Hello Dr. Dawes,
I have a few questions about your recent book Theism and Explanation. First, it seems to me
that there are at least three different argumentative structures that a theist or an atheist can use:
IBE, Deductive Arguments, and Bayesian Arguments. You seem to focus mostly on IBE and
some on Bayesian. The problem with this is that this leaves the door wide open to theists to use
deductive arguments for the existence of God which someone like William Lane Craig does (i.e.
the kalam, the fine-tuning argument, the moral argument, etc.). It seems like concerns over
explanatory virtues would only arise if a theist was employing IBE, but your arguments in the
book do not rule out deductive arguments (and likelihood ratios either I think?).
Second, I am not sure that your project is a wholly fair one to saddle a theist with unless you are
referring to proponents of Biological ID who want to offer a creation ‘science’ whereas most
theists I think are not trying to offer any kind of a creation science when they put forth arguments
for the existence of God. Rather, they are offering metaphysical arguments which may have
scientific support for one of the premises in their metaphysical argument (i.e. the kalam and finetuning argument). Atheists too are offering metaphysical arguments for atheism (i.e. the problem
of evil, divine hiddenness, meager moral fruits, argument from scale, etc.) which may or may not
have scientific evidence in support of one of their premises in a metaphysical argument. Are we
to apply your criticism of theistic explanations in the form of IBE to all the atheistic arguments
as well? It seems that if we can make arguments for atheism (and they don’t meet your
explanatory virtues; which they don’t), then a theist can make successful metaphysical
arguments for theism even if they don’t meet your explanatory virtues.
Third, there are examples of scientific theories that are good explanations which do not always
pass all the criteria you list which makes me unclear as to whether you think an explanation must
pass all the explanatory virtues you list. If yes, then you will have to discount certain scientific
theories and/or principles; if not, then theistic explanations of the IBE form can’t be ruled out
simply because they do not always have all the explanatory virtues you list.
With that said, enjoyed the book.
Hope you will respond 
Kevin
I forgot to add one more thing:
It seems to me like there is an important distinction to make between operant scientific
explanations, and singular-system originating explanations where by the former I mean
explanations that are trying to explain repeatable and regular observations within an existent
arena of natural laws, and by the latter I mean explanations of non-repeatable singular
observations that involve the origin of the arena in which natural laws themselves operate
regularly. Examples of the latter would be the absolute beginning of the universe, and the initial
fine-tuning of the universe. It seems like explanations of this sort are going to be related to the
explanatory virtues you list differently than operant scientific explanations simply. Why? Well,
if the universe really did have an absolute beginning then it is metaphysically impossible to
appeal to repeatable and regular laws of nature which would likewise hold for the fine-tuning
parameters. What natural mechanism which is testable, economic, consistent with other natural
explanations, and the like can we appeal to in these singular-system originating scenarios? None
I think, even in principle.
Hi Kevin.
Forgive my delay in responding to your emails, but I've been involved in the preparation of
another book, this time on science and religion.
Yes, I was aware of the fact that none of the arguments I was considering were deductive
arguments, of the kind that Aquinas, for instance, offers for the existence of God.
The only way of questioning a deductive argument of this kind is to question either its validity or
(more commonly) the truth of its premises. But there aren't many examples out there, as far as I
can tell, of arguments of this form. Plantinga's modal ontological argument would be one, but
even he admits that there is no reason why an atheist should feel obliged to accept its first
premise. I guess Craig's kalam argument is another example, but again one can question its first
premise. There do seem to be some brute facts out there, events that just don't have a sufficient
explanation.
Swinburne's arguments for the existence of God are certainly Bayesian-style arguments, as are
fine-tuning arguments, which generally maintain that the likelihood of the apparent fine-tuning,
given design, is greater than the likelihood of the apparent fine-tuning, given an atheist singleuniverse scenario. Any arguments of this kind would, it seems to me, have to meet the kind of
criteria I list... perhaps not all of them, but then that's the case for scientific theories too. (There
seems to be no algorithm for theory choice, unless of course you are a Bayesian, and then it gets
really complicated!)
But that goes for atheist arguments, too. For instance, much as I dislike fine-tuning arguments,
I've often thought that the proposed multiverse response offends against several of my principles:
without further evidence in its support, it seems ad hoc and invites an Ockham's razor-type
response. (Is an infinite number of undetectable universes really better than one God?) If, as
Roger Penrose has recently suggested, there is empirical evidence of another universe "before"
our one, then that's another matter. It would change everything.
In any case, although my focus was the naturalism of the sciences, I'm not sure if I'd want to
make a sharp distinction between "scientific" and "metaphysical" arguments. Leaving deductive
arguments aside, I'm inclined to think there are just good arguments and bad arguments and that
the criteria for deciding which are which are pretty similar.
But then I guess I'd be inclined to see metaphysics as continuous with science, rather than a
different kind of enterprise altogether.
With regard to what you call "singular-system originating scenarios," I'm just not sure. Physicists
such as Victor Stenger seem convinced they have discovered physical laws that make the
beginning of the universe comprehensible. I don't know enough about quantum physics to make
much sense of it, but they do seem to assume that the universe came into existence out of some
existing state of energy, perhaps a "previous" universe.
Of course, one is free to say that we just don't know how the universe began. After all, if we have
only two proposed explanations and neither seems very good, we're not obliged to choose one
just because it seems the lesser evil.
With best wishes,
Greg Dawes