78 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGIONproperty such that X having that property would explain there being Y.
Here are two specifications of this general point that use the “generable
from logic alone” vocabulary introduced by RP:
1 If no properties beyond those generated by logic alone are properly
ascribable to the Real, then it is no more reasonable or appropriate to
think of the Real as transcendent than as not transcendent.
2 If no properties beyond those generated by logic are ascribable to the
Real, no experience is better thought of as a response to (or as
contributed to by) the Real than any other.
Further, RP allows no moral properties to be ascribed to the Real. But then:
3 If no moral properties are ascribable to the Real, then there being the
Real no better explains moral niceness than it does moral degradation.
Presumably on RP no causal powers or properties are ascribable to the Real.
But then:
4 If no causal properties are ascribable to the Real, then there being the
Real no better explains our existence than it would the existence of a
world without us or there being no world at all.
and:5 There is no reason to think of only religious experience as a response to
the Real; eating a Big Mac or kicking a can is as reasonably thought of as
an experience of the Real.
6 Wishing one were torturing one’s enemies, enjoying mugging a helpless
victim, or happily kicking a dog is as reasonably viewed as an experience
that is a response to (or as contributed to by) the Real. None of them is
at all reasonably thought of in such terms, since no property that is
properly ascribable to the Real would make it reasonable to make any
such suggestion about response or contribution.
So there are two points here: (i) there is no such thing as an experience
reasonably thought of as a response to, or as contributed to by, the Real; (ii)
there is no reason at all to suppose that only nice religious and moral
experiences are such responses or are contributed to by the Real.
The second basic point can be put again in two stages:
1 If one cannot in principle ascribe any property to X by virtue of which X
can explain Y, then positing X as an explanation of Y is entirely vacuous