God as a scientific explanation

Whenever I consider the magnificent structures of cells ^[1], I wonder “How could this possibly be?” There is no answer forthcoming, despite the incredible insight offered by scientists. What is, simply is, and I don’t have a reasonable answer for how such exquisite complexity can arise from a cosmic explosion and a showering of stardust. I assure you that I’ve felt a deep craving to announce that I had figured things out, but the most honest answer is I don’t know. I wish I understood things better, but I fully expect to die without having a satisfactory explanation of many of life’s miracles.

This is where religious believers try to come to my rescue by offering the “explanation” that “God did it” or that “This is God’s design.”

I respond by telling these folks that “God did it” doesn’t explain anything to me. I urge these often well-intended believers that they are talking strange poetry, not real science, and that their platitudes about God don’t help me understand anything about my physical existence. In fact religious claims packaged as “explanations” distract and annoy me. At this point, believers are usually perplexed. From their perspective, uttering religious claims about “God” and pointing to the Bible truly serve as explanations. They are frustrated that agnostics and atheists reject this earnestly offered explanation that “God designed the world.”

How is it that believers are so convinced that bringing “God” into scientific conversations serves as a meaningful explanation?

Philosophers of science have offered many approaches identifying worthwhile explanations, such as A) conformity with a known scientific law (Hempel’s Deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation) or B) Philip Kitcher’s approach, stressing explanatory unification or C) the ability of that explanation to precisely generate predictions of future events or D) Bas van Fraassen’s approach. For van Fraassen, an explanation is an answer—an informative description evaluated pursuant to the context established by a particular question—a request for a specific kind of information.

I subscribe to the idea that an explanation is essentially a description that makes you feel good inside. That’s the currency on the streets. I explored that idea in a post instigated by my encounter with “ball lightning ^[2].”

The use of the word God makes believers feel very good inside, indeed, even ecstatic. But uttering the word “God” only sounds plausible to any of us (plausible enough that we might find it worth our while to debate it), because we have heard this purported “explanation” for hundreds of years. These “God did it” claims sound a little plausible only because we hear these claim so often; many of us heard them while our parents held us in their laps.

What would we think, however, if we heard such a far-fetched claim only in settings devoid of emotion and social connectedness (or better yet, in the absence of the threat of social disconnectedness). We’d reject it flat out. All of us would reject it. Why am I so convinced?

I’m going to use literary license to offer religious explanations that are comparable to Christian beliefs in terms of believability, but dressed up in an unfamiliar way, so that perplexed Christians might be better able to see why I so quickly and decisively dismiss “God” as a meaningful explanation. This is how their religious “explanations” look and sound to me.

Once again, here’s the question: How is it possible that microscopic cells are so incredibly complex?

ME: It’s because Ockbon made it so

TRADITIONAL CHRISTIAN (TC): Who is Ockbon?

ME: A giant invisible baby who wears purple diapers. He sometimes talks to me, but no one but I can hear Him. I go to a four story building to praise Him every week. The spiritual leader dresses up in sparkly clothes and tells us the same stories about Ockbon every week.

TC: What? That’s absurd. On what basis do you make such a preposterous claims about Ockbon?

ME: Based on 900-year old scraps of written by unknown people. Many passages contradict with other passages to outsiders, but not to me. For instance, there are two creation stories. In one, Ockbon is created by 14 magic trees. In another story, he was created on the moon. These are perfectly consistent to anyone who prays for 58 hours every week. Ockbon is actually six persons but also one person. One of the persons is a horse. Another is a two-headed squirrel. Ockbon created the universe 37 years ago and implanted false memories in our heads. We often think that the universe has been around much longer, but we are confused and mistaken.

^[3]

TC: This is absurd. There’s no evidence of any of this. You are hallucinating.

ME: No I’m not. There’s plenty of evidence. One of Ockbon’s six persons was a girl named Sheena, born on earth, according to several fragments. Her earthly father had been in a terrible accident, and he had no testicles. Nonetheless, he sired Ockbon-the-Daughter (“Sheena”). She did many miracles as she grew up. On one occasion, the crowd brought her a little boy with only one leg. She waved her hand and the boy grew a new leg as the crowd watched. She is inerrantly intelligent. She predicted the discovery of Pluto, the four major moons of Jupiter and nebulae when she said: “In the skies, there is more than there seems to be.”

TC: This is absurd.

ME: Only to you is it absurd. Not for those who have faith. Sheena once created a 15,000 foot mountain 8 miles outside of Rome. Then she made it disappear the next day. There is no record of this in history books, but the sacred fragments say that it happened and all of those who have faith believe her. I know that Sheena is loving and perfect. If I keep believing in Sheena she will allow me into a sacred and beautiful cavern inside of the sun after I die, and she will allow all of us chosen people to watch TV shows inside the sun, and they will be the most wonderful shows ever created. Thus it is written.

TC: This is really absurd.

ME: You need to have faith. People who fail to honor Sheena as the perfect creator of the universe (along with Ockbon) will be stabbed with hot swords for 800 trillion years in a mold-filled windowless room in tiny planet in the solar system that they haven’t yet discovered. This is proof that Sheena and Ockman love us.

This does not explain the biology of cells:

ME: Cells are amazing because Ockbon designed them, along with Sheena, his Daughter. And Sheena is her own father. This is the obvious explanation, far superior to science. You need to have faith. We need to teach about Ockbon in school science classes. We need to teach this controversy. Ockbon and Sheena designed cells because they are so smart that even though they are omniscient, only they would be able to create an IQ test to measure their own super-duper intelligence. They designed human cells in a blink of an eye. After they invented cells, Ockbon said to Sheena (she was there, even though she hadn’t yet been born): “This is a human cell in which I am well pleased.“ People who try to apply science to Ockbon’s handiwork are arrogant, and they will go to the bad place after they die.

Traditional explanations of “God” are as utterly absurd as the above story about Ockbon and Sheena. They deserve no discussion in a science class. They are strange poetry. And there’s not much else I can think of saying when Believers inject “God” into science discussions. In fact, I have now gotten to the point where I am utterly bored and annoyed with religious “explanations.” On the other hand, I’m fascinated by the fact that people embrace these religious claims. As I’ve extensively written ^[4], religious beliefs are critically important, at least for social organizing, even though they are not true.

So does Christianity explain human biology? Not at all. When we give “God” a new name and concoct comparable claims about “God,” but put these claims into an unfamiliar context, it becomes abundantly clear, at least to me, that “God” should be kept far from science classrooms.

“God” is not an explanation, but the battle between scientists and the religious faithful will go on and on, because for Believers “God” viscerally feels like an incredibly obvious scientific explanation.

Print this post ^[5]