Thinking About The Gods

The short answer is no.  I understand perfectly why many people think proposing a god as an explanation for something is a valid and a good explanation for that thing, whatever it may be.  I intend to show it is not.

Which of these statements has more explanatory power?

God created the universe in mysterious ways.
The universe came into being in mysterious ways.

The first one explains no more than the second and in fact creates a greater mystery.  It just “creates” something extra that itself requires explanation.  Saying God created the universe in mysterious ways doesn’t explain the universe but now you are obliged to explain not just the universe but God as well.  You’ve increased the number of things needing explanation.  I still don’t know how God created the universe and now I require an explanation of God.  Certainly any being capable of creating this incredible universe would be even more mysterious than the universe he is claimed to have created.

Any explanation that is so vague is no explanation at all.  A good explanation would contain observations, predictions, and a hypothesis using existing knowledge. Explanation involves increasing understanding of the unknown in terms of the known.  If you can’t actually explain something except by saying “somebody did it somehow” you might as well not bother.  You have no justification for saying so.  You solve nothing and explain nothing.

Why did Johnny get cancer and die?  I don’t know is not improved by saying God did it.
Where did the all matter/energy in the universe come from?  I don’t know is not improved by saying God did it.

Explaining anything by God is the exact opposite of an explanation.  An explanation will increase understanding.  It will make something that was previously not understood, understood to at least some greater degree.  It will not simply multiply the mystery.

An explanation that makes you feel good may be useful for making you feel good, but it is totally irrelevant to whether anything has actually been explained.  Something that makes you feel good can be defined as a feel good producing thing, but it cannot be defined as an explanation unless it actually increases understanding in some real way.  I understand the emotional lift someone may get from believing there is some being in the universe that cares about them, but simply saying so does not further understanding of one’s existence or purpose or anything or anyone else.

Forget religion for a moment and consider what most everyone, including believers in various gods, consider good explanations.  I remember some point in school a teacher holding a globe to a light source and slowly rotating it to show why the sun appears to rise in the east and proceed westward across the sky and set in the west.  The same method of explanation was used show why the earth moving around the sun on a tilted axis produces the varying lengths of days and seasons at various points on the earth.

Imagine you go to a performance by a magician and are amazed by an illusion and turn to the person sitting next to you and asked “How did he do that?”  Would you consider “By magic” or “By use of conjuring techniques” or “Somehow” good explanations?  Probably not, but if he actually described and explained in detail plausible conjuring techniques that could have produced the effect you saw in terms you understand, then you might consider that to be a good explanation.

If I asked wise person how the universe came to be, he would be transfer exactly zero knowledge or understanding to me and thus explain absolutely nothing by any of the following:

God did it.
Brahma did it.
Allah did it.
Satan did it.
An invisible cosmic elf did it.
Magic.

He might as well have said “I don’t know” and stopped there.   Saying essentially a magic being did it in magic ways doesn’t help.

So while saying a god doing something may give one emotional comfort, it doesn’t amount to an explanation in any meaningful sense.  If someone disputes a scientific explanation or says the proposed explanation has problems or holes in it it, one does not progress understanding by throwing up one’s hands and simply declaring “God did it”.  One side in a dispute does not get to demand the other side demonstrate everything in rigorous detail, while at the same time be allowed to exclude themselves from the same requirement and simply get to say it was magic.

Saying “God did it” explains nothing any better than “I don’t know”.  Neither one is any sort of explanation at all.  However there is something noble and powerful in saying “I don’t know” and something lazy in saying “God did it”.  The courage to say you don’t know instead of claiming belief or even worse certainty in something for which there is no reasonable evidence is something I can always respect.

 

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