ABSTRACT
This chapter is dedicated to explaining two different forms of the Alternative Explanation Response. Typically, scientists and philosophers advance reductionist explanations after having already discounted, at least by implication, the theistic explanation of perceptions of God. Their research programs seek an explanation for what in their eyes would otherwise lack an explanation. E-reductionists need not claim that all subjects who perceive God are in the e-reductionist explanation-providing circumstances. They need find only a sufficient number of cases to credibly weaken the initial evidential sufficiency of perceptions of God. On the disappearance theory form of the Alternative Explanation Response, in principle people should reject the theistic explanation of God-perceptions, whether or not they possess a specific viable alternative. One version of the disappearance theory would simply remove demons from the explanation of disease and perceptions of shamans. It would not bother to deny the existence of demons.
