The God of the Gaps

It is human nature to desire to understand the universe. It is a feature that only humans possess, and it has dictated the course of human history. Thousands of years ago, people had no conception of anything besides what they could see. They saw the sun in the sky and called it their god. The sun set, and they saw the moon so they called it another god. There existed such a diversity of life that seemed so ordered and purposeful. Plants grew, water flowed, fire burned, and with the limited understanding that these people had of the universe, it was natural to explain these occurrences with deities. Religion was humankind’s first attempt at explaining the world around them. Using religion to explain a phenomenon which might otherwise be explained by science is referred to as “the god of the gaps.”

                

 As centuries passed, human understanding of the universe expanded with the advancement of science. When people finally learned the nature of planets and stars, it became unnecessary and illogical to call them deities. When people learned why fire burned, why plants grew, and why water flowed, these explanations proved more satisfactory than the previous religious explanations. When DNA, natural selection, and evolution were explained, it was became apparent that random occurrences (mutations) can give the diversity of the natural world a seemingly ordered and purposeful appearance, with no need for an “intelligent designer.” As such, religion evolved with science. As more scientific knowledge was gained, the less relevance deities seemed to have in earthy affairs.

                

 One of the main arguments for the existence of God is known as “the cosmological argument.” The argument starts with the premise that everything that we can observe in nature is caused by something else. If a flower grows, it’s because a seed was planted. If a seed exists, it must have come from another flower. This could go on forever into infinity if the knowledge was available. But as you go further back in causation, you eventually reach the concept of the existence of the universe. A scientist would tell you that the universe was started by the big bang, but then the question is: What caused the big bang? If the universe exists, and everything that exists was caused by something else, it logically holds that something must have created the universe. The cosmological argument concludes that the creator of the universe must have been God, and that God has always existed and therefore does not require causality. It then also holds that because God has no cause, he is not a part of nature (supernatural) and therefore cannot be observed.

                 

The problem that people have with this argument is it seems like another extension of the “god of the gaps.” Our scientific knowledge about the origins of the universe are limited, and just as human history has shown, it is natural to try to explain the existence of the universe with religion. What will happen when science can explain the big bang? Will God be driven into irrelevancy? The cosmological argument implies that it is not possible to observe God, and since science exists almost entirely on the basis of observation, it seems unlikely that science and religion will ever find common ground. The cosmological argument makes it easy to be religious in a scientific world, just as the “god of the gaps” fallacy makes it easy to be nonreligious in a religious world. That’s not to say that a scientist can’t believe in God, but that any skepticism they might have would be understandable.