Jeff: So long as that isn't meant to contradict that God creates for His pleasure, it's plausible. Though it may be too narrow.

alexanderpruss: Scientists often propound particular models that instantiate a more general theory. These models are sometimes intended to be more realistic and sometimes less, but the hope is that by studying them and by noting the divergence, if any, between model and reality we will learn something about the relevant phenomenon. Some realistic models will be empirically testable and others will not, and scientists of course have a preference for testable models.

Jeff: We all have a preference for testable models. Unfortunately, not all hypotheses are testable. Indeed, all hypotheses about the origin of mammals, e.g., are untestable.

alexanderpruss: Thus, an evolutionary scientist might offer a more or less realistic model of the evolution of wings. The model may well predict what kinds of fossils we will find. If the model's predictions are not borne out, this does not in any significant way affect the probability of evolution in general, but studying the model is helpful, and if the model's predictions--assuming it makes some--match observations, so much the better for the underlying theory.

Jeff: Very important claim about macroevolutionary theory. It's predictions need not be borne out, and yet "this does not in any significant way affect the probability of evolution in general." I have no idea what that even means.

alexanderpruss: If God created the world to exemplify certain values, one way to generate a family of models of creation is to consider sets of the values that the world might have been created to exemplify. For instance, we might consider the Hedonic Model: the only value the world was created to exemplify is the value of pleasure-minus-pain. The Hedonic Model predicts that the overall amount of pleasure in the world would be very high. This prediction we cannot easily empirically test, however, both because of the vagueness in "very high" and, more importantly, because we cannot ethically test what happens in any afterlife that there might be (suicide is morally wrong).

Jeff: Exactly.

alexanderpruss: However, the Hedonic Model makes another prediction: Any pain that exists in the world is a necessary means to a pleasure.

Jeff: How is that testable? Indeed, it seems manifestly false at the individual level unless we posit post-mortem, sentient states. But that, again, is untestable.

alexanderpruss: Now, there are two ways a pain could be a means to a pleasure: constitutively, as when the pains of physical exertion are partly constitutive of a pleasure, and causally. The causal case might be like this: the pain causes a memory, which then accentuates a pleasure. But any causal role a pain plays could be miraculously duplicated by God. Doing so might make for a nomically more complex world, but nomic simplicity is not one of the values in the present model. Likewise, false memories of pains might sit poorly with the value of truth, but truth is not one of the values the Hedonic Model considers.

Jeff: It truth is not one of the values the Hedonic Model considers, it is surely untestable, huh?

alexanderpruss: A model of creation may be less specific, and yet generate a testable prediction. Here is the Nomic Simplicity and Human-Like Flourishing Model. On this model, one of the values God seeks to make the world exemplify is simplicity of fundamental laws. If that were the only value in the model, the model would make a prediction that we have good reason to think false: that no simpler laws of nature are possible than the ones we have. (Consider a set of laws that prescribes the existence of a single particle that does nothing for eternity.) However, the model has a second part: in addition to nomic simplicity, God is creating the world for the flourishing of human-like beings.

This model makes some predictions as well. Here is one: evils that negatively impact the flourishing of human-like beings must be justifiable by reference to nomic simplicity and the flourishing of human-like beings.

Jeff: Let's assume that's correct. It means that human-like flourishing is measured in a utilitarian way, not in an individual way. Thus, so long as someone's misery is conducive to someone else's greater flourishing, the utilitarian math works out. But how many people are interested in such a model? Who would spend even 30 minutes contemplating it, except people who just like mental puzzles? Most people would be "practical" atheists if they thought God wasn't competently and personally vested in their best interest.

alexanderpruss: For instance, if a model of creation did a good job of explaining most of what we see, that would give us some reason to think the model is in some way close to right, and in particular it would give us further reason (over and beyond that provided by other theistic arguments) to believe that God exists.

Jeff: I haven't seen any one refute Planinga's argument. It alone is compelling. And it basically implies that teleology is intuitive. That's why to me, God's existence, competence, and benevolence are correlative with the belief that I have the capacity to apprehend. The rest is about working out the details. Scripture, science, and extra-scriptural history help us to do that. It's a huge under-taking, but so are attempts at explaining the world a-teleologically. So we all have our work cut out for us.

alexanderpruss: Furthermore, the testability of a model might reasonably be extended to include testability against data from divine revelation in addition to empirical testability.

Jeff: In a sense, I think that is what Greg's books on the historicity of the gospels are. Greg is essentially showing that to prove the gospels non-historical, you have to prove too much. Because you have to make some a-plausible claims of your own to get there.

alexanderpruss: (The task is particularly crucial for Intelligent Design theorists who think that they are doing science--for if they are doing science, they ought to be generating precisely these kinds of specific models, since that is the sort of thing science does, given a general framework theory. I am not saying ID theorists don't do this--but I think they don't do enough of this.)

Jeff: ID'ists have the same problem a-teleologists do. They are making analogical inferences about things that are virtually impossible to test. That's why ID'ists typically say that ID inferences are falsifiable precisely to the extent that a-teleological alternatives are testable. Typically, neither is the case. But a-teleological alternatives to ID hypothesis tend to be non-falsifiable as well. That's why ID'ists are saying that we should be free to articulate any commonly-held analogical inferences without penalty in tax-subsidized contexts when tests are unavailable.

The belief that Allah split the moon is not based on any analogical reasoning that doesn't ultimately contradict other relatively intuitive analogical inferences held by most other human beings. Scriptural accounts make claims that are currently untestable, but they happen to be non-falsifiable for the same reasons the alternative, competing hypotheses are. E.g., in what sense is the claim that there were not giants in Palestine thousands of years ago more plausible than the claim that there were? Seeings how scripture has not been shown to be false historically, and, at times, has been found to be virtually the only corroborating historical text for certain archaeological finds. And seeings how there are other legends about giants. That ought to count for something.

Moreover, there are properties of scripture that make it seem very unlike a hodge podge of texts written pver the course of centuries by space-cadets having illusory dreams and visions. That hypothesis has an a-plausibility of its own. Lewis was right about that. Such over-simplified stereotypes are based on over-generalizations from too little information. I've seen lists of supposed contradictions in the bible on sites from the likes of New Scientist, e.g., that were so silly I was amazed that they weren't embarassed to put it out there. But I guess when the choir your preaching to is grossly ignorant of the subject matter, anything will fly.

There really is nothing more fanciful about the OT than the NT if you think about it. Given our own experiences, they both seem fanciful at first glance. But having read them, they seem to be too sober and consistent to be the product of fancy or even, as Peter said, cunning fable-making. And it is the knowledge of the very radical misuse of libertarian freedom that renders both intelligible and plausible the providential, divine intervention into the world to prolong it by keeping it on teleological track. People who try to show otherwise, by analogical reasoning grounded in human intuition, have their work cut out for them.