"Is there anything wrong with 'God of the gaps' reasoning?"

This excellent question was asked by Robert Larmer in an article published in the international Journal for Philosophy of Religion in 2002. He gives a very good answer, but it has a significant problem.

That problem is that "God of the gaps" is a nice alliterative 4-word epithet. Larmer's philosophically nuanced view comes to eleven pages, printed. "God of the gaps" is commonly used, and universally understood to be the death of any argument against which it is used. Larmer shows that we haven't understood the associated issues at all the way we should have:

"I conclude that there is nothing wrong with the reasoning typically involved in 'God of the gaps' arguments. The widespread dismissal of such arguments as unworthy of serious consideration is, therefore, unjustiﬁed."

That's pretty far out for most people--which is why it took Larmer eleven pages to carefully explain how he came to that conclusion. Not many will follow the argument: the alliterative four words are so much easier to manage in our minds. So "God of the gaps" will live on in the popular and even in the technical literature, used by naturalistic evolutionists and others who want to discredit belief in God. And Larmer's correction of this misunderstanding will hardly be noticed. Even if he's right.

Hat tip to Victor Reppert, who didn't seem to succumb to cynicism the way I just have.

Posted: Fri - August 31, 2007 at 09:22 PM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

"Is there anything wrong with 'God of the gaps' reasoning?"

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson