I agree that special relativity was born out of a empirical question. However, that a theory explains a certain known phenomenon does not really increase how t

I agree that special relativity was born out of a empirical question. However, that a theory explains a certain known phenomenon does not really increase how trustworthy it is. It is trivial to construct a theory that explains a certain phenomenon, the it is slightly less trivial (that's a bit of an understatement) to construct one which does not contradict any other known phenomena. However to empirically "confirm" a theory requires that the theory predicts a phenomenon which has not been observed and is empirically observed.