It's a very common belief, this quote happens to come from Jibninjas.

"God explains the order of universe, rationality, consciousness, advanced intelligence, and a host of other things that naturalism continues to fall drastically short on."

Whilst I happen to think God exists, I've never regarded that as an 'explanation' for any of these things. I think they are brute facts about the world - it is rational, there is consciousness, the universe is ordered. Saying 'those things are true because of God' doesnt seem to help. I don't see what understanding is gained from the existence of God (Other than the trivial 'explanation' of: "This unexplainable thing is responsible for everything else, so now we only have one brute fact unexplained").

I'd be curious to here from anyone who agrees with the quote, not so much about contrasting Naturalism with God but in hearing what has been added to our understanding of those listed phenomenon once we accept that God exists.

I said in another thread that intellect is a property of reality. I would say the same for rationality and consciousness. I would, however go on to say that God and reality are in some sense intertwined.

Saying "those things are true because of God" is not the same as saying "those things are the way that they are and/or can exist because of God".

Would you say that gravity as the explanation for why things fall to the earth is useless? Things fall towards the earth is a brute fact. We don't know why gravity exists (at it's core), so what understanding is explained by saying that gravity causes things to fall to the earth?

Also, saying that because God as a being is unexplainable therefore should be discounted as the explanation of something else is absurd. We don't know why the laws of physics are the way that they are, should we not appeal to them to describe the universe?

And what do you mean by "what has been added to our understanding of those phenomenon?" What needs to be added? What can be added? And finally, why does something need to be added to be the correct, or best answer?

So would I - but I don't see what understanding that adds to our understanding of those phenomena. (They still "just are").

Would you say its your belief in God that allows you to see these things as brute facts of the universe?

Everything depends on the definition of "explain" you are using.

Positing an omnipotent agency "explains" all or nothing, depending on this critical detail.

Well, I'll answer your queries below but it seems odd to respond with a bunch of questions. All I'm asking is why you consider God an explanation for those things. I'm well aware that other people may have different needs from 'an explanation' than I do and I'm partly curious about what those are. I tried to indicate what I think an explanation entails, purely to give some context to the question, not because I think I have the only true account.

If you think nothing has been added to our understanding of these phenomenon by deeming God to be their explanation but that it is explained anyway then that's fine. Is that what you think though?


They seem pretty similar to me (if rationality were different then 'rationality' wouldn't exist - something else would). Nonetheless, amend the question if it suits you better. How does "Those things are the way they are because of God" add any understanding? We still don't really understand why, nor do we have any additional insight do we?
Gravity explains lots of different things - it says that things fall to earth, the sun shines, carbon, iron and so on form, planets move through the constellations the way they do - a whole host of disparate phenomena are ultimately explained. We go from a catalog of facts to an understanding of how one simple thing explains lots of different things. It also enables us to predict from our theory what would happen in a previously unobserved situation (black holes were predicted before they were observed, for example). In contrast: rationality, intelligence, order, spacetime all came from God - what else should we expect? Could we predict the existence of spacetime from just God and rationality? In what way does God's nature result in rationality instead of something else? What is it about God which means the universe is ordered? The gravity explanation explains not just "this simple thing is the source" it also says why it's existence leads to the observed, varied phenomenon. And (crucially in my view) it predicts things we havent already observed.
We should consider them unexplained. If they didnt help we should reject them - it's not that "god is unexplainable therefore he can't be an explanation" it's "If God is the explanation, how does that help? What have we learned?"
It's my understanding of what an explanation is. "Why are there suns?" is explained by gravity - saying "Because of a sunmaking thing" is not an explanation if it doesnt add any understanding of how the cause leads to the effect. What do you think an explanation is?
Parsimony, primarily. If someone asked me why pythagoras' theorem were true and I said "because of the axioms of euclidean geometry" I don't think I've given them an explanation. It only counts as an explanation because we can see how the axioms lead to the truth of the theorem. (Similarly I don't think "All perfect numbers are even" is explained by the axioms of number theory. I happen to think it's true. I happen to think the explanation will rely on the axioms of number theory. Without the connection though, it's just moving the target from one mystery to another).

Yeah I'm interested in what sense people who think God explains these things are using the word. See my above post to Jibninjas for the kinds of things I look for in an explanation (which I don't find in "Rationality exists because of God").

No. I considered them brute facts of the universe both as an atheist and still do as a theist.

I would say they are brute facts of reality(i think there is much much much more to reality then just our universe) and excepting God doesn't help us to explain them.

What is handy is that accepting them as brute facts of reality you can better understand God.

I'm confused now (though I didn't really expect you to be a "god explains..." kind of guy, to be honest).

Do you think God explains those things?

EDIT: Ah no I see - I misread your post (excepting vs accepting). We agree (I think?)

Here's my take, although obviously I'm speaking as an observer, not an adherent. The way in which God is thought to explain all these phenomena is as an explanation of what Aristotle called their "final cause" or their purpose.

Think about the question NotReady appealed to in his thread about Hawkings and Krauss. "Why are the laws of nature as they are?" There are two ways we could interpret this question. One way is in the modern scientific way, which is essentially just asking, what are the deeper laws of nature that caused these particular laws to be the case. But of course that only pushes the question back one step, as we can then ask the same question about those laws. Eventually, there will just be a set of laws, and that is it.

The other way of understanding the question is, What is the purpose for the laws of nature? What is the reason they are as they are? It is as an answer to this second question that theists bring in God. God had a purpose in mind when he created the universe, which means that there is an answer to this second question--namely, God's purpose in making the universe.

You'll find that a very similar form of reasoning can be done about consciousness, rationality, intelligence, etc. This is because the crucial step is the attempt to find an answer as to the purpose of these parts of the universe. Thus, God doesn't solve the mind-body problem, or tell us how the brain can be intentional. But God does tell us why we are intelligent and conscious beings; God gives us a purpose, a reason for this intelligence. It is science's (and by extension scientific naturalism) inability to answer these questions that gives rise to a need for God.

An awesome response thanks.

I certainly use explain in the modern, scientific sense and considered that the "God explains..." crowd were also. If it's more "These things exist because God has some purpose in mind" then I both agree with them that naturalism is not going to provide a purpose and also disagree that it counts as an explanation. Irrespective, I can translate from 'explanation' to 'purpose' without too much mental effort. Cheers.

Why is there consciousness? God wants it that way.
Why is there intelligence? God wants it that way.
Why is there ... ? God wants it that way.

Yep. seems to cover it. danka.

Just to clarify, this is not a fair representation of the theist position at all. The answer to these questions is not just that God wanted it that way, but why did God want it that way. In other words, why did God make us intelligent beings, etc (although in the end the answer to this question might end up reducing to the answer you give).

luckyme tends to cut corners sometimes in debate.

Might? There is no escaping it.

When you see the maze only has one home you may as well go stand in and wait for the others to thread through to it if they enjoy that sort of thing.
"cut to the chase" is how I think of it.

Original Position, while i appreciate you posting here a great deal, in the future could you wait a bit longer before helping the theists with their answers? you're really cutting down the potential lulz!

It depends on how one looks at things. There are some that believe God and God's Law are synonymous. So by understanding the law we come to understand God, and by understanding God we come to a better understanding of the law. A further thought is that God is being and the law of God is the law of being. Or so some thinking goes.

As to what we can do with that understanding of God and/or God's Law, it's not a lot different than what we do with laws of nature. Through our understanding and actions we provide conditions that don't occur randomly in nature for the laws of electro-magnetism to operate at higher levels. So in a similar manner we provide conditions that don't randomly occur in nature for that Law (the law of being) to operate at higher levels or fulfill its potential.

So just as a scientist through his understanding of natural law brings out the non-actualized potential within nature's laws, we can do the same, and with our understanding bring out the non-actualized potential of God's Law. However, to provide conditions that don't randomly occur in nature requires an entity that does not act randomly, an entity with an intellect to understand and the free volition to act. Without such an entity, hidden potential could not be actualized and The Law could not be fulfilled.

I think most would agree things like love, compassion and sacrifice equate to a higher level of being, yet they don't occur randomly in nature. They're volitional acts that bring out higher potentia of being, fulfilling The Law.

While Original Position might have provided some theists' answer (I think it's perhaps what Concerto was alluding to) I don't see that it quite answers all such views on what constitutes an explanation.

Jibninjas seemed to be equating gravity or the other laws of physics as explanations for the physical phenomena we observe. If he's suggesting this is analogous to God's explanation for rationality/consciousness/the universe then I think he is not following Original Position's "Two kinds of explain" approach.

Not sure though. I'd also like to hear NotReady's view, since I think he means more than "God provides the purpose of rationality" when he says "God explains rationality".

I'm not clear how this addresses the question. In what sense does God explain rationality on this approach? Rationality is a facet of God?
I don't understand this. We use the laws of physics to predict the existence of objects and/or events which we havent yet seen. We use them to explain many disparate phenomena with one simpler, underlying process. In my mind this is why they can be said to be 'explanations'. When you say:

"So just as a scientist through his understanding of natural law brings out the non-actualized potential within nature's laws..."

I don't see much meaning. Can you give a concrete example of a scientist 'bringing out the non-actualised potential within nature's laws through his understanding'?

I don't know if I'd call it facet of God, but when we look at natural laws we can deduce that they don't work against one another or themselves. We might call it harmony or a physicist might call it a unifying theory, but back of both is an inherent unity without which nothing would be. From here we can posit harmony or unity as a first principle of existence or being and by aligning our thoughts and actions with that principle we are thinking and acting rationally.

A light bulb and all that goes along with making it work.

Yeah it wasn't meant as a criticism (in fact 'cut to the chase' was my first explanation, but I wondered if that was an Australianism since it seems to be internally contradictory). You're an often misunderstood soul, round these parts.

As I pointed out in another thread, there tends to be an ellipsed 'by magic' that follows the 'god did it' response. The ellipsed part is the description of 'how he did it' you initially noticed was missing from the 'god did it' explanation.

As for Jib's attempted rebuttal, gravity explains 'what' happens between two bodies: they move toward one another. This is not an attempted description of 'how' gravity works, just a description of 'what' happens. However, general relativity does explain 'how' this happens: bodies bend space-time around them.