Are Theistic Explanations Testable?
The problem facing theistic explanations is that they tend to fall into the “explains everything, therefore nothing”-category. After all, theists tend to believe that everything is ultimately attributable to god (except, perhaps, the freely willed actions of humans), even if the road to that attribution is unclear. Nonetheless, Dawes argues that theistic explanations could be testable if they were more specific. They would need to identify some divine goal and show how a particular state of affairs served as a means to that goal. They could then be corroborated by showing how this divine goal explains other states of affairs. The example Dawes uses to make this point is the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. In the aftermath of this incident, at least some religious commentators attributed it to God’s desire to stamp out sexual immorality. These commentators are making a specific claim about God’s goals, and this claim can be tested. How? By seeing whether other natural disasters target region
