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Jan. 15th, 2007
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God of the gaps
Jan. 15th, 2007 12:20 amOn the off-chance you're here for some content rather than the humourous cat photos, you might be interested in some discussions I've been having with Stephen from Outside the Box. Stephen first turned up on a posting of mine about anger among de-converts from religion.
Stephen has made some interesting posts lately. I've commented on a couple, one on evidence for God's existence, and the other on atheism and the god shaped hole in scientific knowledge. Stephen said some nice things about my comment on the latter posting.
According to Wikipedia's article on the God of the Gaps, Christian theologians have specifically warned Christians off making arguments for God from scientific ignorance (it's an obvious tactical error, because the areas of ignorance tend to get smaller). Nevertheless, you do see Christians doing it, and atheists have tended to consider all arguments of this form a fallacy. As I said in my comment to Stephen, I don't think it's a strict fallacy (God might have done whatever this thing is that we don't have a good explanation for yet). But to go from there to claiming that a lack of a scientific explanation is evidence for a specific sort of God, as some Christian apologists do, is begging the question (which is a fallacy) because it assumes that "God" as a label for "whatever is in the gaps" is identical to the God that the apologist is advocating. That's what makes the Flying Spaghetti Monster a useful tool for annoying Intelligent Design advocates.
Stephen sounds like he'd like to follow Descartes in seeing what he can find out about God from first principles. I don't think you'll get very near a Christian God by doing that (and I expect Christians would agree, because they'd talk about the need for revelation, whether from the church or the Bible). Nevertheless, I'll be interested to see where that line of thought takes him.
Stephen has made some interesting posts lately. I've commented on a couple, one on evidence for God's existence, and the other on atheism and the god shaped hole in scientific knowledge. Stephen said some nice things about my comment on the latter posting.
According to Wikipedia's article on the God of the Gaps, Christian theologians have specifically warned Christians off making arguments for God from scientific ignorance (it's an obvious tactical error, because the areas of ignorance tend to get smaller). Nevertheless, you do see Christians doing it, and atheists have tended to consider all arguments of this form a fallacy. As I said in my comment to Stephen, I don't think it's a strict fallacy (God might have done whatever this thing is that we don't have a good explanation for yet). But to go from there to claiming that a lack of a scientific explanation is evidence for a specific sort of God, as some Christian apologists do, is begging the question (which is a fallacy) because it assumes that "God" as a label for "whatever is in the gaps" is identical to the God that the apologist is advocating. That's what makes the Flying Spaghetti Monster a useful tool for annoying Intelligent Design advocates.
Stephen sounds like he'd like to follow Descartes in seeing what he can find out about God from first principles. I don't think you'll get very near a Christian God by doing that (and I expect Christians would agree, because they'd talk about the need for revelation, whether from the church or the Bible). Nevertheless, I'll be interested to see where that line of thought takes him.