I concluded chapter 5 by exploring Alston and Swinburne's ambivalent and ambiguous stance toward explanation. They insist that direct perception of God provides an immediate source of grounds not based on an inference to the best explanation. It transfers the existence of God from the status of an explanatory hypothesis in need of defense to the status of an immediately justified belief. An unacknowledged explanation returns again, however, to bridge the gap between justified beliefs about God (based on putative encounters) and genuine perceptions of God. That God actually appears to individuals in experience best explains the justified beliefs.

In this chapter I intend to trace out another aspect of this tension concerning explanation. We explored how Alston and Swinburne's direct realism and particularist principles down-play the explanatory commitments embedded in experience and relieve the theist of the burden of proof. We did not pay much attention, however, to the peculiar nature of the explanations they seek to suppress. The rhetorical force imbuing the assimilation of religious experience to perception derives from the manner in which such a move masks the supernaturalism of the former with the naturalism of sense perception. To liken God-experiences to sense perception obscures supernaturalism behind the cloak of uncontroversial good sense. Here I will bring to light the covert supernaturalism involved in mystical perception and again suggest that Alston misplaces the burden of proof.