Full, Complete, Ultimate, and Absolute Explanation
The main issue of this chapter is then, what are proper stopping-points for explanation, when do we have grounds for supposing that certain phenomena constitute such stopping-points and when do we have grounds for supposing that they themselves have an explanation. Having established general principles, we can then ask whether it is right to suppose that the physical universe, or the regular operation of scientific laws, or such particular events as (assuming that it happened) the resurrection of Christ from the dead, are just brute facts, or whether they are phenomena which it is reasonable to suppose to have a further explanation.
 
Before I come to deal properly with the central issue, I need first to make certain distinctions. The question of what is a 'terminus' of explanation needs a more technical explication. And partial explanation of some phenomenon. An explanation of E by F is a full one if F includes both a cause, C, and a reason, R, which together necessitated the occurrence of E. (Recall that on the Hempelian account of scientific explanation C are initial conditions and R natural laws; whereas in personal explanation C is a person, and R that person's intentions, beliefs, and capacities.) If C and R together provide a full explanation of E, nothing else logically contingent beside C and R needed to be so in order for the occurrence of E to be guaranteed, and so a proposition reporting C and R entails a proposition reporting E. Thus a scientific explanation of an eclipse of the moon E is a full one if it cites all the natural laws involved, L (laws of motion and laws of light propagation), and precedent states of the world C necessary for the occurrence of E, viz. the positions and masses of moon, sun, and earth, and the absence of other heavenly bodies in the region, and if L and C together entail E. An explanation of E is only a partial one if the explanation includes factors which brought about the occurrence of E, but these factors did not necessitate the occurrence of E
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The Scientifically Inexplicable
What, to start with, are the grounds for supposing that phenomena do not have a scientific explanation? Phenomena of two kinds can be shown not to be explicable scientifically. First, there are phenomena which are too odd to be fitted into the established pattern of scientific explanation, and secondly there are phenomena which are too big to be fitted into any pattern of scientific explanation.
 
To show phenomena too odd to be explicable scientifically the theist needs to show that there is good evidence for a scientific system h covering a certain range of phenomena, but that it is not a consequence of h that certain phenomena (within the general range of h) occur; and that any attempt to amend or expand h to allow it to predict e would make h so complex or for other reasons to have such low prior probability that it would be very improbable that it is true. Theists have claimed various particular phenomena to be too odd to be scientifically explicable. Among these, if we assume that they occur, are violations of laws of nature such as levitations, or people getting better from polio in a minute, or blood suddenly liquefying, or men walking on water, events which theists claim to be miracles. A somewhat different example of a particular event which, if it occurred, would be scientifically inexplicable, would be the first event or initial state of the universe.
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Saving Theism by Adding Hypotheses
However, clearly many persons of great moral sensitivity have reached a different conclusion from mine. Those who are inclined to follow them may well feel that although in itself the existence of evil does provide a good C-inductive argument against the existence of God, the argument will fail if we complicate somewhat the hypothesis of theism. We have already considered one way of doing this—adding to the hypothesis of theism the hypothesis of bad angels. Fairly clearly many, many years ago theism came to include this hypothesis for just this reason—to deal with the problem of evil. Another hypothesis added to theism partly also under the pressure of this problem is the hypothesis of life after death.  Men felt that God would only bring about or allow others to bring about great suffering if there was a life after death in which God could restore the victims to health of mind and soul. I have not myself argued along these lines, but I can see very strong reasons why a God would choose to bring about life after death, including the reason of the compensating for evils of life on earth. If any one wishes to add this hypothesis to theism to save it from the force of an argument from evil, he must however bear in mind that theism then becomes a more complicated hypothesis, and hence has less prior probability and so needs more in the way of confirming evidence to raise its over-all probability on evidence, to (e.g.) more than ½.
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