Theism and Explanation - Appeared-to-Blogly

36 Theism and Explanation
argued, was meaningful and legitimate insofar as it could be indirectly
correlated with sense data, that is to say, insofar as there existed “empirical
observations” which are “relevant to its truth or falsehood.” 13 But
Ayer argued that such terms refer only to “entities of reason,” which are
“postulated as a means of describing and predicting the course of sensible
phenomena.” 14 We are not entitled to draw any conclusion regarding their
actual existence. For “it is impossible, by any valid process of inference,
to make a transition from what is observed to anything that is conceived
as being, in principle, unobservable.” 15
The foremost contemporary defender of an instrumentalist—or, to
use his own phrase, a “constructive empiricist”—view of science is Bas
van Fraassen. In particular, van Fraassen addresses the particular type of
abductive reasoning known as inference to the best explanation (IBE). He
argues against the idea that the success of an explanation entails its truth.
A particular explanation may be the best explanation on offer, but its truth
is another matter. The inference from success to truth would be defensible
only if we already knew that the true explanation were among the candidate
explanations under consideration. But of course we do not know this.
As van Fraassen writes, “we can watch no contest of the theories we have
so painfully struggled to formulate, with those no one has proposed. So
our selection may well be the best of a bad lot.” 16 What follows? According
to van Fraassen, even if a particular explanation is the best available, we
cannot infer it is true. We cannot infer that the theoretical entities of which
it speaks actually exist.
3.1.2 Theism and Realism
We might expect to encounter corresponding arguments among theological
antirealists. Surprisingly, we do not. Theological antirealists (instrumentalists
or positivists) certainly exist. The best known—and the most explicit
about his antirealism—is Don Cupitt. 17 But while theological antirealists
believe that talk about God has a range of important functions (often ethical),
these functions rarely if ever include explanation. Indeed one school
of theological antirealists, the Wittgensteinians, 18 argue that religion represents
an entirely different “language-game” from that of science. Religious
propositions, they argue, should not be regarded as explanatory
hypotheses. 19 Many, if not most, theistic philosophers disagree. They do
offer theistic explanations, and they do so precisely as theological realists.
Such explanations are most commonly offered in support of belief in the
existence of God. They suggest that the existence of God is the best explanation,
or perhaps the only explanation, of some observable state of affairs.
And by the existence of God such thinkers mean the existence of a being
who is independent of our theories about him. 20
I would like, if possible, to defend this realist assumption. I would like
to say that the success of scientifi c explanations gives us good reason to