Theism and Explanation - Appeared-to-Blogly

Against Religious Explanations 15
explanation for everything. But . . . when explanation is complete, science
(and genuine explanation) is dead. 75
A similar view of religious explanations has been put forward by Robert
Pennock. Pennock argues that religious explanations are “immune from
disconfi rmation,” since they “give no guidance about what follows or
does not follow from their supernatural components.” 76 For Pennock, this
is a consequence of the fact that the agent whom they invoke is capable
of working miracles. For this reason, “nothing defi nite can be said about
the processes that would connect a given effect with the will of the supernatural
agent—God might simply say the word and zap anything in or
out of existence.” 77
1.3.3 Deciding the Issue
So the key question for opponents of religious explanations is: Are such
explanations fl awed in principle, or merely superseded in practice? From
the atheist’s point of view, a “fl awed in principle” answer would be preferable,
since it would “put a merciful end to all the nonsense.” But is it true?
There are two ways in which I could attempt to answer that question. One
option would be to survey the in principle objections that have been offered
to such explanations, perhaps from Darwin onwards, to see if such objections
are well founded. But this would not necessarily settle the issue, for
there may be other objections that have not yet been raised. And in any
case, many of these objections appear misguided. It may be possible to
formulate better ones.
Some of the in principle objections to which I have referred hark back
to the accusation that religious propositions are meaningless, or at least
unscientifi c, because they are unfalsifi able. 78 There is, however, an ambiguity
here. When philosophers argue that a theory is “unfalsifi able,” they
may mean that there are no possible observations that would demonstrate
its falsity. If this were true, the theory would be unfalsifi able, in the strict
sense of the term. But they may mean something quite different, namely
that the proponents of the theory adopt all manner of ad hoc strategies to
avoid admitting that their theory has been falsifi ed. 79 This latter does not
necessarily indicate a weakness in their theory, although it does represent a
moral failure on the part of its proponents.
Now it may be the case that many religious believers are guilty of this
failure: they refuse to admit there are facts that demonstrate their beliefs to
be false. But that does not mean their beliefs are unfalsifi able in the strict
sense. On the contrary, it assumes that there are facts—such as the existence
of gratuitous evils—that constitute evidence against religious explanations.
80 And while it is true that some proposed religious explanations
do appear to be unfalsifi able, because they lack empirical content (3.2.3),
they can often be made falsifi able by a more careful formulation. That