The God of the Gaps Argument
Night is Fled by Maxfield Parrish (1918)
While sitting in the Edmonton International Airport awaiting a flight, I read the latest online comments on a very short argument I had posted for the existence of the supernatural. The argument was logically impeccable, but more than one commenter responded by classifying the argument as a 'god-of-the-gaps' argument.
This response is frequent and often made in all sincerity, leading me to conclude that there is honest confusion over what a god-of-the-gaps argument actually is. Consequently, this misconception can hinder major advances in a person's understanding of reality.
Part I will look at what constitutes a god-of-the-gaps argument and Part II will look at two arguments that are often mistakenly dismissed as god-of-the-gaps arguments. Both have enormous implications for humanity and the nature of reality.
Part I: What is a god-of-the-gaps argument?
Let's imagine an ancient Greek man making his way through a storm in the era prior to Socrates. Suddenly, the man is startled out of his wits by a bolt of lightning exploding a nearby tree with a blinding blast of light and an ear-splitting crack of thunder. Of course, at that point in history, the poor man has no natural explanation for this composure-shaking event which we will call (L). If you were to ask him to explain what happened, his response might be summarized in the form of the following syllogism.
I do not know of a natural explanation that explains L
If I do not know of a natural explanation for something, then the gods did it.
Therefore, the gods caused L.
The second premise (2) is the essential feature of a god-of-the-gaps argument and may be explicitly stated but, most often, unstated. Premise (2) can range from strong to weak, depending upon the second half of the premise. For example, it can be strong if it ends with the strong claim, "then God did it," or weaker if it ends with, "then God likely did it," or very weak if it terminates with, "then God might have done it." This last form is hard to falsify, but it is so weak, that it is virtually useless except, perhaps, to make a rhetorical point.
Key aspects: There are two important points to understand pertaining to god-of-the-gaps arguments, and the usual criticism against them:
1) The key characteristic of a god-of-the-gaps argument is that it is an argument from ignorance of what nature is capable of and, therefore, must contain some form of premise (2) either stated or unstated.
2) The primary competing assumption or premise against this argument is the assumption that there is a natural explanation. Thus, increasing knowledge of nature hangs like a sword of Damocles over the head of any god-of-the-gaps argument, as well as the assumption that there is a natural explanation.
When is an argument not god-of-the-gaps:
From the above two points we see that if,
If it is logically impossible for nature to have caused the effect (e.g., a violation of an axiom of logic or mathematics) then the assumption that there is a natural explanation is false. We may not know what caused the effect, but we know with logical certainty that it is not in the category of what we define as 'natural'. One step down from this is if, on the basis of evidence and what we know, we find that the probability of a natural process producing the effect approaches zero the more our knowledge advances, then rather than a god-of-the-gaps argument, we may be looking at an abductive argument (argument to the best explanation) or some form of an inductive argument.
it is an argument from positive evidence rather than an argument from ignorance. Positive evidence is the opposite of a gap in knowledge. Whether the argument from evidence is valid or compelling is a different issue, but it is not a god-of-the-gaps argument if it is based on knowledge.
Legit gaps: The primary response to a god-of-the-gaps argument is the assumption that there is a natural explanation and that future advances in knowledge will fill that gap in our knowledge. This assumption can be rationally justified if, as science advances, that particular gap in knowledge becomes increasingly smaller—we may not yet fully understand how the effect was produced, but the gap is growing narrower.
If, however, the more we find out, the bigger the gap gets and the more preposterous the 'scientific' creative story-telling becomes, then the rational justification for the assumption that science will fill that gap decreases, and the legitimacy of the gap increases. By ‘legitimate gap’ I mean a gap in knowledge that science may not be able to fill or may be the wrong tool to use. For an example of a legitimate gap, evolutionary biologist Eugene Koonin has shown that the probability of RNA replication arising naturally is so small, that we cannot expect it to happen anywhere in this universe over its history. His conclusion, therefore, is that there are an infinite number of universes, in which case probabilities approaching zero are no problem. (1) It should be noted that he is appealing to an infinite number of unseen, untestable entities in order to avoid the other option of one unseen entity that just might be testable as our knowledge of the origin of life increases. Ockham’s razor might be helpful here. It is essential to distinguish between creative story-telling, which is particularly rampant in origin of life scenarios and large-scale evolutionary 'just-so' stories, versus legitimate scientific explanations that are testable, verifiable, and repeatable.
Part II: Two arguments that are often mistakenly labeled as god-of-the-gaps arguments
A good test of one’s understanding of what constitutes a god-of-the-gaps argument is to look at two arguments that are often mistakenly thought to be such. It must also be pointed out that to defend the assumption that an argument is actually a ‘god-of-the-gaps’ argument, one must summarize the argument premise by premise, and show where the god-of-the-gaps assumption is being made. If this is done, it becomes obvious whether it qualifies or not. Alternatively, one can present their argument with the premises numbered and the logical conclusion to demonstrate at the outset that the conclusion does not depend upon any god-of-the-gaps premise.
A. Logical argument for a supernatural origin for nature
This first argument is not strictly an argument for the existence of God but rather for the existence of a non-material/supernatural reality. I’ve published a more detailed explanation of the argument elsewhere. (2) Here, we shall concern ourselves mainly with whether or not this is a god-of-the-gaps argument. First, let us define some terms.
Nature: all of material reality composed of space, time, matter, and energy and determined by the laws of physics, where the word "all" extends to include even a multiverse (even though it has been pointed out that multiverse theories are not testable and, therefore, should be classified as fantasy or science fiction). (3) These four components are chosen to define material reality simply because all variables in equations of physics can be reduced to these four (mass can be reduced to energy, but let’s just leave it at these four variables, all of which are controlled by the laws of physics.
Natural processes: Every effect that is determined by the laws of physics, unfolding in a gigantic causal chain that extends back to time zero at the origin of material reality.
Supernatural or non-material: The set of all things that are not-natural. To clarify, any portion of reality that exists and operates independently of the laws of physics. An example would be the axioms of mathematics and logic which control material reality, but themselves are not controlled by material reality or the laws of physics. Thus, they form a very real and essential supernatural/non-material foundation for material reality without which we would be incapable of practicing science, rational thought, mathematics, or making any sense whatsoever of material reality. Other examples include free will (which is not free if determined by the laws of physics) and God.
The argument:
1. The cause of nature is either natural or not-natural.
2. It is logically impossible that the cause of nature is natural.
3. Therefore, the cause of nature is not-natural.
Note that the above argument is not an argument from ignorance. We know premise (2) with logical certainty due to the law of non-contradiction which is fundamental to logic, science, and mathematics. To clarify, nature, while in the logically prior state of not existing cannot, while in that state of non-existence, use non-existent natural processes to bring about the natural origin of natural processes. The concept violates the law of non-contradiction. This logically entails that science will never, ever explain the origin of nature and any attempt to do so will automatically be logically defeated by the law of non-contradiction. It is a logical checkmate. Premise (1) is a true dichotomy. When we only have two options, and one of those options is logically impossible, then the other option must necessarily be true whether we like it or not. Thus, as discussed earlier, we see that this is not a god-of-the-gaps argument. Rather, it is as a valid, disjunctive syllogism, based on what we know with certainty.
Remarkably, however, I frequently observe someone committed to ‘scientism’ (the philosophical position that science can explain everything) respond to the above argument by appealing to mathematical models that, mathematically at least, try to get around the problem of nature having a beginning. There have been some articles in journals of science dealing with the problem of fantasy in science, (3) but sufficient for now is to make two points:
None of these models are testable, so they fail to qualify as a ‘scientific’ explanation and,
None of these models work when mapped to reality; they fail on at least one critical point.
Thus, the materialist, in an effort to deny the argument, ends up presenting a ‘fantasy of the gaps’ argument but almost never realizes it.
B. Argument for a mind behind life
I have published a more thorough discussion of the following argument elsewhere. (4) Here, we shall only concern ourselves with whether or not it qualifies as a god-of-the-gaps argument.
1. A unique attribute of an intelligent mind is the ability to produce statistically significant levels of functional information.
2. Protein-coding genes contain a statistically significant level of functional information.
3. Therefore, the functional information encoded in protein-coding genes was produced by an intelligent mind.
Premise (1) is testable, falsifiable, and verifiable.(5) Science actually has one, and only one observable, testable, and repeatable source for significant levels of functional information--intelligent minds or rational agency. We observe it being produced every day when we speak, text, or write software. Thus, statistically significant levels of functional information are the fingerprints of an intelligent mind and those fingerprints are all over the genomes of life.
Although there have been creative stories as to how the functional information encoded in the genomes of life could be produced by evolution, they lack knowledge of how functional information is mathematically defined and continue to be falsified in every way we can test them. Genetic or evolutionary algorithms require a very carefully thought-through and well-designed fitness function if they are to work. They are examples of intelligent design in action.
This argument is a valid abductive argument--an argument to the best explanation, based on observable data. Premise (2) is data-based, rooted in our rapidly expanding knowledge of protein family sequences and online libraries, (6) which enable us to use published, peer-reviewed methods to estimate the level of functional information required to code for individual protein families. When we do this, we observe that the level of functional information encoded in the genomes of life is staggeringly impressive, far beyond the minimum threshold of statistical significance.
The bottom line is that this argument is firmly rooted in science and enormous amounts of data. Thus it is not an argument from ignorance, but an abductive argument founded on real, positive evidence.
Conclusion: If I could summarize the god-of-the-gaps argument in one sentence, it would be this; it is an argument from ignorance--an argument from what we do not know rather than from what we do know. If, however, one comes upon an argument based on what we do know, then it fails to qualify as a god-of-the-gaps argument. Whether it is compelling, or even valid, is a different issue but it will not be a god-of-the-gaps argument.
References:
Eugene Koonin, ‘The cosmological model of eternal inflation and the transition from chance to biological evolution in the history of life,’ Biology Direct, 2007.
Kirk Durston, ‘What caused the universe?’
See George Ellis, Cosmology: The untestable multiverse, Nature, Vol 469, January 2011 and Ellis and Silk, Scientific method: Defend the integrity of physics, Nature, Dec. 2014, and M. Buchanan, When does multiverse speculation cross into fantasy?, New Scientist, January 2014.
Kirk Durston, ‘Why this scientist believes intelligent design was required for biological life.’
For more on functional information, see ‘Molecular Messages’ and ‘Functional Information and the Emergence of Biocomplexity’.
See, for example, the Pfam data base.
Further reading:
For a more thorough, academic discussion on this topic, check out the following:
Gregg Gannsle, ‘“God of the gaps” arguments’, The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity, J.B. Stump and Alan G. Padgett (Eds.), https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118241455.ch12, 2012.
Larmer, R. ‘Is there anything wrong with “God of the gaps'' reasoning?’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 52, 129–142 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020832916983
