356 RELIGION, MORALITY, FAITH, AND REASONthen T cannot be reasonably believed. If theory T entails P, and we know
that P is false, then we know that T is false. (Some theories entail that
there is no moral knowledge, or that sensory experience is never
reliable; if we know that it is wrong to torture infants for pleasure or
know by sensory experience that there is a door to our room, these
theories are false.) If T’s only rationale is that accepting T solves
problem Q, and T does not solve Q, then there is no rationale for
accepting T. If T does not explain data within T’s reference range, then at
best T is incomplete. (A theory’s reference range is the set of data that it
was created to explain.) So disconfirmation has many varieties.
To summarize, confirmationism tells us that we should accept only
theories that have been confirmed; falsificationists tell us that we
should accept only theories that have explanatory power and have not
been falsified.
Theistic arguments and explanatory power
One way of thinking of the standard arguments for monotheism is
this: their premises refer to such things as there being things that
might not have existed and are possibly explicable, the accessibility of
the world to human cognitive powers, there being a distinction
between right and wrong, there being self-conscious morally
responsible agents, and the like. Such arguments are possible only
insofar as theism has explanatory power regarding such facts as these.
Theism need not be the only explanation of these facts in order to have
explanatory power regarding them. The monotheistic arguments have
any force only if the facts mentioned are such that, if monotheism is
true, then it provides (a personal) explanation of their obtaining. Part
of a different style of argument for monotheism has the following first
premise:
M1 Monotheism has explanatory power regarding things hard to
explain otherwise.
Its second premise is:
M2 Monotheism has not been falsified.
In the light of the argument earlier concerning monotheistic belief and
religious experience, and stating the premise neutrally between
confirmationism and falsificationism, the third premise is: