What is "God of the Gaps"?

[Love4All]

There’s no contradiction in postualting that the universe is part of an infinite chain of events. In fact our universe could be causing lots of other universes as we speak. An infinite chain going back in time is not impossible, I think that’s called a per accident series. You are thinking of a per se series ( I hope I’m not mangling the terminology) which can’t go back into infinity.

ETA: The important thing is to aknowlege that God is the cause of the existence of all that is. How He pulled it off isn’t all that important to our faith in my opinion.

While I agree that it is more important to believe God than to “figure it all out,” nonetheless if we are going to discuss philosophy we ought at least to strive for accuracy. An infinite series of actual physical events would be a physically completed infinity, since time is a dimension like space. The problem is that “infinity” does not name a possible quantity, but only a limit. We know that the series of natural numbers never completes, i.e. the series is infinite. Thus it is not possible to name the highest number. Similarly, it is not possible to posit the first event in an infinite causal chain, and therefore not possible to posit a second event, or a third, and so on — none of the events in such a causal chain are possible, because infinity cannot be physically completed.

The only situation where infinity is more than just a limit, is in describing God.

 

[J_Peterson]

While I agree that it is more important to believe God than to “figure it all out,” nonetheless if we are going to discuss philosophy we ought at least to strive for accuracy. An infinite series of actual physical events would be a physically completed infinity, since time is a dimension like space. The problem is that “infinity” does not name a possible quantity, but only a limit. We know that the series of natural numbers never completes, i.e. the series is infinite. Thus it is not possible to name the highest number. Similarly, it is not possible to posit the first event in an infinite causal chain, and therefore not possible to posit a second event, or a third, and so on — none of the events in such a causal chain are possible, because infinity cannot be physically completed.

The only situation where infinity is more than just a limit, is in describing God.

It’s been awhile since I read Aquinas so I’m having a hard time explaining my self. So I’m going to cheat and post a link to Edward Feser’s blog as he can describe it much better than me: edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/08/edwards-on-infinite-causal-series.html

The big bang could be part of a per accidens series which could theoretically go back to infinity. What can’t go back is a per se series. I’ll have to re-read this material myself as I’ve forgotten too much

 

[polytropos]

What would be an example of a physical event or mechanism today that would fit in with the God of the Gaps pattern? That is, what would be a modern example of lightning and thunder?

I think others have given good answers. I would just say that I don’t think Catholic authorities fall into the God of the Gaps pattern. There is just a more popular impulse to explain things that are unknown with God (or science, in the alternate case that someone brought up) even though history would inform us that many unknown things (but not all) have a chance of being later explained by science.

Supposing that science can explain everything is a fallacy, indeed.

In the example of the big bang, I don’t think it necessarily constitutes Science of the Gaps, unless one takes it as the definitive beginning of everything. It is certainly the beginning of what science alleges to observe, but claims cannot be made about anything before it.

 

[catholictiger]

its a lack of understanding of the relationship between science and philosophy.

the God of the Gaps argument kinda goes like this. The reason that we have a God is that science can’t explain everything in the world, so instead of admitting that science is limited and hasn’t explained everything yet, they say that it must be God who is the reason for this. One of the classic examples of this would be people assume God must be the cause of the universe because science hasn’t been able to explain the cause of the universe. They also believe that the more we learn in science the less there is a need for a God to fill the gaps of science.

the problem with this is that science deals with what questions and how questions. How did the universe come into existence? Easy the big bang (complicated answer but you get the point) How do new humans develop, how do we get new human people? easy human reproduction. So on and so forth. But philosophy deals with the Why questions. Why is there something other than nothing? I don’t know why but philosophy tries to explain it? Why must a perfect deity exist? and so on and so forth. People who use the God of the gaps argument are mostly scientific reductionist. They believe that everything can be explained by science and anything not explained by science or that can’t be explained by science is obviously false. This isn’t true in any sense of the word.

 

[polytropos]

its a lack of understanding of the relationship between science and philosophy.

the God of the Gaps argument kinda goes like this. The reason that we have a God is that science can’t explain everything in the world, so instead of admitting that science is limited and hasn’t explained everything yet, they say that it must be God who is the reason for this. One of the classic examples of this would be people assume God must be the cause of the universe because science hasn’t been able to explain the cause of the universe. They also believe that the more we learn in science the less there is a need for a God to fill the gaps of science.

This may be semantic but the limitations of science are not the reason you have a God. You have a God because (ostensibly) God is truth. Science’s limitations are resultant of the nature of both the universe and humans (whether you are theistic or secular). You do believe that God created the universe (was the first cause) because that is what your faith is; both Catholicism and science may acknowledge that science is not necessarily capable of understanding the absolute origins of the universe.

Those who claim that there is “less of a need for a God to fill the gaps” are arguing from a anthropological perspective: “Mythology is a social construct that was used by early humans to make sense of otherwise inexplicable natural phenomena, so science removes the need for religion.” It’s my understanding that this is also the view of some secular philosophers, although I haven’t read them so I won’t make claims about them. This is its own ideology, though, and in itself is not a logical reason to hold science above belief in God.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

What would be an example of a physical event or mechanism today that would fit in with the God of the Gaps pattern? That is, what would be a modern example of lightning and thunder?

Reminds me of a video of N. D. Tyson. He mention as a modern example the accelerating expansion of the universe. For previous examples he mentioned retrograde motion of the planets.

 

[Lion_IRC]

The cause of the big bang. The nature of sub-atomic matter. How it originated and how it behaves.
That’s a modern example.

Abiogenesis. The quest to learn how biological life got started.
Thats a modern day example.

The mind/consciousness. Neuroscience’s search for what is going on when electro-magnetic and elector-chemical energy hits the piece of meat we call a brain. Free will? The soul?
Thats a modern day example.

Whenever human science (honestly) admits it’s own ignorance, there is a Gap or some kind of placeholder. (For example - ‘‘Cosmological Constant’’ or "Quantum Vacuum’’)
And humans dont need to be embarrassed to admit ignorance or use a placeholder where Gaps exist.

Biblical monotheists say that God knows the answer to those questions. And saying that God knows is NOT the same as claiming that we know. Hence, there is no need for Christians to be ashamed or obliged to defend against strawman accusations that God is an invented place holder. God exists, and by definition He knows.

 

[Lion_IRC]

When science proudly announces that the universe is expanding, my response is…’'yeah - I already know."

…How can you know that, it’s only just been discovered.

Nope, its only just been discovered by you.

God’s prophet Isaiah discovered it 2,500 years ago. (See Isaiah 40:22)

 

[snarflemike]

Reminds me of a video of N. D. Tyson. He mention as a modern example the accelerating expansion of the universe. For previous examples he mentioned retrograde motion of the planets.

OK, I watched that, and what I took from it is that if God doesn’t exist, we should be able to explain everything (certainly not my view, but what would seem to be the logical conclusion of those he is talking about). If people this day and age are really saying “you can’t explain X, so that proves God exists” then they are playing a fool’s game. But are there such people, or is this just a straw man?

And of course there’s the whole question of what it means to “explain” something. There seems to be an unspoken assumption that a thing is either unexplained, or 100% explained.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

OK, I watched that, and what I took from it is that if God doesn’t exist, we should be able to explain everything (certainly not my view, but what would seem to be the logical conclusion of those he is talking about).

I can’t say that’s what I got out of the video. But I’m also of the opinion that there may be things that are never known to humans (which may influence why that’s not what I got from the video).

If people this day and age are really saying “you can’t explain X, so that proves God exists” then they are playing a fool’s game. But are there such people, or is this just a straw man?

Yes, there are such people that say it and perpetuate the concept of “god of the gaps.”. I’ve encountered some at a previous place of employment. There are also people from various denominations that come through my neighborhood knocking on doors to invite people to their church. There have been some that said it to me, the most memorable of which being a grandmotherly lady whom I did not want to upset. If a person sharing their religion already sees their audience as alreadying having a god-concept then there is little motivation for a person that employs God of the gap arguments to share it. I think it’s something that comes up more in exchanges between religious and non-religious.

And of course there’s the whole question of what it means to “explain” something. There seems to be an unspoken assumption that a thing is either unexplained, or 100% explained.

I think there are a lot of people that in general see things as having bivalent and polarized truth values and that a view the something is either 100% explained or not explained to be one facet of that view.

 

[abucs]

For me, and i think for the history of the Christian intellectual civilisation, it has always been God on the other side of the gaps with the western Christian civilisation trying to close those gaps.

 

[inocente]

**What is “God of the Gaps”?
**
Is this the devastating defeater that some atheists seem to think it is?

Nothing to do with atheists.

*God of the gaps is a type of theological perspective in which gaps in scientific knowledge are taken to be evidence or proof of God’s existence. The term was invented by Christian theologians not to discredit theism but rather to point out the fallacy of relying on teleological arguments for God’s existence. Some use the phrase to refer to a form of the argument from ignorance fallacy.

The term goes back to Henry Drummond, a 19th century evangelist lecturer, from his Lowell Lectures on the Ascent of Man. He chastises those Christians who point to the things that science can not yet explain—“gaps which they will fill up with God”—and urges them to embrace all nature as God’s, as the work of “… an immanent God, which is the God of Evolution, is infinitely grander than the occasional wonder-worker, who is the God of an old theology.”

In the 20th century Dietrich Bonhoeffer expressed the concept in similar terminology in letters he wrote while in a Nazi prison during World War II, which were not made public until years later. Bonhoeffer wrote, for example: “…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.”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps*