Theism and contrastive explanation

Came, Daniel

Abstract

I argue that there could not be grounds on which to introduce God into our ontology. My argument presupposes two doctrines. First, we should allow into our ontology only what figures in the best explanation of an event or fact. Second, explanation is contrastive by nature, in that the explanandum always consists in a contrast between a fact and a foil. I argue that God could not figure in true contrastive explanatory statements, because the omnipotence of God guarantees that for any true proposition p, God could have made it the case that ~p just as much as He could have made it the case that p.

Citation

Came, D. (2017). Theism and contrastive explanation. European journal for philosophy of religion, 9(1), 19-26. https://doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.v9i1.1862

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 6, 2016
• Online Publication Date: May 3, 2017
• Publication Date: May 3, 2017
• Deposit Date: Dec 5, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 23, 2017
• Journal: European journal for the philosophy of religion
• Print ISSN: 1689-8311
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 9
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 19-26
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.v9i1.1862
• Keywords: God; Contrastive explanation; Theism; Atheism; Naturalism
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/445874
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.v9i1.1862
• Additional Information: This is the author's accepted manuscript of an article accepted for future publication in: European journal for the philosophy of religion, 2017, v.9 issue 3.
• Contract Date: Dec 5, 2016