Revisiting the “God of the Gaps”
Ron Larson
OUTLINE
•The “God of the gaps” pitfall in
apologetics
•The growing aggressiveness of
atheistic scientists
•My apologetic (shortened version)
•Re-assessment of the “God of the
gaps” critique
OUTLINE
•The “God of the gaps” pitfall in
apologetics
•The growing aggressiveness of
atheistic scientists
•My apologetic (shortened version)
•Re-assessment of the “God of the
gaps” critique
“Gaps” filled by Science
•Isaac Newton asserted that God’s intervention was
required to maintain the stability of planetary orbits, but
Laplace explained their stability using Newton’s own theory
of gravitation. When asked where God fit into his theory,
Laplace is said to have remarked: “I have no need of that
hypothesis.”
•William Paley argued that the clock-like perfection and
intricacy of living creatures implies that their origin could
only be found in a divine “Watchmaker.” Darwin explained
how natural selection might gradually lead to diverse forms
of life from a single progenitor, without the need of “that
hypothesis.”
Fossil Fish With "Limbs" Is Missing Link, Study Says
Tiktaalik roseae
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Found in the Canadian Arctic, the new fossil
boasts leglike fins, scientists say. The creature is
being hailed as a crucial missing link between fish
and land animals
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/0405_060405_fish.html
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Ancient Walking
Whales Shed Light
on Ancestry of
Ocean Giants
David Braun
National Geographic
News September 19,
2001
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Ambulocetus
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Walking Whale Rodhocetus, a
primitive whale that lived 47
million years ago, visualized on
the basis of new fossils from
Pakistan. The ankle bones
indicate a close relationship
between early whales and
hoofed land mammals such as
hippos and pigs.Copyright 2001
Science/Painting by John
Klausmeyer
"If by the accumulation of irresistible evidence we are driven -- may
not one say permitted-- to accept Evolution as God's method in
creation, it is a mistaken policy to glory in what it cannot account for.
The reason why men grudge to Evolution each of its fresh claims to
show how things have been made is groundless fear that if we discover
how they are made we minimize their divinity. When things are known,
that is to say, we conceive them as natural, on Man's level; when they
are unknown, we call them divine--as if our ignorance of a thing were
the stamp of its divinity. If God is only to be left to the gaps in our
knowledge, where shall we be when these gaps are filled up? And if
they are never to be filled up, is God only to be found in the disorders of
the world? Those who yield to the temptation to reserve a point here
and there for special divine interposition are apt to forget that this
virtually excludes God from the rest of the process. If God appears
periodically, he disappears periodically. If he comes upon the scene at
special crises he is absent from the scene in the intervals. Whether is
all-God or occasional-God the nobler theory?"
Henry Drummond Ascent of Man 1894
Problems with “God of the Gaps” Theology
“How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for
the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact
the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed
further and further back (and that is bound to
be the case), then God is being pushed back
with them, and is therefore continually in
retreat. We are to find God in what we know,
not in what we don't know; God wants us to
realize his presence, not in unsolved problems
but in those that are solved.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
OUTLINE
•The “God of the gaps” pitfall in
apologetics
•The growing aggressiveness of
atheistic scientists
•My apologetic (shortened version)
•Re-assessment of the “God of the
gaps” critique
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“A scenario is suggested by
which the universe and its
laws could have arisen
naturally from ‘nothing.’
Current cosmology suggests
that no laws of physics were
violated in bringing the
universe into existence. The
laws of physics themselves
are shown to correspond to
what one would expect if the
universe appeared from
nothing. There is something
rather than nothing because
something is more stable.”
Victor Stenger, in Why is There Something Rather
Than Nothing? The Self-Contained Universe
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New York Times Bestseller!
Review of “Breaking the Spell
Religion as a Natural Phenomenon”
By Daniel C Dennett
“Humans have brains that are big enough to be
both self-aware and aware that others are selfaware. This “theory of mind” leads to a
“Hyperactive Agent Detection Device” (HADD)
that not only alerts us to real dangers, such as
poisonous snakes, but also generates false
positives, such as believing that rocks and
trees are imbued with intentional minds or
spirits… This is animism that, in the well-known
historical sequence, leads to polytheism, and,
eventually, monotheism. In other words, God is
a false positive generated by our HADD.”
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Daniel C. Dennett
Michael Shermer in Science Jan. 27, 2006
What’s New by Bob Parks,
American Physical Society Email
“After all, we assume that events have natural
causes. As we learn more about causes, God's
domain keeps shrinking, or at least moving, like
God's Little Acre in the Erskine Calwell novel. I
leave the extrapolation to the reader.”
"The legacy of the Enlightenment is the belief that entirely on
our own we can know and in knowing, understand and in
understanding, choose wisely. That self-confidence has
risen with the exponential growth of scientific knowledge,
which is being woven into an increasingly full explanatory
web of cause and effect. In the course of our enterprise we
have learned a great deal about ourselves as a
species. We now better understand where humanity came
from, and what it is. Homo Sapiens like the rest of life was
self-assembled. So here we are, no one having guided us
to this condition, no one looking over our shoulder, our
future entirely up to us. Human autonomy having thus
been recognized, we should now feel more disposed to
reflect on where we wish to go."
E.O. Wilson, in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
"The legacy of the Enlightenment is the belief that entirely on
our own we can know and in knowing, understand and in
understanding, choose wisely. That self-confidence has
risen with the exponential growth of scientific knowledge,
which is being woven into an increasingly full explanatory
web of cause and effect. In the course of our enterprise we
have learned a great deal about ourselves as a
species. We now better understand where humanity came
from, and what it is. Homo Sapiens like the rest of life was
self-assembled. So here we are, no one having guided us
to this condition, no one looking over our shoulder, our
future entirely up to us. Human autonomy having thus
been recognized, we should now feel more disposed to
reflect on where we wish to go."
E.O. Wilson, in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
“Naturalism is perhaps the dominant
perspective or picture among contemporary
Western intellectuals; its central tenet is that
there is no God and nothing beyond nature.
Human beings, therefore, must be
understood, not in terms of their being image
bearers of God, but in terms of their
commonality with the rest of nature, i.e.,
nonhuman nature. The things we think
distinctive about ourselves--religion, morality,
love, scholarship, humor, adventure, politics-all must be understood in natural terms,
which in our day means evolutionary terms.”
Alvin Plantinga, Christian Philosophy at the End of the 20th Century
“Maybe Reason Isn’t Enough”
New York Times Editorial, 1999
“Upward of 90 percent of all Americans say they
believe in God. But I bet a lot more than one of 10
also believe that science has got it basically right.
Religion may offer a source of nostalgia, a sense of
community, a consoling mythology, but without faith,
without the experience of God, it is no protection
from the crisis of spirit at the century’s end.
This is the sadness at the heart of our secular
lives. No one wants to live in a pointless, chaotic
cosmos, but that is the one that science has
given us, and that our culture has largely
championed. We may yearn for the divine, but
our feet are stuck in the moral relativism (or
even nihilism) that such a culture breeds. The
post-modern Dadaism that’s hip today is the
best we can do; everything’s a joke. But inside
it feels awful. The things you want a God for - an
afterlife, a comfort, a commander - seem
unavailable”
Marty Kaplan, former speechwriter for Vice President
Walter Mondale, then a screenwriter and movie producer.
Is it time to reconsider the complete
rejection of “God of the gaps” arguments?
…it has proved incorrect to assume that the
rigor of scientific methodology would
constraint how far some scientists might go in
claiming to be able to account for mysteries
that are of central importance to religious
belief.
OUTLINE
•The “God of the gaps” pitfall in
apologetics
•The growing aggressiveness of
atheistic scientists
•My apologetic (shortened version)
•Re-assessment of the “God of the
gaps” critique
Is there Design in the Universe?
•
•
•
•
1. Design in the Cosmos
2. Design in Living things
3. Design in Man
4. Design in Ethics and
Morality
Is there Design in the Universe?
•
•
•
•
1. Design in the Cosmos
2. Design in Living things
3. Design in Man
4. Design in Ethics and
Morality
Design in the Cosmos
“Lift your eyes and look to the heavens:
Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by
one and calls them all by name
Because of his great power and mighty
strength,
Not one of them is missing”
Isaiah 40:38
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1. Design in the Cosmos
“That our sun, or any star, can be such a constant
source of energy for so long is hardly an accident.
The properties of nuclear reaction and gravitation
must be just right. Nuclear reactions must take place
to provide the sun’s energy, but if they are too
abundant the sun would expand and blow-up – as
many stars do, particularly the very old stars… The
laws of physics need to be carefully balanced. “
Charles Townes, Nobel Laureate
“For the approximately one hundred different chemical
elements we have on earth to be here, in particular for
the important elements carbon and oxygen to exist,
the electrical and nuclear forces must be just right and
balanced. Fred Hoyle, who discovered how carbon
and oxygen could be formed by nuclear processes
within stars, was much impressed. Although he was
something of a religious skeptic, Hoyle wrote in the
Caltech alumni journal:
“Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the
properties of the carbon atom… A common sense
interpretation of the facts suggests that some super-intellect
has monkeyed with the physics… the facts seem to me so
overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond
question.”
Charles Townes
“The Biggest Fix in the Universe”
“The value of the dark energy mass density
measured by astronomers is some 120
powers of ten less than the “natural value”
obtained by applying quantum theory… a
mechanism that cancels to one part in 120
powers of ten, and then fails to cancel after
that is something else entirely…. It would be
an extraordinary coincidence that that level of
cancellation… just happened to be what is
needed to bring about a universe fit for life…
That level of flukiness is too much to swallow.
Paul Davies, Cosmic Jackpot (2007)
Even atheistic scientists know that
the universe appears “designed”
“The real mystery raised by modern cosmology concerns a silent
‘elephant in the room,’ an elephant, I might add, that has been a huge
embarrassment to physicists: why is it that the universe has all of the
appearances of having been specially designed just so that life forms
like us can exist? This has puzzled scientists and at the same time
encouraged those who prefer the false comfort of a creationist
myth….. In the past most physicists (including me) have chosen to
ignore the elephant – even to deny its existence. They preferred to
believe that nature’s laws follow from some elegant mathematical
principle and that the apparent design of the universe is merely a
lucky accident. But recent discoveries in astronomy, cosmology, and
above all, String Theory have left theoretical physicists little choice
but to think about these things.”
Leonard Susskind, The Cosmic Landscape. String Theory and
the Illusion of Intelligent Design
Is there Design in the Universe?
•
•
•
•
1. Design in the Cosmos
2. Design in Living things
3. Design in Man
4. Design in Ethics and
Morality
Design in Living Things
“How many are your
works, O Lord!
In wisdom you made them
all;
the earth is full of your
creatures.”
Psalms 104:24
Miller-Urey Experiment
Methane, ammonia,
water, and hydrogen
+ sparks of
electricity ->
Amino acids!
Miller & Urey, 1952
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“The products of this early chemistry, dissolved in
the oceans, forming a kind of organic “soup” of
gradually increasing complexity, until, one day,
quite by accident, a molecule arose which was
able to make crude copies of itself, using as
building blocks the other molecules in the soup.
This was the ancestor of DNA, the mmmaster
molecule of life on earth….
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Carl Sagan, in “Cosmos,” 1970’s PBS series
“For those who are studying
aspects of the origin of life, the
question no longer seems to be
whether life could have
originated by chemical
processes involving nonbiological components, but,
rather, what pathway might have
been followed.”
National Academy of Sciences Website
Design in Life: Theoretically
Simplest Self-Replicating Cell
“By identifying the genes shared by the
simplest organisms, researchers have
recently concluded that at least 250 or
so are required for survival as a selfreplicating cell. That’s about half the
number present in the smallest known
bacterial genome.”
Science, 1998
New knowledge is opening, rather than closing, some gaps!
Making a Single Protein
Odds against forming a 100-amino-acid
protein by chance from the 20 natural
amino acids:
P = 1 out of (20)100 = 1 out of (10)130
When functional alterations are allowed, this
probability is reduced to
P = 1 out of (10)65
Reidhaar-Olson and Sauer, Proteins:
Structure, Function, and Genetics 7:306 1990
Famous Atheist Now Believes in God
NEW YORK/Dec 9, 2004 A British philosophy professor
who has been a leading champion of atheism for
more than a half-century has changed his mind. He
now believes in God more or less based on scientific
evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.
At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a
mistake, Anthony Flew has concluded that some sort
of intelligence or first cause must have created the
universe. A super-intelligence is the only good
explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of
nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from
England.
http://abcnews.go.com
Anthony Flew now believes in God
“I'm not sure how to express what a big deal this is. …
for a half century professor Anthony Flew has been
considered probably the number one living
intellectual proponent of religious skepticism and
atheism. I believe it may represent one of the
seven seals of the apocalypse. Soon ….Michael
Moore will be publicly repeating the Pledge of
Allegiance. Any halfwit can jump up and down
denouncing God, but for a half century professor
Anthony Flew has been considered probably the
number one living intellectual proponent of
religious skepticism and atheism. …...
http://blogcritics.org/
archives/2004/12/09
/210618.php
Is there Design in the Universe?
•
•
•
•
1. Design in the Cosmos
2. Design in Living things
3. Design in Man
4. Design in Ethics and
Morality
Design in Man
“What is man that you are mindful
of him, the son of man that you
care for him?
You made him a little lower than the
heavenly beings and crowned him
with glory and honor.
You made him ruler over the works
of your hands..”
Psalm 8:5,6
3. Design of Man: The puzzle of
consciousness
“I think, therefore I am” - Rene Descartes, 16h Century
Review of “Being No One. The Self-Model
Theory of Subjectivity” by Thomas Metzinger.
Reviewed in Science, 3 Oct., 2003
“Descartes identified the thinker with “himself” and himself with the
immortal soul. Unsatisfied with [this], scientists try to explain
human self-consciousness as a natural phenomenon. ….. In
Being No One, the German philosopher Thomas Metzinger …..
a professor at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz,
Germany, maintains that there are actually no autonomous
selves in the material world. The perception that one is the
source of thoughts and actions is an illusion… there are
experiences, but no one who experiences; there are thoughts,
but no thinker; action, but no actor.”
Is there Design in the Universe?
•
•
•
•
1. Design in the Cosmos
2. Design in Living things
3. Design in Man
4. Design in Ethics and
Morality
Design in Ethics and Morality
“the requirements of the law
are written on their hearts,
their consciences also
bearing witness…”
Romans 2:15
A ‘Scientific’ Ethics?
• The Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have
them do unto you” - Jesus
• The Silver Rule: “Do not do unto others what you
would not have them do unto you.” - Gandhi
• The Bronze Rule: “Do unto others as they do unto
you.” - Confucius
• The Iron Rule: “Do unto others as you like, before
they do it unto you; or “He who has the gold makes
the rules.”
• The Tin Rule: “Give precedence in all things to close
relatives, and do as you like to others” - favored by
evolutionary biologists as “kinship selection” or “I
would die to save two or my sons, or four cousins or
eight second cousins”
from Carl Sagan, Parade Magazine, 1993
A ‘Scientific’ Ethics?
“Game theory” run on computers tells us that the rule
that works best is something in between the golden
rule and the bronze rule - “If… ethical behavior were
self-defeating, we would not call it ethical, but foolish”
Carl Sagan Parade Magazine, Nov. 28, 1993
Is “what works best” the test of ethics?
How many heros have died young and
apparently defeated? How many tyrants
have lived out their days in relative peace
and success?
Jesus’ Golden Rule landed him on the
cross. And he left no offspring to carry his
genes. Was he unethical?
OUTLINE
•The “God of the gaps” pitfall in
apologetics
•The growing aggressiveness of
atheistic scientists
•My apologetic (shortened version)
•Re-assessment of the “God of the
gaps” critique
Re-assessing Bonhoeffer:
“How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the
incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the
frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and
further back (and that is bound to be the case), then
God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore
continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we
know, not in what we don't know; God wants us to
realize his presence, not in unsolved problems but in
those that are solved.”
Re-assessing Bonhoeffer:
“How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the
incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the
frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and
further back (and that is bound to be the case), then
God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore
continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we
know, not in what we don't know; God wants us to
realize his presence, not in unsolved problems but in
those that are solved.”
“God of the gaps” - Defined
The God of the gaps refers to a view of God
deriving from a theistic position in which anything
that can be explained by human knowledge is not
in the domain of God, so the role of God is
therefore confined to the 'gaps' in scientific
explanations of nature. Within the traditional
theistic view of God as existing in a realm
"beyond nature", as science progresses to explain
more and more, the perceived scope of the role of
God tends to shrink as a result.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps
“God of the gaps” - Defined
The God of the gaps refers to a view of God
deriving from a theistic position in which anything
that can be explained by human knowledge is not
in the domain of God, so the role of God is
therefore confined to the 'gaps' in scientific
explanations of nature. Within the traditional
theistic view of God as existing in a realm
"beyond nature", as science progresses to explain
more and more, the perceived scope of the role of
God tends to shrink as a result.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps
The Scientific Method:
A process for evaluating empirical knowledge
under the working assumption of
methodological materialism, which explains
observable events in nature by natural causes
without assuming the existence or nonexistence of the supernatural.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science
An Intellectual Cul-de-Sac
If science, by definition, rejects the supernatural, and
if all real knowledge, by common understanding, is
scientific knowledge, then there is nothing that we
can “know” that points to the existence of God. If, in
addition, we reject the notion that evidence for God’s
existence lies in any perceived limitations in what
science might discover (i.e., we thoroughly reject
any “God of the gaps” arguments), then, almost by
definition, there can be no legitimate reason for
believing in God.
How Science Becomes Atheism
“Let me be up front and state my own prejudices
right here. I thoroughly believe that real
science requires explanations that do not
involve supernatural agents… Furthermore, I
believe that physicists and cosmologists must
also find a natural explanation of our world,
including the amazing lucky accidents that
conspired to make our own existence possible.”
Leonard Susskind, The Cosmic Landscape
How Science Becomes Atheism
In other words, science is defined by two characteristics: 1)
It rejects the supernatural. 2) It seeks to explain
everything; indeed it “must” do so, according to Susskind.
The first of these characteristics is frequently put forward
as a methodology or as a boundary of the scientific
discipline; that is, science does not deal with the
supernatural, and hence any discussion of “design” since it typically implies a creator - is excluded from
scientific discourse. The second characteristic of science
is to push hard against the boundaries of ignorance and
to be confident of ultimate success. Each characteristic,
on its own, sounds appealing. Together, however, they
make philosophical naturalism – in essence, atheism –
the very heartbeat of science.
Are all “Design” arguments really
“God of the gaps” arguments, or
arguments from ignorance?
• We do not know how the physical constants
of the universe were set, nor why they seem
so well “tuned” for the existence of life.
• Recent discoveries in physics have revealed
more and more extreme examples of “fine
tuning” and have “increased the gap” that
science must bridge.
• Is it therefore legitimate to use “fine tuning” as
evidence against naturalism, or is this just
another fallacious “God of the gaps”
argument?
Are all “Design” arguments really
“God of the gaps” arguments, or
arguments from ignorance?
• We do not know how life could have selfassembled naturally, through the action of
known physics and chemistry alone.
• The more we have learned about physics and
chemistry and the structure of living things,
the harder it has become to imagine that life
assembled itself without guidance.
• Is it therefore legitimate to use the seeming
impossibility of a naturalistic origin of life as
evidence against naturalism?
When do “explanatory gaps” imply that
one’s ontology should be expanded?
Magnetic field lines were introduced by Michael Faraday
(1791-1867) who named them "lines of force."
http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/whfldlns.html
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Faraday's introduction of the concept of lines of force was
[initially] rejected by most of the mathematical physicists of
Europe, since they assumed that electric charges attract and
repel one another, by action at a distance, making such lines
unnecessary.
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http://www.phy.hr/~dpaar/fizicari/xfaraday.html
Consciousness: The “explanatory gap”
“I suggest that a theory of consciousness should take
experience as fundamental. We know that a theory of
consciousness requires the addition of something
fundamental to our ontology, as everything in physical
theory is compatible with the absence of consciousness.
… we will take experience itself as a fundamental feature
of the world, alongside mass, charge, and space-time. If
we take experience as fundamental, then we can go about
the business of constructing a theory of experience.”
David Chalmers: http://consc.net/papers/facing.html
My (Current) View:
•Science, by its modern definition, can never find direct,
positive, evidence for God, since God is not a hypothesis
that the methodology of science can entertain.
•Thus, unless the aspects of reality that are
described poorly, or not at all, by science, are
pointed out, there is little chance to persuade an
atheist to consider “enlarging his ontology” beyond
the purely material.
•While it is true that God’s presence is to be found in all,
not just some, aspects of the physical world, an
unbeliever who sees no reason to believe in God is more
likely to be persuaded to reconsider if he/she can be
shown aspects of reality where God’s activity seems
especially obvious.
My (Current) View:
•Pointing out specific areas (e.g., fine-tuning, origin of
life) where God’s activity seems especially evident may
risk creating a “God of the gaps.” However, it is also
possible that a skeptic, once convinced (in part, by
considering these gaps) that God exists, will then be
able to see God at work elsewhere, such as in the life of
Jesus, and through reading the Bible, than would be
have been possible before a more limited “beachhead”
belief in God has been established.
•Failure to point out the limits of science, at least as
based on current knowledge, weakens one apologetics,
and allows distortions to stand unchallenged among the
scientific community and the broader public.
Questions?