god of the gaps
In an earlier post I promised to give examples of gaps in our thinking. Well, we may as well start with the big one.
Many years ago I trained to be a physics teacher. (I also studied film and media and marketing, but that's another story.) I spent most of my time in the library reading other topics. One article I remember was in a journal for science teachers. The (Christian) author was talking about god. He warned against the 'god of the gaps' theory. Whenever there is something we don't understand, like coincidences or death or the origin of the universe, we say "God did it." But as science progresses we find more mundane explanations. God is constantly being pushed back into the smaller and smaller gaps in our knowledge. The (Christian) author didn't like the idea of a constantly retreating god. But the phrase "god of the gaps" is accurate, and it stuck with me.
Most people believe in a god of some kind, or at least in spiritual forces. There is nothing wrong with that in general terms - most of the universe is a mystery to us, and we may as well call it something. In fact, statistically speaking there probably is a god of some kind (that's a topic for another post). I only have a problem with this when our god/mystery/spirit/force is given precise shape. If we have rational evidence that this particular form of god exists, then where is that evidence? In feelings? Anecdotes? That same evidence can be used to argue for the precise opposite.
Most believers have a set of reasons they use to justify their belief. Yet these reasons disappear on close inspection. I know from hard experience. I was once a lay minister, and before that a full time missionary. I spent many years examining my beliefs, and even made a thousand page website to defend my church. But the closer I looked, the more that my god ran away and hid in the gaps. Here is just one example: Creationists say it is statistically unlikely for a Big Bang to occur. (They are wrong of course, but they are right in the sense that the Big Bang is amazing.) But how much less likely is it for a complex life form to suddenly appear out of nothing and then say "let there be life!" It just doesn't make any sense. It represents a massive gap in our rational world view. Yet most people believe in it. or something like it. God is the biggest gap of all.
Does the gap matter? Yes, because this same god gets involved in birth and marriage and life and death and wars and land ownership and sex and stem cell research and homosexuality and everything else. Most people base all of their most important decisions on something that probably isn't true. How do you debate with someone like that? I can't do it. It just makes my head swim. And for the first half of my life I was one of them. My intellectual life was based on a yawning chasm, a vast gap, an empty hole that I refused to look into. Most of my friends are still in that state. And if I point it out, I become very unpopular. It is extremely rude to point out when people are basing their whole lives on lies. And if you do get through to someone, they start to panic inside - "what if life has no meaning?" - and they run back to the security of the myth.
Most people base their lives on a gap, a hole, an emperor with no clothes. There are better alternatives to believing in specific gods, but they require us first to recognize the weakness of the existing ideas. That makes people very, very uncomfortable, so they never get past that first step.
LOL! I never said this Blog would be popular. :)
posted by Chris Tolworthy at 10:20 AM
2 Comments:
So your version of the god of the gaps is simply some kind of sentient creature of a higher order/ability than humans?
I don't live among people of the same religious persuasion you do, but I find that my beliefs, which are similiar enough to yours, aren't any more popular with my peers. I personally find that the process of attributing natural (and explanable) phenomena to super-natural forces limits our understanding and interaction with the universe. I'm sure there were people who wanted to ban the use of flint to start fires since fire was of the gods and not for human control! Now we have stem-cell researchers trying to get around the same "this is only for god" mentality.
God of the gaps
I will begin this article with two postulates: 1) God has created this universe, 2) He has brought man in this universe with some purpose.
I am not claiming here that these two postulates are true, or that I can prove them to be true. But I want to show here that if these two postulates are true, then God will always be the God of the gaps. Anyone who will be reading this article should not forget that there is an “if” clause in the last sentence.
Now I will begin with the supposition that God has created this universe. If God has created this universe, then He could have created it in four different ways: 1) He created it in such a way that there was no necessity for Him to intervene in it after creation, 2) After creation He intervened in it, but these interventions were a bare minimum, that is, He intervened only when these were absolutely necessary. In order to clarify my point here, I will say that He intervened only when He found that without His intervention the universe would come to a standstill, 3) He created the universe in such a way that in order to keep it going He had to make very frequent interventions in it, 4) God's total intervention after creation.
If it was the purpose of God to keep mankind crippled in every possible way, then He would have adopted either the third or the fourth way while creating the universe. This is because in these two cases man, in spite of his having sufficient intelligence and reasoning power, will fail to unveil the secrets of nature, because in almost every phenomenon of nature that he will decide to study he will ultimately find that there always remains an unknown factor, for which he will have no explanation. For him the book of nature will thus remain closed forever. But if it were God's purpose that man be master of His creation, then it is quite natural for Him that He would try to keep the book of nature as much open to him as possible, so that with the little intelligence he has been endowed with man will be able to decipher the language of nature, and with that acquired knowledge he will also be able to improve the material conditions of his life. In that case God will try to adopt the policy of maximum withdrawal from His creation. He will create the universe in such a way that without His intervention the created world will be able to unfold itself. However that does not mean that He will never intervene. He will definitely intervene when without His intervention the created world would become stagnant. In such a scenario man will be able to give an explanation of almost all physical events in scientific language. But in those cases where God has actually intervened, he will fail to do so.
So I think there is no reason for us to be ashamed of the "God of the gaps" hypothesis. Yes, if God has created the universe, and if God’s purpose was that man be master of His creation, then He would try to keep as little gap in His creation as possible. But the minimum gap that would be ultimately left can never be bridged by any sort of scientific explanation. God will also reside in that gap. Why should we be ashamed of that?
Therefore, I can conclude this article in this way: If God created this universe, and if God wanted man to be the master of His creation, then God would willingly choose to be “God of the gaps”.
A theistic God will always prefer to be the God of the gaps.
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