Does God Explain Anything At All? (Part 4)

If what we know of God is true, then that knowledge explains much of life (ultimately, all of it). That's my thesis, in contention with doctor(logic)'s belief that there's nothing explanatory about God at all. The nub of our difference is coming clearer now.

That God is explanatory if our knowledge of him is true--that seems painfully obvious. We have to examine it more closely in order to address doctor(logic), however. First, a general definition of explanation. doctor(logic)'s definition places it strictly in terms of predictiveness. Here's mine:

D1: An explanation is any true knowledge that contributes to our understanding of the reason for, or the nature, source, cause, etc. of some phenomenon or reality.

Note several things about this definition. First (1), explanations do not entail exhaustive understanding. Why is the water boiling on the stove? "I want to make some tea." That's an explanation. It's information that contributes to our understanding of the cause of that reality. It leaves out any description of how the natural gas got to the stove, or any mention of the theory of combustion or the kinetic theory of heat; but that does not make it any less an explanation. An explanation need not be exhaustive to be helpful and true.

Second (2), this contribution to our understanding should have some substance to it, some discriminatory power, or else it's really no contribution at all. doctor(logic) has said this often, and I agree. If we always "explain" things by, "Because that's how God wanted it," that tells us nothing at all.

Third (3), this contribution must be within our realm of knowledge. We could speak of unknown explanations, but I think doctor(logic) would be content (as I am) to stick with what is known.

Fourth (4), it is based on that knowledge being true. There are false explanations, certainly, but that's not what we're after; we want to know what true ones are like, and how to get to them.

I think doctor(logic) could agree with everything here. But he disagrees with the possibility that God could be explanatory. Our disagreement seems to center around (2) and (4). doctor(logic) believes that God can be used indiscriminately to explain just anything that could happen. My short answer to that is that this is just not true. God cannot, and never has, violated his revealed character; and he always works in accord with his promises, his warnings, and his prophetic statements. He can't be used to explain just anything that could be imagined. The full revelation of God in history does, however, line up strongly with observed reality, as I wrote in my Beauty series.

(4) is probably even more central to our disagreement. The reason doctor(logic) insists so strongly on predictiveness is because this is how we can know that an explanation is true. For him, it is the only way. I would certainly agree that's a powerful method, but not that it's the only one. It walks terribly close to the cliff of positivism's well-known self-defeat ("the only meaningful statements are those that are empirically verifiable/falsifiable"--a rule that does not meet its own standard).

Worse, or at least more obviously so (for dl has tried to deny that his version of positivism falls off that cliff), is that it begs the question of naturalism versus supernaturalism. doctor(logic)'s rules not only require that truth be determined solely in terms of what is tangible and measurable (sharply limiting knowledge to the natural realm), they also deny the usefulness of the exceptional. Unique events don't work well statistically. Any information regarding Christ's resurrection has to be tossed aside, because people don't rise from the dead. So any evidence for supernaturalism is defeated by the arbitrary rules of the game.

The curious and obviously wrong result of this is that if God is truly the explanation for anything in the universe, doctor(logic)'s system could never see it so or admit it. His definition rules out God, even if God exists and is the source of reality. Something smells fishy about a definition that can do that regardless of evidences.

To summarize, if we take our definition of explanation down to a deeper level as I've done here (D1), I think doctor(logic) and I can agree on what it means. He disagrees, though, that it can apply to God, because he thinks that God is used to explain things indiscriminately and because all knowledge must be testable statistically, implying naturalistic presuppositions. I've stated why those two objections don't hold up.

There's one more thing I ought to mention, not because doctor(logic) has brought it up lately but because Intelligent Design opponents often have. They complain that if we speak of God as our explanation for origins, our curiosity will be cut off and science will grind to a halt. No. Anybody can tell the difference between God contributing to our understanding, and natural explanations also contributing. Anybody can see that many, many Christians in science have pursued both levels of understanding at the same time. 'Nuff said about that, I hope.

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

Posted: Mon - September 17, 2007 at 10:50 AM |

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Does God Explain Anything At All? (Part 4)

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson