Theism and Explanation - Appeared-to-Blogly

66 Theism and Explanation
4.3.2 Facts Lacking a Natural Explanation
Some of the phenomena that the theist is attempting to explain do not have
a natural explanation. But there are two senses in which something may
lack a natural explanation. It may lack a natural explanation in practice, as
a contingent matter of fact. It is not so much naturally inexplicable as currently
unexplained. Or it may lack a natural explanation in principle. It is a
fact of which we cannot even conceive that a natural explanation could be
given. This gives us two classes of facts that lack natural explanations.
4.3.2.1 Naturally Unexplained Facts
Let’s start with the fi rst of these classes. These are facts of which we can conceive
of a natural explanation being given; it is just that we don’t (yet) have
one. Such facts may be naturally unexplained in one of two senses. We may
not have even a potential natural explanation of such facts. We just have no
idea how the explanandum could have occurred. Or we may have a potential
explanation, but one that is less than convincing. Not even the atheist thinks
we have suffi cient reason to regard it as the actual explanation. 29 In either
case, the fact in question remains, for the moment, unexplained.
Here’s an example. A person may make a sudden recovery from an illness,
which leaves her doctors entirely baffl ed. All they can say is, “Well,
sometimes this occurs. But we have no idea why.” The theist may wish to
attribute this recovery to divine agency. Yet everyone concerned may admit
that a natural explanation is possible and that one day it might be found.
Perhaps medical researchers will discover the mechanism responsible for
such apparently “miraculous” recoveries. Or they may be able to show
that, given the mechanisms controlling this illness, such an outcome occurs
entirely by chance, in a certain percentage of cases. In those circumstances,
the outcome might still be surprising, since it occurs in only a small proportion
of cases. But it would not be unexplained. 30 What’s important is that at
the moment we lack a natural explanation of the event in question.
Let’s take another example. For a number of years, beginning in 1981, a
group of six young people in Bosnia-Herzegovina reported having visions
of a supernatural being, namely the Virgin Mary. Careful studies showed
that on the occasion when the alleged vision occurred, they knelt, ceased
praying aloud, ceased to respond to external stimuli, turned their eyes
towards precisely the same place in the room, moved their eyes in a way
that corresponded to their reports of the vision, and then returned to their
normal state of consciousness. All the alleged visionaries performed each
of these actions at almost precisely the same moment, but without any
detectable sign of collusion. 31 If the reports are correct, they indicate a
puzzling phenomenon, which many Roman Catholics were quick to attribute
to supernatural agency. But once again, we can at least conceive of a
potential explanation—perhaps that the collusion in question was occurring
subliminally, below the level of consciousness. But one might argue
that until this proposed explanation is developed and corroborated, it does