A standard God of the Gaps is the following.
- Science doesn’t explain A.
- God explains A.
- Therefore God exists.
- However there is no reason why science will never be able to explain A some time in the future.
Why not use such an argument?
- It does not logically follow.
- When science does explain it then the argument collapses.
- Besides the idea that God explains something is dubious in the first place.
However there are many arguments which people call “god of the gaps” when not all of the above holds. In particular…
- sometimes science cannot explain something because of the very nature of scientific inquiry.
- sometime science itself tells us that something cannot be explained within the premises of the scientific worldview.
In these cases, the “god of the gaps” objection does not apply.
On the contrary, God fails as an explanation because it doesn’t really give any answers. “Because Goddidit” is pretty much like a parental explanation to a two year old “because I said so.” Indeed its only function is to silence inquiry and forbid questions… “if you have faith then you just believe it and don’t ask questions.” …just about as lame as you can get.
I am a theist… a Christian, but not because I think God explains anything. At least not by itself. At the very least you would need to provide an explanation WHY. Why did God do it that way? But just saying that God felt like doing it that way for some reason we will never understand doesn’t explain anything. But even with such an explanation, this is pure supposition and there is little hope for any evidence to back it up.
But such a reason is something I provide in the one thing where I see God providing an explanation… quantum physics, which has been such an issue of cognitive dissonance for so many physicists because it seems to contradict the very premises of scientific inquiry. But if God wanted a way to interact with the universe without breaking the laws of nature then I think that would explain it at least on the same subjective level where so many physicists have a problem with it. It is certainly not required by the evidence and it cannot count as a scientific or objective explanation though.