Proofs for God, Again

According to Scott Siskind, people on the Internet are once again debating proofs of the existence of God. He calls our attention to an alternative explanation, Max Tegmark’s mathematical universe hypothesis, which posits that all possible mathematical objects exist. I do not find this any more interesting than most proposals in this field. Siskind lists these various arguments for god's existence:

• Cosmological: Why is there something rather than nothing?
• Fine-tuning: Why are the values of various cosmological constants exactly perfect for life?
• Argument from comprehensibility: why is the universe so simple that we can understand it?
• First cause argument: All things must have a cause.
• Teleological argument: Why does the world have interesting structures like living things?

All of these, it seems to me, boil down to saying that the universe cannot be explained by its own laws; therefore, something outside the universe, or not bound by its laws, is required to explain it. To that I would say, first, that we do not understand the laws of the universe well enough to make that claim, and second, so what? If we cannot understand that thing outside our universe in any way, or know anything about its purposes or whatever, what difference does it make what we call it? What is the point in talking about it?

The universe is a mystery; we do not know why it is here or why it is the way it is or whether we have some special role in it. What does the word "god" add to that basic insight? If by "god" you mean, "whatever explains what we can't explain," I can't really object. I simply don't get why taking the old notion of "god" as a superpowerful sort of being and using it in this abstract way is helpful. 

Rather than toward Max Tegmark, I would direct those concerned with this problem to David Hume. In his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion he created a dialogue between Philo, a skeptic, and Demea, a deist:

Philo the skeptic says that we cannot understand or know anything about a transcendent reality that explains or sustains the ongoing order of nature, while theists such as Demea say that we cannot understand or know anything about the transcendent reality, which is God, that explains or sustains the ongoing order of nature. Since the inserted clause does not help us in the least, the difference between them is merely verbal. And this is Hume's conclusion.