Strong and Weak Arguments

[Angrboda]

I'm frequently confronted by theists who declare that God is the best explanation for some phenomena. I end up having to explain to them that while God is an explanation or hypothesis for that phenomena, by the standards we judge hypotheses / explanations, it is not a particularly good one. The Goddidit explanation has great scope, meaning the number of facts it can accommodate is broad -- he's omnipotent so that makes sense -- but it doesn't fare as well on other traits which we look for in a good explanation or hypothesis. The following is a list of them, for comparison purposes. (i.e. I finally found a good list of them.)

Philosophers of science have proposed a number of comparative approaches [to evaluating hypotheses], usually involving some combination of the following criteria:

Likelihood. The probability of the evidence occurring given the hypothesis in question.
Prior probability or plausibility. Our degree of belief in the hypothesis prior to observing the evidence, or assuming we had not observed it.
Predictive power. The degree to which the hypothesis determines which potential observations are possible (or probable) and which are impossible (or improbable).
Falsifiability. The degree to which the hypothesis "risks" being falsified by new evidence.
Parsimony. The degree to which the hypothesis observes the principle of Occam's razor: "Do not multiply entities needlessly."11

Other criteria often cited include explanatory power, track record, scope, coherence and elegance.

http://www.talkorigins.org/design/faqs/nfl/