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What are your thoughts about the "God of Gaps"? Can these gaps are sufficient to fill in God's existence?
#Godofgaps

Nox28 3 May 13
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32 comments

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0

Only if your god is getting ever smaller all the time, and is now only a thousandth the size it once was.

12

Unless I'm misunderstanding the phrasing of your question, I do not think "god of the gaps" means what you think it means.

It is an argument from ignorance. "I don't have an explanation for x, therefore y", is a fallacious argument, no matter what x and y are. In this case y = god and x typically equals the origin of life or some other aspect of reality that we don't yet have good and full explanations for or for which we don't like the prosaic explanations that we do have. Gaps do not "explain" anything; instead they simply reflect a lack of data and expose most people's discomfort with not knowing everything they'd like to know.

In addition, in the general arc of human history, the number of gaps that people have used as "evidence" for deities has consistently shrunk, and continue to. We used to not understand thunder, for example, so we "explained" them with Thor and his hammer. Today, no one questions the mechanism of thunder, which we now understand, so Thor worship has all but vanished from the earth. In theory all gods will eventually meet the same fate. However by definition, the mysteries that yet remain are the more difficult ones to fully explain and understand, so I expect people will tend to experience confirmation bias about gods with those things for awhile longer. Certainly well beyond my lifetime.

12

Absolutely not because gaps of the past have been obliterated due to constant advances in science ,and present and future gaps will continue to be filled in .To believe in a god because something can not be explained leads to Complacency and takes away incentive to discover what can not be explained .This is proof that belief in a god and religion is detrimental to scientific advances.

11

The god of the gaps are gaps in knowledge until someone has the brains enough to fill in the gaps with intelligent scientific information and remove the god of ignorance .

11

No, on all counts. Use your head for more than a hat rack.

I had forgotten the "head as a hat rack" idea. Thanks for the reminder. 🙂

@anglophone I had the judge in a case I was involved in say that to the crook I was suing for damages, followed it up with 'Sir, I don't believe you, you are lying and I suggest you stop doing it'

9

Nothing is sufficient to make bullshit real.

9

God of the gaps is a philosophy of ignorance. Not to be a wise guy, but you could use the space on this site for weightier questions.

7

The argument from ignorance (sometimes called the God of the Gaps) is an ill-fated position, as it attributes a supernatural cause for phenomena we do not yet understand. But as our knowledge of the universe has steadily increased, and natural explanations have been advanced for things once believed to have been 'miraculous,' the role for a deity has gradually, yet unflinchingly diminished. Theists who rely on the argument from ignorance disregard the path of history and shut their eyes to the inevitable end of their incredible shrinking god.

7

Gods are man made. The gaps idea only works to allow a believer to fill in holes in their presentation. it is an attempt to justify something that you already believe by patching it up. It has no logic or evidence.

7

The God of the Gaps is a nonsense beloved of the cognitively deficient.

6

God of the gaps only works as filler between reason and evidence. If something is generally understood but there's some piece of it that's still fuzzy, the faithful see that as a perfect opportunity to shoehorn their magical pal into it.

The Big Bang is a good example. While science can offer a reasonable fact-based hypothesis on what it was and how it likely worked, there's no way of knowing what took place the millisecond before it occurred since time, physics, and reality as it's understood didn't exist yet. Perfect opportunity to work God into it. That way they can acknowledge the science and still credit God for all of creation.

6

In addition to the comments below, I'll mention that this is an argument of moving goalposts. Every time science explains something in one of the so-called "gaps", religionists will then point to the newly created margins on each side of the explanation and say, "A-ha! There are now TWO gaps which science can't explain!" Rather than see that knowledge has been increased, they focus on what we don't know.

6

as the wise man once said

6

If I notice a large, ostensibly healthy branch has fallen from the top of a tall tree, and there wasn't a strong wind and I don't know how it came down, I might be tempted to proclaim that it must have been Sasquatch who climbed up and tore the limb from the tree. Someone will likely ask me how I know, and I can reply that in the absence of any wind and disease of the wood there's no other explanation. That's the god of the gaps (or argument from ignorance). And when applied to a literal God, we see the same pattern: God must have made the world. How do you know? There's no other explanation. The fallacy is that we don't know that there's no other explanation. There may be other ideas we haven't explored, possibilities that have yet to be discovered, etc., but it's invalid to assume Sasquatch or God is the answer to a problem, without any evidence, just because we can't think of another explanation. And in the case of Sasquatch and God, it might also be a circular argument, because the argument is likely to go something like this: How do you know there's a God/Sasquatch? Well, just look at this world/tree limb — that's proof of God/Sasquatch. But how do you know God/Sasquatch is responsible? There's no other explanation, so it must be God/Sasquatch. But how do you know there's a God/Sasquatch?

6

The "God of the gaps" argument is a variation on the "Argument from incredulity" logical fallacy.
While some ignorance will forever be with all of us, The "gaps" are becoming fewer and narrower.

No, it is not a valid argument for the existence of a god.

6

Welcome to the asylum. Enjoy your stay.

Gaps are just things which science hasn't answered yet.
No need to throw gods into it.
You know, since there aren't any anywhere in reality.

6

Any primitive culture, to explain observed phenomena, will postulate a mystical actor.

5

The god of the gaps is really a rhetorical technique to point the flaw in the case for god. The known gaps keep shrinking or disappearing and God has an ever diminishing domain. So in that sense the definition of God as an omnipotent omnipresent entity keeps taking hits. So it is a useful tool to point out the fallacy in the other side's arguments.

5

Definitely not. It's all an argument from ignorance. Jumping to any conclusion when you don't have an answer. The same reason people thought Thor or Zeus caused lightning before we had an answer.
It's exactly the same.
God of the gaps is just saying "I don't know how this happens so I'm going to say God/Allah/Thor/Zeus, etc."
And you can see from the example that people who do that can easily reach ideas that contradict each other meaning that at least some people have to be wrong.
If you can use that method and reach a wrong conclusion then I have no reason to believe anyone is actually correct about a God if they use God if the gaps.

5

The God of the Gaps ideology is somewhat like what a builder once told me, " When there are gaps due to walls, etc, not being perfectly aligned, etc, you just grab a tube of No More Gaps and fill in the spaces."
I.e. Remove the gaps, no more spaces, no more problems to think about or try to solve.
In other words a simple solution suited perfectly to the mindset of the Faithfools who either do NOT want to actually think for themselves or are way too afraid to think for themselves and hence fit a nice tube of 'God of the Gaps' into any holes in their beliefs systems.

4

I think gaps well always exist. Consider the fossil record and transitional evolutionary species. Since Darwin first proposed the theory of evolution, tons of transitional fossil species have been discovered, but religious doubter's insist on transitional species between each of those discovered. We will never have a complete species geneology from the fossil record and those who insist on nothing less will always have gaps they think are exploitable.

I find the situation terribly ironic. Those who insist on claiming God to fill in gaps within scientific explanations have no real proofs for what they want to fill the gaps with. The very real factual gaps within religious explanations are in fact huge chasms (if not complete phantons), and they do nothing substanial to try to close them with facts.

3

The god of the gaps concept does not overcome the problem of evil.

3

As the gaps get smaller, god gets smaller, today we have a very small god indeed, one wonders if that entity really deserves that title?

3

"We don't know, so therefore, God" is lazy and ridiculous. I can just as easily say 'we don't know so therefore Gozer the Gozerian."

3

If god is omnipresent there are no gaps. If there are gaps any god is no more a ‘created’ being like ourselves.

It’s an irrelevant argument.

2

Yawn. Not interested in religious arguments. Next question.

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