God of the Gaps Revisited

KEVIN HARRIS: We’ve talked about God-of-the-gaps on podcasts many times. There is a good Question of the Week on the topic – topic #395 – so go to #395.^[1] Maybe it is time for a refresher. Andrew Loke defines it in his new article in the Worldview Bulletin^[2] that is [paraphrasing] “Ancient people didn’t understand things like thunder so they attributed it to Thor until science explained it and kicked Thor out of the gap. Now skeptics accuse theists of doing the same thing with arguments for God.” Anything to add to that definition?

DR. CRAIG: This accusation of a God-of-the-gaps usually comes in disputes between science and religion today. The claim is that theists will use God to stop up the gaps in our scientific knowledge but as scientific knowledge expands and fills the gaps, God has progressively squeezed out. So if you're accused of having or using a God-of-the-gaps, this is taken to be a really lame sort of argument.

KEVIN HARRIS: Andrew quotes Richard Carrier, claiming that “scientists have consistently found physical explanations for every phenomenon they have been able to thoroughly examine …. There is not a single instance on record of any fact that has been thoroughly examined by scientists that turned out to have no identifiable physical origin.” I wonder – even if that were true, would that even harm the case for theism?

DR. CRAIG: Before I address your question, I just can't resist saying that this claim by Richard Carrier is absurd on the face of it and is utterly false. For example, take the origin of the universe. Scientists have been studying this for a hundred years and still have no physical explanation for the origin of the universe at a point in the finite past. Or, take the current area that I'm working on right now in my systematic philosophical theology – the origin of life. Secular origin of life researchers almost unanimously admit that we have literally no understanding of the origin of life on this planet. We have no idea of how the chemical compounds on a prebiotic Earth converted and became a living organism – how the first living cell arose. This has been the object of intense study for a number of decades now, millions of dollars poured into this, and yet almost nothing to show for it. So Carrier is just patently mistaken in thinking that science can explain everything. But, as you say, even if it were true, how would that harm the case for theism? Theism is perfectly consistent with saying that there are natural causes for every event that occurs, but these are under the supervising providence of God. Take the origin of life. The Christian theist could maintain that there is a chemical route unknown to us to the origin of life but that this route was providentially decreed and supervised by a sovereign God. That would be unproblematic. You would still have philosophical arguments for the existence of God such as the ontological argument, Leibniz's argument from contingency, the argument from the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in describing the physical phenomena, the moral argument for God as the ground of objective moral values and duties, and so on and so forth. So by no means are theists exclusively dependent upon arguments appealing to science and science's inability to explain certain things.

KEVIN HARRIS: Andrew continues,

While the god-of-the-gaps objection might be valid against certain theistic arguments, they are not valid against others. For example, they are not valid against the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA).

We will get into why he says that in just a moment, but what theistic arguments do you think are vulnerable to God-of-the-gaps?

DR. CRAIG: I think that probably design arguments (like the argument from fine-tuning) could be vulnerable to this objection. It's going to depend upon whether or not there is any sort of a plausible unknown explanation for the fine-tuning apart from design. I'm convinced that that chance is so remote that in fact the inference to intelligent design is the best explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe. But this would be an example of an argument where one might be accused of using God to fill a gap in scientific knowledge.

KEVIN HARRIS: Andrew then writes,

The conclusion of the KCA is not based on ignorance. Rather, it is based on reasons. The argument is not ‘because we still do not know how to explain the origin of the universe, therefore there is a Creator.’ Rather, the argument is because there are reasons (explained in my book The Teleological and Kalām Cosmological Arguments Revisited [Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2022]) for thinking that an actual infinite causal regress and a closed causal loop is not the case, therefore there is a First Cause. It is because there are reasons for thinking that whatever begins to exist has a cause, therefore this First Cause is beginningless. The rest of the properties of this First Cause are likewise derived on the basis of reasons rather than ignorance, and they indicate that the First Cause is a personal Creator.

Bill?

DR. CRAIG: I think that Andrew here has focused on the philosophical arguments in support of the key premise that the universe began to exist. Certainly those philosophical arguments are not open to God-of-the-gaps objections. But I also think, as Andrew does, that there is good empirical confirmation for that premise as well from the expansion of the universe and from the thermodynamic properties of the universe. But I don't think this is susceptible to a God-of-the-gaps objection because we are not using God to explain the scientific data. Rather, the scientific data go to support or confirm the premise “the universe began to exist” which is a religiously neutral statement that can be found in any textbook on astronomy and astrophysics. The way I would put it is this: Science can provide evidence in support of a premise in a philosophical argument leading to a conclusion having theological significance. I'll repeat that: Science can provide evidence for a premise in a philosophical argument leading to a conclusion that has theological significance. When we understand it properly, you can see that there is no God-of-the-gaps here because you're not claiming that science proves God. You're saying science proves or confirms that the universe began to exist.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next he writes,

Moreover, as explained in my book, each step of the argument is strictly deductive in nature, for which no alternative explanation is possible, whereas a ‘god of the gaps’ explanation is one on which it is at least possible in principle that some nondivine explanation might be correct’ (Feser 2017, p. 271).

Talk to us about the difference between a deductive argument and an inductive argument. Then the rest of the things that he said – the possible in principle non-divine explanation that he mentioned.

DR. CRAIG: One of the advantages of a deductive formulation of an argument is that if the premises are true then the conclusion follows necessarily. It is logically impossible that the premises be true and that the conclusion be false in a logically valid deductive argument. So if it is true that whatever begins to exist has a cause, and it is true that the universe began to exist, it follows necessarily that the universe has a cause. It doesn't matter if you don't like that conclusion, if you don't want it, it follows from the truth of the premises. That's the great strength of a deductive argument. Now, in an inductive (or sometimes it's called abductive) argument, what you do is assemble a body of facts to be explained, and then you put together a pool of live explanatory hypotheses to explain those data. Then you assess which one of those hypotheses in the pool of live options is the best explanation using established criteria like explanatory power, explanatory scope, degree of ad hoc-ness, plausibility, and so on and so forth. Then you infer what is the best explanation of the data, and that explanation then is taken to be the true explanation for the data in question. That type of argument can be susceptible to a God-of-the-gaps objection because the person can say the best explanation might be God but maybe there's another explanation that you left out of the pool of live explanatory options that you haven't considered. Or maybe one of the other candidates in the pool of options that you considered is really better after all than theism. So you're just plugging up gaps. So the person who offers an abductive argument I think needs to be prepared to explain why in fact his pool of live options is reasonably complete, and why the explanatory option that he prefers is in fact the best explanatory option.

KEVIN HARRIS: The article continues,

While the progress of science would generate newer understandings of the laws of nature as explanations for the phenomena we observe, as shown by the KCA the progress of science would not replace a First Cause (Creator) as an explanation for the existence of all things, including the laws of nature themselves which must have come from this First Cause.

Bill?

DR. CRAIG: What you would have to do to refute the argument is not only refute the philosophical arguments that the universe began to exist but you would have to show that the laws of nature (such as the laws of general relativity and quantum mechanics) do not in fact imply the finitude of the past and the beginning of the universe. That is very unlikely. There are no models at the present time that are viable that have or feature an infinite past. All of the viable models are finite in the past and have a beginning.

KEVIN HARRIS: Andrew then writes,

Concerning the Teleological Argument, one might attempt to explain away design (using science or otherwise) by appealing to alternative explanations. However, where the mathematical order and fine tuning is concerned, I demonstrate in my book that all the possible alternative explanations (chance, regularity, combinations of chance and regularity, uncaused) would fail as ultimate explanations for these phenomena.

This reminds me of the three alternatives that you offer: chance, physical necessity, or design.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, it's very much the same. What one tries to do is show that your theistic hypothesis better meets those criteria of explanatory power, explanatory scope, degree of ad hoc-ness, and so on and so forth. I think that here the design hypothesis is clearly superior. So it's not offered as a way of plugging up a gap in our scientific knowledge. One is offering a positive argument for the superiority of one's theistic hypothesis. Really what this God-of-the-gaps objection amounts to is that you must not be allowed to infer to a supernatural explanation. It's simply a bias against non-naturalistic explanations because once you admit the supernatural explanations into the pool of live options then there's a case to be made, I think, that a supernatural explanation is the best of the lot.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next Andrew writes about his book in which he,

demonstrates that the KCA can be used to strengthen the Teleological Argument by demonstrating that an infinite regress of causes/events is not the case and thus there is a first event, and that this first event cannot have been brought about by a regular/natural/mechanistic/scientific process but by an act of libertarian freedom of the First Cause.

By that I guess he is arguing the cause is personal.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, that's exactly right. That is the argument that al-Ghazali uses and that I use to try to show that the cause of the universe is a personal Creator. I think he's quite right in saying that the cosmological argument and the teleological argument fit like hand-in-glove and really produce a powerful combination in support of theism.

KEVIN HARRIS: I wanted to get to this. Andrew gives another great illustration from John Leslie in response to the skeptic’s claim that fine-tuning and design are mere brute facts.

Leslie (1989) asks us to consider a hypothetical scenario in which ‘particles regularly formed long chains which spelled out ‘GOD CREATED THE UNIVERSE’, this then being shown to result inevitably from basic physics’ (p. 109). It would be unconvincing to object that this is not evidence of design by claiming that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary and are brute facts or that this is the only universe that we have observed. It is likewise unconvincing to object that our fine-tuned and highly ordered universe is not evidence of design by claiming that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary and are brute facts or that this is the only universe that we have observed.

What do you think of that illustration?

DR. CRAIG: This is a point that's been made by the philosopher Jonathan Hawthorne. He points out that if your objection to a theistic argument would apply even in the case in which God spelled out his name in the stars or on every atom the way Leslie imagines then that objection is no good because in cases like that it is patently obvious that the argument for God's existence is a good one. If your objection would apply to that as well as to other arguments then that just shows that the objection is not a good one. So these objections to God-of-the-gaps or to fine-tuning arguments can suffer from overkill because if they apply to these cases in which God's existence is as obvious as the nose on your face then it shows that in fact these objections are no good. They're suffering from overkill.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here is how the article wraps up:

While the science concerning fine tuning will be updated in the future, with regards to whatever scientists discover (e.g., a new law of nature), it can still be asked where did that come from or why did that (law of nature) exist such that the science concerning fine tuning is the way it is. The basic logical form of the KCA-TA would still remain, and no matter what scientists discover in the future there must still be a First Cause for what scientists discover, and based on the deduction of the KCA-Teleological Argument (TA), the First Cause must have libertarian freedom and intelligence (i.e., a Creator).

Therefore, while the progress of science would generate new theories to explain various aspects of the physical world, it would not replace the First Cause (Creator) as the ultimate explanation for why the physical world exists in the first place, as demonstrated by the KCA-TA. Thus, the conclusion of KCA-TA cannot in principle be overturned by future scientific discoveries. Rather, future discoveries would only enhance our understanding of the wisdom of the Creator through understanding the laws which He had created.

Bill, your summation?

DR. CRAIG: I think Andrew has effectively argued that given the cogency of the philosophical arguments involved there is little prospect that these arguments will be overthrown and refuted. But I do think that, insofar as the scientific confirmation is concerned, that could be lost as science is never final. It's always provisional. It's in principle possible that the scientific evidence could be reversed in the future. Fortunately, however, I think that there is very little chance of that happening, and that therefore we have a pretty firm foundation scientifically as well as philosophically for believing that there is a cosmic creator and designer.^[3]