I am currently receiving regular hostile reactions from atheists who are posting comments on my YouTube channel in response to my video series, Evidence for Belief. In particular, the latest episode, “10 Impossible Things For Atheism”, has really poked the bear! (The videos on my YouTube channel are released several episodes in advance of my posts here on my website – so you haven’t seen this one yet or read the transcript. It’s coming in a few weeks, but you can check it out on my YouTube channel already if you want to, along with several other episodes that I haven’t posted here yet: 10 Impossible Things For Atheism.)
There are too many comments being posted for me to respond to individually, and, to be honest, many of the comments don’t deserve a response anyway. But in regard to arguments that are repeatedly iterated, I sometimes post a general response in the comments section below the relevant video.
One of the common accusations by atheists is that the theistic belief in God is simply a “God of The Gaps” argument. They accuse theists of effectively saying, “We don’t understand how the universe came into existence, so God must have done it”. In other words, atheists claim that theists are simply conveniently plugging the gap in our knowledge with a superstitious and naive belief in God.
Here is the response to that accusation that I posted today:
MY RESPONSE
One of the common objections against theists that has been iterated several times in the comments below is the “God of the gaps” argument. This claims that theists are arbitrarily attributing causation to an imaginary God simply because of their/our current scientific ignorance. “We don’t understand how this happened, so God must have done it.” Let me make a couple of points.
Firstly, those who accuse theists of doing this are doing exactly the same thing, but instead of plugging the gap with God, they are plugging the gap in their current knowledge with future science. They are effectively saying, “We don’t know how the material universe was created, but future science will eventually come to our rescue and so we place our faith in future science. We don’t know how non-living matter could create biological life and consciousness, but future science will one day reveal the answer.” Alternatively, some atheists who are less optimistic about the ability of future science to solve the riddle say, “We may NEVER know how this universe and everything in it was created – future science might never be able to solve this mystery – but we choose to believe that it was all created via natural processes rather than supernatural causes. We trust in nature, even though we can’t explain it, and may never be able to.” These two positions are both statements of faith, just as is the theist’s position.
Secondly, the theist’s appeal to God as the ultimate cause is not being introduced arbitrarily here, as is often claimed. Christian theists have their sacred text, the Bible, which, from its first page to its last, claims that this universe and everything in it is the intentional creation of a transcendent omnipotent God. Furthermore, theists find evidence of this claim in creation itself – evidence of intelligent design that permeates the universe from the macro level of the cosmos to the micro-biological level of cellular processes. Obviously, atheists deny both the veracity of the Bible and the evidence of intelligent design within the universe (which they are entitled to do) but the point is that the theist’s position is not an arbitrary one.
Thirdly, in rejecting the God explanation, atheists are faced with a conundrum, particularly in regard to the origin of the universe. They must choose between two equally unlikely explanations.
- The universe is eternal – without temporal beginning – thus having no cause. There are huge philosophical problems with this position, centering around the impossibility of an infinite number of events (such as seconds) in a physical temporal universe. (For instance, Al-Ghazali argued that if the universe has existed from eternity past, we would never have arrived at the present – see Episode 3). Apart from such philosophical considerations, most cosmologists today acknowledge that our space-time continuum had a finite beginning (see Episode 1).
- The universe had a natural cause. The problem with this argument is that it inevitably descends into an infinite regression of past causes. If the universe had a natural cause, what was it and what caused that cause to exist? If the universe cannot be eternal, we must eventually reach a first cause of some kind. But how did that first cause come into existence?
This leads me to point to further evidence for the theist’s position – evidence which argues against the so-called arbitrary nature of the God explanation. It appears an unavoidable conclusion that the ultimate cause of our space-time continuum must be both timeless and immaterial. If both time and space had a beginning (as indicated by such things as Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, mounting cosmological evidence and various philosophical considerations) the inescapable logical conclusion is that its cause must be beyond space and time. Its cause must also be immensely powerful to have created such a vast universe. And the extreme complexity of the information system contained within our DNA speaks to the existence of a supremely intelligent mind. This emerging picture of a cause that is timeless, immaterial, powerful and intelligent aligns perfectly with the theist’s concept of God. Belief in a Creator God is not being introduced arbitrarily. The theist maintains that the evidence actually points us toward God’s existence.
The atheist, on the other hand, is unable to offer an explanation of a first cause that meets all these criteria: a cause that is timeless, immaterial, powerful and intelligent. All of the so-called theories of origin proposed to date fall short in one or more of these considerations. (See Episode 2). Indeed, some of the theories of origin don’t deserve to be called scientific theories at all, but more closely resemble wildly fanciful speculation.
The “God of the Gaps” argument commonly raised by atheists against the theistic position is facile and baseless. Furthermore, it seems to me that the fall-back atheist position resembles a “science of the gaps” position and does not ultimately provide a satisfactory answer to the question of ultimate cause.