Does the statement "If it can explain anything, it explains nothing at all" hold true for God?

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Pieman333272 said:
Inspired by another thread.
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Yes, it applies maximally to an omniscient, omnipotent god. There is no explanation that can be dismissed, no explanation can be falsified. So the explanations are inert – they don’t separate a “good” explanation from a “bad” explanation.

If this isn’t immediately clear, consider the Omphalos Hypothesis, which posits that God created the world in six days 6,000 years ago, making Adam complete with navel (hence the name), and starlight from galaxies billions of light years away situated “just so” so as to give us the idea that the light had traveled all that way, when God really just placed it where it needed to be to look that way.

Could be! With an omnipotent, omniscient God, that’s a plausible explanation, because ALL explanations are plausible explanations with belief in God, and “plausible” gets all meaning ripped out of it.

-TS
 
Touchstone said:
Yes, it applies maximally to an omniscient, omnipotent god. There is no explanation that can be dismissed, no explanation can be falsified. So the explanations are inert – they don’t separate a “good” explanation from a “bad” explanation.

If this isn’t immediately clear, consider the Omphalos Hypothesis, which posits that God created the world in six days 6,000 years ago, making Adam complete with navel (hence the name), and starlight from galaxies billions of light years away situated “just so” so as to give us the idea that the light had traveled all that way, when God really just placed it where it needed to be to look that way.

Could be! With an omnipotent, omniscient God, that’s a plausible explanation, because ALL explanations are plausible explanations with belief in God, and “plausible” gets all meaning ripped out of it.

-TS
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I understand that God’s nature makes him able to explain anything and everything. What is a bigger part of the debate, for me, is whether or not that is a reason to discard God as an answer. Of course, there are other reasons non-theists have for not taking God as an answer (or not even calling Him an answer!), but I would like to focus on this example in particular for now.
 
Not that I understand philosophy, but I thought the statement was, "If it can explain everything then it explains nothing. Or am I mistaken?
 
svid said:
Not that I understand philosophy, but I thought the statement was, "If it can explain everything then it explains nothing. Or am I mistaken?
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I think both work. I heard “anything” but can understand it with “everything” as the same deal.
 
What do we define as “it”? No, this is not true for God or for Jesus. For they both can explain everything. They both can answer who, what, where, when, how and why and even explain the anythings that we did not know existed. The Bible explains some things, but just touches the tip of the iceberg when explaining anything. There is another point I would like to make about this statement–If it can explain anything-what is the any thing - is that every thing or just one thing, or many different things rolled into one. So often what we think is a complicated case of the definition of a thing, it turns out to be actually no thing at all. :hmmm:
 
Pieman333272 said:
I understand that God’s nature makes him able to explain anything and everything. What is a bigger part of the debate, for me, is whether or not that is a reason to discard God as an answer. Of course, there are other reasons non-theists have for not taking God as an answer (or not even calling Him an answer!), but I would like to focus on this example in particular for now.
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The language you are using makes this confusing. If we “discard God as an answer”, as you say, we don’t do so because we think God does not exist, or such an answer is false. Rather, we discard it as an answer because it’s not an answer at all, in the sense of separating “true” from “false”, or whatever value you describe to a “good” answer.

Which is really just to ask, what are your requirements for an answer or an explanation. Does it just have to pleasing or satisfying? Does it just need to comport with the intuition?

If so, then God is your thing.

If your criterion, on the other hand, requires an explanation that is distinct from inferior competing explanations, demands that an explanation be distinguishable in its truth value or its epistemic equity from other, lesser explanations, than God doesn’t get to play. God doesn’t provide those kinds of explanations, as you’ve granted above.

So the only reason we would “discard God as an answer” is that we demand more from our answers than “anything explanation is true, anything at all, whatever you prefer”.

-TS
 
Touchstone said:
Could be! With an omnipotent, omniscient God, that’s a plausible explanation, because ALL explanations are plausible explanations with belief in God, and “plausible” gets all meaning ripped out of it.
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No! A thousand times no!! That is completely implausible. 6,000 years ago? Ha!

It is perfectly obvious that the world was created last Thursday with the appearance of age.

🙂

Google “Last Thursdayism” if you are puzzled by this post.

rossum
 
svid said:
So some people don’t believe in explanations at all? Of any kind?🤷
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Well, by “anything” I meant, any given thing, like why we are conscious AND electricity AND the creation of the world.
 
rossum said:
No! A thousand times no!! That is completely implausible. 6,000 years ago? Ha!

It is perfectly obvious that the world was created last Thursday with the appearance of age.

🙂

Google “Last Thursdayism” if you are puzzled by this post.

rossum
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Woah! International conspiracy alert! Let’s take down CNN, it’s been fabricating everything from the past 2 weeks and before! 😛
 
Touchstone said:
The language you are using makes this confusing. If we “discard God as an answer”, as you say, we don’t do so because we think God does not exist, or such an answer is false. Rather, we discard it as an answer because it’s not an answer at all, in the sense of separating “true” from “false”, or whatever value you describe to a “good” answer.

Which is really just to ask, what are your requirements for an answer or an explanation. Does it just have to pleasing or satisfying? Does it just need to comport with the intuition?

If so, then God is your thing.

If your criterion, on the other hand, requires an explanation that is distinct from inferior competing explanations, demands that an explanation be distinguishable in its truth value or its epistemic equity from other, lesser explanations, than God doesn’t get to play. God doesn’t provide those kinds of explanations, as you’ve granted above.

So the only reason we would “discard God as an answer” is that we demand more from our answers than “anything explanation is true, anything at all, whatever you prefer”.

-TS
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Hey! Wait a minute! Every explanation for the origin of the Universe, except steady state and cyclic universe in some models, is unfalsifiable or superfluous, be it religious, scientific, or philosophical! Why must God be taken down but not them?

And I personally find God to be better (i.e., more probable) than competing explanations.
 
The statement doesn’t apply to God. This is simply because one cannot know God fully then we cannot derive an anything/everything answer from the knowledge that we can have of God. Sure, we can know God as the first cause because he is Ipsum esse substens but we can’t provide a formulaic response that explains the color blue by there being, or us having knowledge of God. So, you can’t say ‘God → Blue’ however, you can, through a lot of work, say: ‘Blue → God’ This is because there is nothing about God, as such, that necessitates the color blue. However, once you have the color blue then God becomes a necessary cause for the existence of the color blue.

Further, in some sense, the very statement: “If it can explain anything, it explains nothing” is the type of conditional statement that assumes that the values ‘it’ and ‘thing’ are material. God is not material. The staement, therefore, does not pertain to that which we call God.
 
Pieman333272 said:
Hey! Wait a minute! Every explanation for the origin of the Universe, except steady state and cyclic universe in some models, is unfalsifiable or superfluous, be it religious, scientific, or philosophical! Why must God be taken down but not them?

And I personally find God to be better (i.e., more probable) than competing explanations.
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Swineburn makes a similar argument through use of the principle of simplicity. But, we wary of falling into identifying God as the “God of the gaps.” Both Swineburn and the “God of the Gaps” crowd limit God too much.
 
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