Theism and Explanation - Appeared-to-Blogly

What Would They Explain? 73
There is an element of truth in this claim. If the actions of the gods—or in
this case, the actions of God—were entirely “incalculable,” being “arbitrary,”
then invoking the gods would fail to explain. We could not say what
would follow if a theistic hypothesis were true; such a hypothesis would not
count as even a potential explanation (5.1). But is it the case that the actions
of an agent capable of miracles are incalculable?
Before answering this question, let me look at another expression of the
same objection. In his discussion of modern creationism, Robert Pennock
argues that
empirical testing relies fundamentally upon the lawful regularities of
nature which science has been able to discover and sometimes codify
in natural laws. For example, telescopic observations implicitly depend
on the laws governing optical phenomena. If we could not rely
upon these laws—if, for example, even when under the same conditions,
telescopes occasionally magnifi ed properly, and at other occasions
produced various distortions dependent, say, upon the whims
of some supernatural entity—we could not trust telescopic observations
as evidence. . . . Lawful regularity is at the heart of the naturalistic
world view and to say that some power is supernatural is, by
defi nition, to say that it can violate natural laws. . . . But without the
constraint of lawful regularity, inductive evidential inference cannot
get off the ground. 51
Again, there is surely some truth in these remarks. If the theist is to have
any trust in our knowledge of the world, he is bound to assume that his
God will not work too many miracles. And of course there is something
odd about the idea of a God who establishes the laws of nature only to
violate them, a fact that has led some theologians to reject belief in miracles
on religious grounds. 52 But Pennock’s objection is a stronger one. It
suggests that positing an agent who can work miracles is fatal to the task
of explanation.
4.4.3 A Rational Agent
In order to assess the force of this objection, let me return to my initial
comments regarding abductive reasoning and explanation (2.1.2). I argued
in Chapter 2 that a potential explanation of some explanandum (E) is
one that satisfi es the second premise of Peirce’s abductive schema. It will
show that, given the truth of H, E is what we would expect. In the case of
an intentional explanation, it will do this by positing certain beliefs and
desires and then offering a practical syllogism that has the explanandum as
its conclusion. The practical syllogism, I shall argue later (Appendix 2.1),
will include the following elements.