The Absurdity of the "God of the Gaps" Cliche

First let's start with a definition. There are a few floating around out there, but the one most applicable here would be: "God of the gaps" is an argument for God's existence which says that gaps in scientific knowledge can be evidence of supernatural action as an explanation for events in the natural world. 

Should an argument for God's existence be dismissed because it is a "God of the gaps" argument? No. There are reasonable and unreasonable arguments in this category and each case should be evaluated on its own merits, not lumped together into one pile that can be dismissed without reasonable consideration. 

Consider what would happen if Jesus appeared at a wedding feast today and repeated the miracle of making water into wine under similar conditions. I propose to you that Jesus turned the water into wine by using supernatural power and this is evidence for the existence of God. This would be a "God of the gaps" claim. That is, there is no reasonable natural explanation for how the water became wine, and I am using the abscence of such an explanation to support my argument that it is a supernatural act, indicating that God exists. 

There is no doubt that I am using the fact that there is no reasonable natural explanation available to claim a supernatural explanation, but I hope you would agree that in this instance my argument is sound whether it is a "God of the gaps" argument or not. 

The fact is, science operates using methodological naturalism. That is, it is a search for natural causes only. It can never prove an action had a supernatural cause. It isn't even designed to do so. In that sense, science couldn't detect God if God were standing right in front of it! It assumes all causes are natural in an effort to find natural causes. So even here, when Jesus performs a geniune miracle right in front of you and others, there is no scientific way to prove it was a result of supernatural action. The very best science can do is say "we currently have no natural explanation for this phenomenon, but we will keep looking." In other words, it becomes a "gap in scientitific knowledge". 

I hope the reader will see that if "god of the gaps" arguments are always invalid, then no evidence for miracles from the natural universe, even overwhelming and direct evidence, can ever be considered valid. It is a back-door way of imposing not just methodlogical naturalism (that is, for the purpose of our search for natural causes we will assume natural causes only) to philosophical naturalism (an a priori assumption that nature is all that there is). 

This argument in effect imposes philosophical naturalism on all evidence from nature, since any appeals to "gaps" in science's knowledge is a "god of the gaps" argument and is dismissed. This is begging the question in the extreme. If you will only accept scientific evidence for supernatural actions, and science can't by definition show that any act has a supernatural cause, that's checkmate. Your reasoning is circular. You've sealed yourself off by cliche from any honest consideration of evidence for supernatura action in the natural universe. 

The only honest way to consider the subject is to admit that, at least in theory, there is more than one possible reason for a "gap in scientific knowledge" to exist. One possibility is that there is a natural cause and we just haven't found it yet. This will ordinarily be the case. Another possible reason that we haven't found a natural cause for something is that there is no natural cause. It was the result of a supernatural act. 

If you assume all actions have natural causes period, then you are a philosophical naturalist. You can't consider the evidence of supernatural action fairly because your assumptions about reality don't permit you to. You can't prove the assumption but you are nevertheless imposing it on the evidence. If this is the case with you, I suggest a non-scientific solution- sincerely ask God if He is real to free your mind so that you can fairly consider if He is real. Then see what happens.

I've seen people engage in all sorts of mental evasions in order to try and keep their thinking wrapped in this tight little circle which prevents them from having to fairly consider the question. They may say "the miracle has to be verifiable".  Poke a bit about what they mean by "verifiable" and eventually (if they don't end the discussion because they don't want to go where it is leading) it will be found that they mean scientifically verifiable. So once again they are demanding that the supernatural cause of the act be determined by a method which is by definition unable to detect supernatural causes. "Sealing themselves off from truth" is the phrase that comes to my mind when I observe this mentally crippling process at work.

What about the fact that history shows natural causes displacing proposed supernatural ones with clock-like regularity as our knowledge grew? It is true that at the beginning of the age of science there was a series of phenomena that were often attributed to supernatural acts that were later shown by experiment to simply be nature operating according to regular laws. These laws too, if there is a Creator, were established by Him. Therefore people who use a "god of the gaps" argument are not saying that He is only the God of the gaps. He didn't stumble onto a universe complete with natural laws and decide to start intervening in it from time to time. He is God of both the gaps and all that is between them. He works through the laws of nature, and He is beyond them. That science discovered and described these laws doesn't disprove the existence of God or supernatural acts. God can act through nature, or He can act in her.  

Yes, the past track record of natural causes being found for events formerly attributed to more direct divine action is a strong argument against divine action as a cause- but only regarding questions where our scientific knowledge is scant. At the beginning of the age of science, that was almost everything. That's why the history is so one-sided. At the start of the age of science, very little was attributed to natural law and much to direct divine action. We are now reaching the point where the pendulum begins to swing the other direction. That is, there are some subjects were our knowledge is increasing, but the proposed natural explanations grow less likely with our increase in knoweldge, not more likely. This is true of the smallest scales with living cells and on the largest scales with the astonishing fine-tuning of the fundamental forces of the universe. And increasingly, it is true of certain aspects of evoultion as documented on this blog. 

The more we know about something, the more likely a natural explanation for it should become, if the thing in question did indeed have a natural cause. At some point, when every reasonable natural explanation becomes unlikely even though we have accumulated great knowledge of the thing in question, the "God of the Gaps" argument becomes a perfectly valid argument. That is, it is a poor argument in an area where we know little, but can be a sound one with reference to certain scientific anomalies. Especially if the findings which defy natural explanation line up with the character of God and scripture. 

The truth is out there, but only free minds can find it. Happy hunting. 

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How about this for evidence for God through events in the natural world, my book on early Genesis shows how when we look at the text through the lens of Chrsit, as He said to, the supposed conflicts between scripture and what science and history tell us about the natural universe resolve beautifully. How could this be unless He is who scripture says and that scripture is inspired by God? 

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