Originally Posted by bhutocracy

You've just described an atheist position.

Originally Posted by dav3

Then again, the whole Universe could be inside of some alien's SimUniverse game, and no we aren't going to call him the 'God of Nintendo'.

We can never be too sure about the biiiig picture. But we can try to whittle away at the unknown with repeating patterns in enviroments that are known.

Originally Posted by bhutocracy

And you didn't answer the question.
The question was "How and why would it advance or augment our understanding of the universe to call electromagnetism or gravity god rather than plain old "vanilla" electricity or gravity."

Originally Posted by bhutocracy

Finding out what "natural forces" created the universe is the raison d'être of the scientific method. You can do that without calling anything God or redefining Him. You just point at something, ask "Why" and apply the scientific method to try and find out. We found out that gravity creates stars and electricity can spark life without calling those forces "god". My bowels "create" shit but we didn't have to call our assholes god to find that out. Science, with it's heavy leaning on experimentation doesn't even require there to be a initial guiding question to generate a serendipitous discovery. We didn't have to call mercury a "god" to discover it helped create photographic images.