What does this desk explain?

A while back, before it was time for the political philosophy class to start, there was a bit of a pre-class discussion. I don't know what started it, as I walked in in the middle of it to hear them discussing Spinoza's and various other formulations of "God" (in quotes because most of these were not the Abrahamic God). Pelletti made a comment that I found very strange. He said something to the effect of, "The problem with pantheism is that it doesn't explain anything."

But why should a deity explain anything? Does the existence of this desk actually explain anything? Perhaps it explains why my office tools don't fall through to the ground, but they could rest on the ground just as easily. The desk just is. We don't expect that noticing its existence will explain anything in particular. If I refused to believe that there is a desk here solely because its existence does not seem to explain anything, that would seem a trifle odd. Either there is a desk there or there is not.

Perhaps it could be argued that the desk explains the sense-data associated with it. I see a somewhat rectangular shape, with rounded off corners. It feels cold and impenetrable against my elbows. The top surface is brown, but the rounded corners have shiny metallic inserts. Yet there are sense-data traditionally associated with the Divine as well, particularly with the mystical sense of the Divine: a sense of Oneness, of Totality. Positing such Oneness, a la pantheism, would explain that sense datum, would it not? Or do we not count sense data as needing such an explanation?

And, I know, the immediate rejoinder is that those particular sense data are some artifact of the way the brain processes information. But isn't the way we perceive the desk likewise an artifact of the way the brain processes information? We see light reflected in a particular spectrum that our eyes can detect. Our sense of touch reports only a limited set of information to the brain. Those sensations, too, are influenced by mental processing, yet most of us would not claim that the desk is only the result of such processing. Why the difference? Why are some artifacts of mental processing interpreted as meaningful and corresponding to something existent, while others are dismissed as being only artifacts?

I suspect the rejoinder to that one would be "physical evidence." That is, anyone with the appropriate sensory apparatus will detect an object in its place, and those with the appropriate cultural background will recognize it as a desk. Yet the mystical experience is widespread across different cultures, all describing similar experiences, and most give that experience a name connected to the Divine. Perhaps because we don't have a machine that can directly detect that experience, we reject it as less meaningful than the experience of the desk, but I suspect that most mystics would argue that the experience of the Divine is more meaningful.

Finally, either a thing exists or it doesn't. Whether the thing actually explains anything seems irrelevant to whether or not it actually exists. For instance, invisible ants in my computer might explain its occasional hiccups, but that gives me no reason to think such ants actually exist. Except for the sense-data connected with it, though, the desk just doesn't seem to explain much of anything, any more than the letter 'h' on my keyboard does, or the air in my lungs does.

Ideas and theories explain things. Objects and Beings just exist. (I have a feeling I'm going to wind up editing this in the morning, but for now I'm just going to his hit* "Publish.")

*Hiss would be more amusing, yes, but it's not what I actually meant last night. And for the moment, I'll let the post stand apart from this rambling comment. It occurred to me a bit after writing this that 'pi' is another good example. The "ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter" exists for any circle, or for any constructed approximation of a circle, if you prefer. But that ratio in and of itself explains nothing. With a bit of work, one can prove that the ratio will be the same for any perfect circle, and then we can measure it for constructed approximations of circles to compare. So this number 'pi' exists as a property of circles, but it is the consequence of an explanation, and does not itself explain anything.