Ha! God In The Gaps! I've Caught You! That's a paraphrase of a much more vulgar statement that means the same thing. Only I didn't make an argument for "the existence of God" I made an argument against something else.
First, while there are religious people who do make "God of the gaps" arguments, no informed or sophisticated religious people of my experience do. I don't believe I ever have. It is a generally unknown fact that the person who is on record as the first person arguing against the folly of "God of the gaps" was an evangelical preacher, Henry Drummond. Though, in looking online, right now, I believe some are claiming it as a formal logical fallacy. I'm not sure it has generally been accepted as one, though online atheists love to invent new "logical fallacies" all the time.
Second, as a matter of fact, though the term is, to my knowledge, not used, I was arguing against something very similar, the atheist insertion of materialism into gaps in knowledge, believing, that by asserting that some as yet unknown material explanation - generally asserting that unknown, perhaps nonexistent explanation to be "scientific" - fills in gaps in knowledge.
Darwin's imaginary unconscious creatures on the moon, Carl Sagan's invention of atheist extraterrestrials, the Just-so stories of evolutionary psychology, atheist cosmologists bi-jillions of imaginary universes, an infinity of previous incarnations of our one and only universe*, myriads of psychological-physiological entities, imaginary social constructs, the imaginary structures in our brain which cause our consciousness, all of which are not in evidence..... and most of all, an ultimate material explanation of everything including our consciousness are the equivalent of a virtual pan(a)theon of gods that are constantly invented to shove materialist-atheism into gaps of knowledge. The phenomenon has been going on since the dawn of science, gaining force as atheists claimed ownership of science, that it is remarkable that its existence hasn't been named before now. Some sciences consist of little else. The usual name of "promissory notes of materialism" is good but it doesn't go far enough in identifying what they are doing when they do it. They are making atheism in the gaps or, if you prefer, materialism in the gaps arguments against the existence of God. And that has been the actual motive of a shocking amount of what gets called science for a long, long time. I believe it probably accounts for a large percentage of once current but now discontinued and seldom discussed science. Some of it with quite horrific consequences.
* I don't remember who it was who pointed out the folly of that effort because an infinite God might well have been believed to have created an infinity of universes or an infinity of incarnations of our, one universe. If one is good (as Genesis says) why wouldn't an infinity of them not be infinitely good? None of which is a. knowledge, or b. science.
"It is a generally unknown fact that the person who is on record as arguing against the folly of "God of the gaps" was an evangelical preacher, Henry Drummond."
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting how many ideas atheists claim as their own originate with religious thinkers of one kind or another. I'm beginning to generalize that atheists are among the most ignorant people out there and, like Donald Trump, defend their ignorance vociferously because it's easier than learning (or maybe, like Trump, they are just incapable of education).