The first time I was accused of using ‘God of the gaps’ reasoning, I was debating the existence of a creator God with some atheist friends.
It was a rather unpleasant, partly because of the manner of the accusation, but mostly because I had no idea what I was being accused of. Naturally I was unable to respond, and the conversation dwindled.
This prompted me do some research into the idea. The understanding that I came to is that God-of-the-gaps reasoning is essentially arguing that God must be responsible for an occurrence because there is no other means of understanding it. In his book released in 2004: Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Us? Victor Stenger, a physicist and religious sceptic, says that:
“Intelligent design arguments are modern versions of God of the gaps reasoning, where a god is deemed necessary whenever science has not fully explained some phenomenon"
Perhaps the most common example of such reasoning, and the argument for which I was accused of it, is that of the existence of the universe. Since, from a scientific perspective, the best explanation of how the universe came to be is extremely improbable, is it not more likely that God had a hand in it?
At first, I was rather dejected. Perhaps I was wrong to argue in that way. It doesn’t seem right to fill what is, currently at least, a gap in scientific knowledge, by plucking the word ‘God’ out of nowhere. But as I pondered all this, I realised that this was not actually what I, or most people who use this argument was doing for 2 main reasons.
The first is this: Imagine, for whatever reason, you have a black eye. Your wife, mother, or someone, asks how it happened. Would they be satisfied if you explained to them, that a fast moving object made contact with your eye, and as a result, the blood vessels in the tissue around your eye burst in such a way that it’s current appearance came about? Certainly not. They would ask if you got into a fight, or got mugged, or something like that. But that doesn’t mean that the answer you gave them wasn’t true. My point is that, whether something is understood from a scientific point of view, doesn’t always, or often, mean that God wasn’t present and working in that situation. So to say that it’s flawed to argue that God could have created the universe, because there might be a scientific explanation, is nonsense. The two are not mutually exclusive.
The second reason is that, arguing for God in scientific 'gaps' is not a good description of my argument. The odds of us existing as a result of mindless random chance processes like the big bang and evolution are staggeringly tiny. To explain this away by saying ‘There might be billions of universes, in which case it’s probable that life would come to exist in one of them’ seems very silly to me. Arguing that the possibility of billions of entities that we can’t see or prove explains the staggering odds against us, is completely an argument from ignorance.
If the only rational explanation of these tiny odds is that God is responsible, It makes the ‘Gap’ look distinctly like a shoe and God distinctly like a footprint.
What do you think?
I'm having similar discussions as the moment with an atheist online. The annoying thing is their necessity of solid rational proof of everything, which negates the need for faith, which is thus deemed illogical. Ultimately, as I said to this person, it comes down to the heart, not the head, so the best we can do is pray for grace, patience and a personal revelation. You may as well ask for solid tangible proof of love. It doesn't exist, only the outworkings of it. Keep plugging away, you look like you're on the right path, and remember "The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice." Pr 12:15
ReplyDeleteI also think it's important to note that the statement: 'knowledge needs solid, rational proof' cannot be solidly, rationally proved.
ReplyDeletehttp://whatyouthinkmatters.org/blog/article/the-problem-of-knowing