(May 5, 2016 at 5:56 pm)SteveII Wrote:(May 5, 2016 at 9:17 am)Jörmungandr Wrote: It isn't that God is an impossible explanation, just that it is a very poor one. Discounting the evidence from miracles, we have no direct effects attributable to this hypothetical being, only the writings and words of men. Explanations are judged on a number of different criteria to determine their merit. One of these is scope, or how many phenomena are covered by the explanation. God gets high marks in this area. Another aspect is parsimony, or how simple the explanation is. Arguably, God fares okay on this metric, though it's hard to compare. On other measures, the God explanation fails miserably. Relevance, or how related the cause is to the effect is poor. Explanatory power, or how well we understand the phenomenon after the explanation as opposed to before is another abysmal failure. Predictiveness, or what predictions you can make based on the explanation and how do those pan out is another big zero for God.
In short, in most of the things we expect a good explanation to provide, God comes up short. God is little more than a Hail Mary hypothesis. It explains everything without explaining anything. The only real advantages it has are scope and familiarity, and familiarity is a lousy reason to support a hypothesis.
Can you provide a link to you list (and discussion thereof) of what makes a good explanation so I can better address each one?
It wasn't drawn from any particular source. I tried to list them clearly in my reply, but philosophy of science is a favorite topic with me and the information is drawn from my experience as much as from online sources.