Skip to main content

God of the gaps

I'm no fan of I.D., or at least not an ardent one. In fact, it seems to me that ID proves at most the following disjunctive: either some superhuman being, or a deistic-styled deity, or the God of monotheists is the source of the species that presently populate the earth.

In spite of my not being a fan of ID, it seems to me that the "God of the Gaps" objection (i.e., the claim that ID resorts to God to fill the ever-narrowing gaps in our knowledge of nature) is not always a fair one. Isn't every scientific explanation an attempt to fill a gap?

Comments

Unknown said…
The difference between a "God of the gaps" hypothesis and an ordinary scientific hypothesis is that the first isn't empirically testable while the latter is. If you propose a new law of gravity that has certain hitherto untested consequences (such as the lensing of distant starlight around the sun) then you can set up an experiment and test whether you're right. When the hypothesis at hand, however, is a Designer which has by definition no necessary physical presence, then the hypothesis is, as a result, not inherently testable. (We are at His whim, we only know what He reveals about Himself - because if you propose a merely *human* designer, then you have a testable hypothesis, since humans necessarily have bodies and hence an essential physical presence - but an unseeing being is a different story. That is to say, even if you could empirically prove that a designer exists, it doesn't prove that the designer is uncreated.) This doesn't rule out philosophical arguments, like invoking the anthropological principle, but I think it does mean that seeing a Deity behind nature is not a scientific hypothesis.
4:55 PM
Unknown said…
Oops - meant to say "unseen" above.
4:56 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

P F Strawson's Freedom and Resentment: the argument laid out

Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson.  He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal.  My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this.  I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true.  Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist.  In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dembski's "specified compexity" semiotics and teleology (both ad intra and ad extra)

Integral to Dembski's idea of specified complexity (SC) is the notion that something extrinsic to evolution is the source of the specification in how it develops. He compares SC to the message sent by space aliens in the movie "Contact." In that movie, earthbound scientists determine that radio waves originating in from somewhere in our galaxy are actually a signal being sent by space aliens. The scientists determine that these waves are a signal is the fact that they indicate prime numbers in a way that a random occurrence would not. What is interesting to me is the fact that Dembski relies upon an analogy with a sign rather than a machine. Like a machine, signs are produced by an intelligent being for the sake of something beyond themselves. Machines, if you will, have a meaning. Signs, if you will, produce knowledge. But the meaning/knowledge is in both cases something other than the machine/sign itself. Both signs and machines are purposeful or teleological...
Post a Comment
Read more

Richard Dawkin's problem with God

Beliefnet has published an interview by Laura Sheahan with biologist Richard Dawkins, who employs evolution in support of atheism. In the second part of the interview, Sheahan says to Dawkins: "You criticize intelligent design, saying that 'the theistic answer'--pointing to God as designer--'is deeply unsatisfying'--presumably you mean on a logical, scientific level." Dawkins then replies to the interviewer: "Yes, because it doesn't explain where the designer comes from. If they're going to emphasize the statistical improbability of biological organs—'these are so complicated, how could they have evolved?'--well, if they're so complicated, how could they possibly have been designed? Because the designer would have to be even more complicated." My reply: Dawkins does not explain WHY the designer of biological organs would have to be more complicated than the organs he designs. He does not think that such an explanation is...
Post a Comment
Read more