. Ibid., 66.
28. Ibid., 341.
29. Ibid., 329. There is a person-relative aspect to Swinburne’s argument from
religious experience. For although it does give a role to testimony (ibid., 322–
24), it largely rests on his “principle of credulity” (ibid., 303), which states
that “if it seems (epistemically) to a subject that x is present (and has some
characteristic), then probably x is present (and has that characteristic).”
30. Swinburne, Existence of God, 341.
31. Ibid., 342.
32. Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 272–80.
33. Swinburne, Existence of God, 328.
34. The article in question, Meyer’s “Origin of Biological Information,” was
published in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington in
2004, becoming the fi rst work advocating “design theory” to be published
in a peer-reviewed scientifi c journal. On September 7 that year, the Biological
Society of Washington published a statement repudiating both the article
and intelligent design theory. (The statement is available at http://www.biolsocwash.org.)
For a less than positive review, see Gishlick, Matzke and Elsberry’s
“Meyer’s Hopeless Monster.”
35. Swinburne, Existence of God, 23.
36. Meyer, “Return of the God Hypothesis,” 27; Peacocke, Paths from Science
to God, 32–36; Banner, Justifi cation of Science, 125–53.
37. See, for example, Steinhardt and Turok, “A Cyclic Model of the Universe,”
1436–39.
38. Hempel, Philosophy of Natural Science, 7.
39. Ayer, Foundations of Empirical Knowledge, 231.
40. Thomson, “Cathode Rays,” 293.
41. Ibid.
42. Musgrave, Essays on Realism, 284. Musgrave is here adapting an example
given by John Herschel (Preliminary Discourse, §138 [144–45]), although
in support of rather a different position. Herschel is arguing that we should
appeal to what we already know to be “true causes” (verae causae), Musgrave
that we should adopt the best explanation of the phenomenon. For the
relationship between the two claims, see Sects. 7.2 and 7.5.