Theism and Explanation (Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion) [Hardcover]

Gregory W. Dawes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0415997380 | ISBN-13: 978-0415997386 | Edition: 1

In this timely study, Dawes defends the methodological naturalism of the sciences. Though religions offer what appear to be explanations of various facts about the world, the scientist, as scientist, will not take such proposed explanations seriously. Even if no natural explanation were available, she will assume that one exists. Is this merely a sign of atheistic prejudice, as some critics suggest? Or are there good reasons to exclude from science explanations that invoke a supernatural agent? On the one hand, Dawes concedes the bare possibility that talk of divine action could constitute a potential explanation of some state of affairs, while noting that the conditions under which this would be true are unlikely ever to be fulfilled. On the other hand, he argues that a proposed explanation of this kind would rate poorly, when measured against our usual standards of explanatory virtue.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Gregory Dawes' Theism and Explanation is a competent, nuanced look at the nature and scope of theistic explanations.  Dawes argues that theistic explanations can in principle be good explanations, but he also argues that they have to meet a high bar to count as good explanations. ... The result is an interesting and insightful look at what it takes to be a successful theistic explanation.
-Bradley Monton, University of Colorado at Boulder, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

About the Author

Gregory W. Dawes is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Otago. He is the author of The Historical Jesus Question: The Challenge of History to Religious Authority.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 222 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (April 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415997380
• ISBN-13: 978-0415997386
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,833,582 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Greg gained his first graduate degree at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome before returning to New Zealand to complete a PhD in Biblical Studies at the University of Otago. He has more recently completed a second PhD, in the Philosophy of Religion, and now teaches in both Religion and Philosophy. Having two young daughters, Anna and Kathryn, he is continually reminded of the truth of Quine's remark that the major questions of philosophy are asked by age five.

Greg is currently working on a new book entitled After Copernicus: Religion, Science, and Magic in Early Modern Europe.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A determinate refutation of theistic explanation September 29, 2011

By Nolan

Format:Hardcover

In his book, Gregory Dawes looks at whether the idea of God works as a successful explanation.

Dawes begins by carefully defending his controversial stance that there are no in principle objections to positing God as an explanation. In doing so, he directly confronts the idea that supernatural explanations in general, and theistic explanations specifically, are outside of the scope of science. Instead, Dawes argues, if we take it that God will act rationally to create an optimally good world, we have a hypothesis that is testable and falsifiable in principle, well within the scope of science, and thus worthy of consideration as a possible explanation.

Now it seems at first that Dawes, in his defense of God as a potential explanation, would be very sympathetic to God as a successful explanation. Instead, Dawes points out that even if God might potentially explain things, in every criteria we use to evaluate a successful explanation, God does very poorly.

When examined in light of "testability", whenever theists do posit testable accounts of God, theism tends to fail those tests. In light of "background knowledge," a disembodied, timeless being goes against our established knowledge of humans as embodied, finite, and temporally limited. In light of "past success", naturalistic explanations have been wildly successful, with supernatural explanations never reaching any success whatsoever. The theistic hypothesis similarly fails in light of explanatory virtues like simplicity, ontological economy, and informativeness.

Unlike many philosophy books, Theism and Explanation is very readable and not prohibitively long, with only 166 pages of text outside of the index, bibliography, and notes. Dawes shows his fair minded nature by avoiding any of the easy criticisms of God that many atheists take. Instead, he builds the strongest, most defensible view of God as an explanation, and then proceeds to demolish that very view in terms of his explanatory virtues.

7 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A determinate refutation to the New Atheist arguments March 16, 2011

By Bruce Bain

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Philosopher Gregory Dawes has his most telling argument, when he offers the Logical refuation of Richard Dawkins' argument, in which he proves that Richard Dawkins' "God Hypothesis" exhibits a faulty reasoning.

Gregory Dawes writes:

"Pace Dawkins, it is not a necessary condition of a successful explanation that it can explain its explanans. If we follow my earlier suggestion and assume that explanations are arguments, then an explanation is an argument which has the explanandum as its conclusion. To explain an explosion, for instance, all we need is a description of a leak of gas, coupled with a description of its causal field, and some low-level laws regarding the behaviour of gases. One might argue that a complete explanation would need to cite further laws, which would explain the lower-level laws. Of course, this leads to a regress of explanations, which may or may not have an end. But that doesn't matter, since it is not obligatory. We do not need to have a complete explanation in order to have an explanation."---------- from p. 58 "Theism and Explanation"
(Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion) by Gregory w. Dawes, hardcover Edition (Gregor Dawes has Ph. D. in "Biblical Studies" and another in "The Philosophy of Religion"

"Similar questions may be raised about the 'in principle' objection made by Dawkins: the idea that religious explanations are unacceptable because they leave unexplained the existence of their explanans (God). Dawkins apparently assumes that every successful explanation should also explain its own explanans. But this is an unreasonable demand. Many of our most successful explanations raise new puzzles and present us with new questions to be answered. As Peter Lipton remarks, "a drought may explain a poor crop, even if we don't understand why there was a drought; ... the big bang explains the background radiation, even if the big bang is itself inexplicable."" ---------- from p. 16, "Theism and Explanation"
(Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion) by Gregory w. Dawes, hardcover Edition (Gregor Dawes has Ph. D. in "Biblical Studies" and another in "The Philosophy of Religion"

(Gregor Dawes has Ph. D. in "Biblical Studies" and another Ph. D. in "The Philosophy of Religion"

Dawes is a methodological Philosopher, with strong powers of analysis.

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