God of the gaps
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The phrase God of the gaps refers to a view of God as existing in the "gaps" or aspects of reality that are currently unexplained by scientific knowledge.
The concept involves an interaction of religious explanations of nature with those derived from science (see also Relationship between religion and science). "God of the gaps" is sometimes used to describe the retreat of religious explanations of physical phenomena in the face of additional scientific explanations. An example of the line of reasoning starts with the position that early religious descriptions of objects and events (such as the Sun, Moon, and stars; thunder and lightning) placed these in the realm of things created or controlled by a god or gods. As science found explanations for observations in the realms of astronomy, meteorology, geology, cosmology and biology, the 'need' for a god to explain phenomena was progressively reduced, occupying smaller and smaller 'gaps' in knowledge. Since the domain of natural phenomena previously explained by God is shrinking, theistic or divine explanations for any natural phenomenon become less plausible.
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[edit] Origins of the term
The term goes back to Henry Drummond, a 19th century evangelical 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."[1]
In the 20th century the term was used by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in letters he wrote while in a Nazi prison during World War II, which were not made public until years later. The term gained attention in 1955 when it was used in the book Science and Christian Belief by Charles Alfred Coulson, where Coulson states: "There is no 'God of the gaps' to take over at those strategic places where science fails; and the reason is that gaps of this sort have the unpreventable habit of shrinking."
After simmering in theological and philosophical circles, the term gained yet wider attention from a 1971 book and a 1978 article, both by Richard Bube. He articulated the concept in far greater detail, most notably in Man Come Of Age: Bonhoeffer’s Response To The God-Of-The-Gaps (1971). Bube attributed modern crises in religious faith in part to the inexorable shrinking of the God-of-the-gaps as scientific knowledge progressed. As humans progressively increased their understanding of nature, the previous "realm" of God seemed to many persons and religions to be getting smaller and smaller by comparison. Bube maintained that Darwin's Origin of Species was the "death knell" of the God-of-the-gaps. Very importantly, Bube also maintained that the God-of-the-gaps was not the same as the God of the Bible (that is, he was not making an argument against God per se, but rather asserting there was a fundamental problem with the perception of God as filling in the gaps of knowledge).
Since the 1970s, the term has increasingly been used by philosophers and theologians in reference to the problem of making the assumption that the currently unknown is necessarily where God "resides."[citation needed]
[edit] Usage as argument
God of the Gaps is seldom used as an argument: Many theologians do not consider this reasoning a valid argument for the existence of God.[2]
The term God-of-the-gaps argument can refer to a position that assumes an act of God as the explanation for an unknown phenomenon, and is a variant of an argument from ignorance.[citation needed] Commonly such an argument can be reduced to the following form:
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- There is a gap in scientific knowledge.
- The gap is filled by acts of a god (and therefore also proves, or helps to prove, the existence of said god).
One example of such an argument, demonstrating how God is supposed to explain one of the gaps in biology, is as follows: "Because current science can't figure out exactly how life started, it must be God who caused life to start." This example is used in the debate of "intelligent design vs. evolution", since the religious side of intelligent design often tries to discredit the theory of evolution for not accounting for the origin of life.[citation needed]
The God of the Gaps argument tries to relegate God to the leftovers of science: as scientific knowledge increases, the dominion of God decreases. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said: "...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.[3]
[edit] Criticism
The God-of-the-gaps view has been criticized for implying that God only acts in the gaps, and that God's activity is restricted to them.[4] It is also argued that the God-of-the-gaps view is predicated on the assumption that any event which can be explained by science automatically excludes God; that if God did not do something via direct action, God didn't do it at all.[5]
The God-of-the-gaps view has also been criticized for assuming that, in a world created by God, the mechanics of how things happen cannot be described by science.[6]
[edit] See also
- Argument from ignorance
- Watchmaker analogy
- Deism
- Faith and rationality
- Intelligent Design
- The Challenge of Creation
[edit] References
- ^ See Thomas Dixon "Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction" p. 45
- ^ "Handbook of Christian Apologetics" Kreeft,P and Tacelli, R. K, Intervarsity Press. 1994, ISBN:0-8308-1774-3
- ^ Dietrich Bonhoeffer Letters and Papers from Prison edited by Eberhard Bethge, translated by Reginald H. Fuller, Touchstone, ISBN 0684838273, 1997
- ^ http://www.newdualism.org/papers/R.Larmer/Gaps.htm
- ^ http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/gaps.htm
- ^ http://www.dctech.com/physics/features/old/godofgap.php
[edit] Bibliography
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997 (ISBN 978-0-684-83827-4) "Letter to Eberhard Bethge", 29 May 1944, pages 310-312.
- Richard H. Bube, "Man Come Of Age: Bonhoeffer's Response To The God-Of-The-Gaps," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, volume 14 fall (1971), pages 203-220.
- C. A. Coulson, Science and Christian Belief (The John Calvin McNair Lectures, 1954), London: Oxford University Press, 1955. Page 20, see also page 28.
- Henry Drummond, The Lowell Lectures on the Ascent of Man, Glasgow: Hodder and Stoughton, 1904 (Chapter 10, containing the relevant text).
