Inferring and Explaining

84 that laws of nature don’t hold or that the evi- dence for them is in anyway flawed. They believe, rather, that an omnipotent God created the entire physical world, including those laws of nature, and can, if He chooses, supersede those laws by the exercise of His omnipotence. Miracles, therefore, presuppose the existence of God. Testimony about the occurrence a mir- acle might count as good evidence for the exis- tence of God, but as Hume saw, it will always face serious difculty. For me to take seriously this kind of testimony, it would need to come from very special sources, so e 3 would be very important. Further, I suspect that regardless InferrIng and exPlaInIng of the qualities of the source, I would need the corroboration of lots of equally good sources. Finally, I think I would need some independent evidence that God might exist. To see whether such independent evidence available is one of the oldest questions in Western philosophy. If you are curious about using evidence, indeed using inference to the best explanation (IBE), to present arguments for and against the exis- tence of God, I invite you to read my next book, Religious Evidence , or perhaps some of my arti- cles that attempt to apply inference to the best explanation as a means of assessing the quality of evidence we have for the existence of God. 3 exerCIses 1. Why do the conventions of normal communication recommend that we assume honesty when someone tells us something? 2. Assuming that I was being totally honest in my letter of recommendation, what were the two of worries that one might have that I knew what I was talking about? 3. You read the following on a Facebook post: “I just observed a miracle—I saw a dead man restored to life!” Use the tools we have developed in this chapter to assess the quality of evidence you have for the claim that a dead man has been restored to life. QuIz nIne On November 6, 2012, Donald Trump tweeted the following: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive” (https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/265895292191248385?lang=en). 4 Use the tools we have developed in this chapter to assess the quality of evidence you have for the claim that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese to damage US manufacturing. Notes 1 Gilbert Harman, “Knowledge, Inference, and Expla- nation,” American Philosophical Quarterly 5 (1968): 167. 2 David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Under- standing , ed. L. A. Selby Bigge (Oxford: Calendon, 1902), 114–16. 3 See Jef Johnson, “Inference to the Best Explanation and the Problem of Evil,” Journal of Religion 64, no. 1 (1984): 54–72; Jefery L. Johnson, “Inference to the Best Explanation and the New Teleological Argument,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 31 (1993): 193–203; Jef- fery L. Johnson, “Explanation, Evidence, andMystical Experience,” Minerva—anInternetJournalof Philosophy