Is the Concept of God Necessary To Explain Anything?

[Sunstone]

Is the concept of god necessary to explain anything? If so, what? How is it necessary? If not, why not?

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

What do you think?

 

[Sunstone]

What do you think?

So far as I can see, the god concept is not necessary to explain anything. But what do you think, Jay?

 

[Panda]

No, I don't think it is required. If I did I wouldn't be an atheist.

 

[McBell]

Concept of God would likely be needed to explain the rules and regulations that people claim God requires all mankind (not just the followers of that particular God) to follow.

 

[BucephalusBB]

The concept of God doesn't explain anything at all. It just replaces questions..

 

[sandandfoam]

Is the concept of god necessary to explain anything? If so, what? How is it necessary? If not, why not?

Yes, a concept of God explains to me (amongst other things) the connection/wonder I experience when for example I tilt my head backwards and look at the night sky.

 

[McBell]

Seems to me that it merely creates new questions that always end up with an answer something along the lines of "who are you to question God?" or "God is unknowable" or "God works in mysterious ways" or "Gods ways are not mans ways" or ... ...

 

[Kungfuzed]

Without God who will punish all the evil doers who get away with their crimes and reward those who suffer and do good? Is there any real justice if we all have the same fate?

 

[Willamena]

Is the concept of god necessary to explain anything? If so, what? How is it necessary? If not, why not?

Depends, of course, on your concept of "God." For instance, if it's defined in terms of nature or "power" rather than as a supernatural person or disembodied personality with "power," then it can "explain things."

Edit: oops, to answer your OP, then it's as necessary or unnecessary as any other thing of nature.

 

[Febble]

No, I don't think it is required. If I did I wouldn't be an atheist.

I don't think so either, but that doesn't make me an atheist.

 

[Orthodox]

The concept of God is not needed for the same reason that the concept of flying spaghetti monster isn't - the evidence doesn't point to it. Lest we forget Ockham's Razor!

 

[sandandfoam]

Is the concept of god necessary to explain anything? If so, what? How is it necessary? If not, why not?

I've been thinking about this all afternoon and have come back for another bite. I think the word 'god' is what I apply to my concept of an explanation of everything. But of course I'm not sure.....

 

[Appy603]

I don't think it is a question if God is necessary to explain anything. Personally, I think that God wants us to come up with our own explanations for things. When I first read the thread the first thing that came to mind was the necessity of God to explain the world around us. I realize that it may not have been the intent of this thread to be caught up in a creation/evolution debate, but for the sake of discussion I'll use it as an example.

As a Christian, I also see evolution as a valid explanation for the origin of the Earth. I just so happen to believe that God used it as His tool. I don't mean to be off topic, but my point is this; If God gives us free will to choose him because he wants that relationship He is certainly not going to let us use him as a crutch for explaining the world around us. If he were "necessary", as it has been put, for explaining things then there would be no need for free will. So i don't see Him as unnecessary for explaining things, I only see our Earthly explanations for things as an extension of the free will that He created us for in the first place.

 

[logician]

" I just so happen to believe that God used it as His tool."

Strange tool, to leave so much to chance, life essentially went along half a billion years in unicellular form before even making the jump to multicellular life. Homo sapiens certainly was not a predictive outcome of evolution, as explained so clearly in S J Gould's "WONDERFUL LIFE".

 

[Storm]

" I just so happen to believe that God used it as His tool."

Strange tool, to leave so much to chance, life essentially went along half a billion years in unicellular form before even making the jump to multicellular life. Homo sapiens certainly was not a predictive outcome of evolution, as explained so clearly in S J Gould's "WONDERFUL LIFE".

If one accepts that God used evolution as His tool, then it stands to reason that the process was not random.

 

[emiliano]

""So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence." "
Bertrand Russell

This quote is worth a few minutes of attention, this couldn’t be more off the mark, the gospels are nothing but praise to intelligence, that of God that have it in infinite quantities. What I would grant it author is that there isn’t much in the way of praise to human intelligence, and the main reason is that we don’t have much of it, after all according to those that are supped to know, we only use a quarter of our brain capacity, so in a book that treats the infinite intelligence of God in comparison to our, how much praise should we get?

 

[View from Here]

as a class problem in philosophy, I would say the concept is not necessary

 

[rojse]

Even if we were to accept the idea of God's existence, that does not remove any scientific question as to how a process occured. I do not consider "God done it" to be any sort of answer, just as I would not consider "Mr XYZ done it." Even should I accept God's/XYZ's interference in the situation, it seems like a copout to me. We would still need to know the physics and the chemistry behind the event, and the methods utilised. On top of that, we would also need to know exactly why God or Mr XYZ felt the need to do the event in question.

All that the existence of God does is make whatever event we are examining more difficult to explain on a rational basis.

 

[Nick Soapdish]

In my opinion God does not reveal Himself in order to explain stuff, it is to provide meaning, purpose and to put an ethical authority over us.

Having said that, I believe from an intellectual perspective, God does help to explain things (at least for me), such as the origin of the Universe, the creation of life, and the reason we have consciousness, freewill and a knowledge of good and evil.