Evidence · Case 09 · Atheism
Methodological naturalism and the “God of the gaps” concern
One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
Over centuries, natural explanations have replaced supernatural ones for lightning, disease, the diversity of life, and much more, so it is reasonable to expect the remaining gaps to close as well, leaving no work for God, or so the objection goes at its strongest. This succeeds against a “God of the gaps” who is only wheeled in to plug what science has not yet explained. It does not touch the different question of why there is an orderly, law-governed world for science to describe in the first place. Explaining the mechanism of a system is not the same as explaining why the system exists or why our minds can understand it.
Sources
On the limits of scientific explanation and the contingency argument
Objections & responses
- Saying science explains mechanism but not existence just relocates God to a bigger gap. “Why is there anything?” is the last gap left. The pattern of retreat is the argument.
The theist’s answer is that why is there something rather than nothing is not a gap of the same kind, because it is not a question science could in principle answer. Science explains features of the existing world by other features of it and cannot explain the existence of the whole from inside. Critics reply that the question may be ill-formed. The distinction to hold onto is between gaps within nature, which science closes, and the question of nature’s existence, which is not the sort of thing that gets closed by more data.