Theism and Explanation - Appeared-to-Blogly

What Would They Explain? 67
not deserve our support. It has not won the right to be called the actual
explanation of the event.
4.3.2.2 Naturally Inexplicable Facts
There is, however, a second class of facts lacking natural explanations.
These are facts that are naturally inexplicable in principle. Given what it
means to offer a natural explanation, we know that we could never have
a natural explanation of this. All the atheist could ever say is that it is a
“brute fact.” It just is as it is; end of story. Now the atheist may balk at
the idea that there exist such facts. He may argue that those facts the theist
regards as naturally inexplicable are merely unexplained. Or he might
insist that if naturally inexplicable facts do exist, they are few in number.
But it is at least possible that there exist facts of this kind.
What kinds of facts might fall into this category? There are two obvious
candidates for the role of naturally inexplicable facts, namely the very
existence of both the universe and of laws of nature. 32 Richard Swinburne
argues that these facts are “too big” for scientifi c explanation in the sense
that all scientifi c explanations take them for granted. 33 I have already suggested
(4.1.1) that the two facts Swinburne cites may, on closer investigation,
collapse into one. But let me leave that issue aside for the moment. Let
me concede that there may be facts which are, in principle, naturally inexplicable.
My point is that such facts often function as the explananda of
proposed theistic explanations. How we might test such a proposed explanation
is a question to which I shall return (7.1.3).
4.3.3 Facts Having Natural Explanations
So much for facts that lack—either de facto or in principle—natural explanations.
But alongside facts lacking natural explanations, there is another
class of explananda to which theistic explanations can be applied, namely
facts that have natural explanations. In some cases, the natural explanations
in question are undisputed. The atheist and the theist agree that these
facts can be naturally explained; what the theist is offering is a complementary
explanation. But in other cases, the theist may dispute the natural
explanation. He may (or may not) concede that the alleged natural explanation
is a potential explanation of the fact in question. But even if he does,
he will still maintain that it is not the actual explanation. In this latter case,
the theist is offering a competing potential explanation, arguing that it
should be accepted as the actual one. This distinction gives us two further
classes of explananda.
4.3.3.1 Facts With Accepted Natural Explanations
Let’s begin with the fi rst of these: the class of facts whose natural explanation
the theist does not contest. The existence of explananda of this sort
assumes that the theist rejects an occasionalist view of divine action. But