Theism and Explanation - Appeared-to-Blogly

38 Theism and Explanation
argue that even the acceptance of a theory entails a certain belief. And so
it does. But what it entails is not necessarily belief in the theory; it can be
belief in some fact about the theory (such as its fruitfulness). 25 Under what
circumstances (if any) IBE would warrant belief (simpliciter) is an important
question, but it is not one I need address here.
All that IBE needs to support, for my purposes, is the kind of commitment
discussed by John Bishop, who has offered a defence of what he
calls (rather misleadingly) religious “belief.” In fact, what Bishop is arguing
is that a religious commitment can sometimes be what he describes as
a “subdoxastic venture.” A subdoxastic venture is one in which we take a
proposition to be true in our practical reasoning, without actually considering
it true, since we realise that it is not adequately supported by the total
available evidence. 26 Bishop offers a William James-style defence of the
conditions under which this might be defensible, on which I shall offer no
comment. But what I am suggesting is that a similar (subdoxastic) attitude
might be defensible if it could be shown that a proposed theistic explanation
was indeed the best explanation on offer of some puzzling phenomenon. I
suspect that Bishop would share my pessimism about the likely success of
such a project, but it is its mere possibility that I wish to argue for here.
3.1.3 Physics and Theology
What I have been arguing is that proposed theistic explanations resemble
some explanations in the natural sciences insofar as they posit an unobservable
entity. But the opponent of proposed theistic explanation might argue
that while this is true, the parallel does not take us very far. The fact that
scientists also posit unobservable entities offers little support to proposed
theistic explanations, for the being whose existence is posited in a theistic
explanation is very different from the entities whose existence is posited,
say, in physics. It may be true that God resembles an electron insofar as he
is generally regarded as inaccessible to observation. 27 But in other respects,
the two are hardly comparable. An electron, however inaccessible it may
be to observation, is at least part of the same physical universe as other,
observable entities. It obeys the same kinds of laws as other entities. And
we have well-established theories about how electrons interact with things
we can observe. The presence of an electron can be traced in a more direct
manner than the presence of God. (It might, for instance, leave a track in a
cloud chamber.) And of course, as we shall see in a moment, an electron is
an impersonal entity, whereas God is supposed to be a personal being, one
who has something analogous to human beliefs and desires. Yet unlike all
the personal agents with whom we are familiar, he is an unembodied agent.
How, then, can he interact with the material world?
This is a serious objection. If we are to regard God as a theoretical
entity, comparable in this respect to an electron, we shall have to take
into account just how peculiar this posited being would be. In particular,