Theism and Explanation - Appeared-to-Blogly

44 Theism and Explanation
If the phrase “God wants it to be the case” imposes no restrictions on
what can be substituted for a, if (in other words) a could be any actual
state of affairs, then the unifi cation achieved by this pattern is spurious.
The explanation in question would lack empirical content, since—as Karl
Popper pointed out—the empirical content of a theory is measured by the
possible states of affairs it excludes. 38 It is only by excluding possible states
of affairs that a theory can single out what is the case from what might
have been the case.
What kind of an objection is this? I have already argued (2.2.1) that it
is a de facto objection. It is conceivable that a proposed explanation of this
form might count as a potential explanation of fact a. It all depends on
what a is. If we could show that a is the kind of fact that we could plausibly
expect God to will, then the above argument would satisfy the second
premise of Peirce’s abductive schema (2.1.2). If the premises of the argument
were true, then one could deduce a description of the explanandum.
Kitcher’s objection is that one could deduce from an argument of the same
form (and almost identical premises) a description of any explanandum at
all. Any fact at all could be substituted for a. If this is true, then (he argues)
the proposed explanation is spurious.
But is Kitcher correct? Is it true that any state of affairs at all could be
substituted for a? I don’t think it is. I shall argue later (5.3.3) that there
are possible states of affairs which any proposed theistic explanation must
exclude; this would be true of even a bare-bones proposed explanation of
the form Kitcher cites. If the God in question is omnipotent and morally
perfect, we would not expect him to bring about, for instance, states of gratuitous
suffering. If a were an instance of gratuitous suffering, then the theistic
hypothesis “God wants it to be the case that a” would not constitute
even a potential explanation of a. The state of affairs which a designates is
not the kind of thing that God could plausibly be said to want.
This is, of course, the heart of the atheist’s argument from evil, the force
of which most theists recognise. (They may argue that the instances of suffering
the atheist cites are not gratuitous, or at least that we cannot know
they are gratuitous. But to say this is to accept the force of the atheist’s
argument.) So pace Kitcher, it is simply not true that one could substitute
any state of affairs for a. It follows that even a very minimal proposed theistic
explanation of the kind Kitcher cites has some empirical content. There
are possible states of affairs that it excludes.
3.2.3.2 A Legitimate Objection
But even if this is correct, this does not mean that Kitcher’s warning is
unnecessary. I have just argued that even a bare-bones proposed theistic
explanation of the kind he cites cannot cover any possible state of affairs.
But it may still cover too many possible states of affairs. Its empirical
content may not be zero, but it may be unhelpfully low. And the point I