The Gaps Debate: Science, Design, and Limits of Knowledge

Exploring God of the Gaps and the Boundaries of Scientific Inquiry

Of the various arguments that are commonly presented to attempt to demonstrate the existence of God, perhaps the most common category is teleological arguments, or the arguments from design. Some forms of this argument are from biological design, the anthropic principle, and the ecology of the universe or planet. Recently, the most common form of this argument offered is known as the fine-tuning argument. All these arguments attempt to demonstrate that elements of the universe could not have arisen randomly or through natural processes, and there must have been an Intelligent Being who designed it to exist in a specific way.

For most of human history, virtually every aspect of the natural world was regarded as being purposefully arranged. However, in the last few centuries, since the rise of science, many of these were explained to be the result of non-intentional physical causes, which can account for the arrangement of things even absent an Intelligent designer. One example of this is the celestial spheres, which were once thought to only be able to exist because of a being who placed the celestial objects in their orbits. However, since Isaac Newton published his Principia in 1687, demonstrating that gravitational laws can account for their orbits, we no longer need to invoke an Intelligent designer for this. Of course, it is still possible that an intelligent being wanted it to be this way and used the laws of nature to create this system¹, but as we no longer need such a being to account for the observed phenomenon, we can no longer use it as evidence for the existence of God.

Currently, many theists and atheists alike accept that science can account for large portions of the apparent design in the universe. This is especially true since Charles Darwin argued for evolution through natural selection in 1859.² Just as the cosmos were largely demystified through the work of physicists such as Newton and Einstein, the biological world can be understood through the framework of evolution. Biological complexity, ecological systems, and the fact that we are optimally suited for our environment can all be explained to be the result of one sweeping natural theory.

However, there remain many gaps in current scientific knowledge. There is no field that we can say we have a complete understanding of the subject matter, and science is constantly working forward to fill in these gaps. This has led various theologians to point to these gaps and consider them evidence that God must have caused them. This is true both for matters of origin and for mysterious events which take place. Theists sometimes point to these phenomena and proclaim that because that there is no known natural explanation, they are better explained by supernatural explanations, such as Creation and Miracles, or otherwise supernatural phenomena.

The contemporary scientific and philosophical communities tend to reject these forms of evidence under the umbrella term ‘God of the Gaps’. They argue that just because science can’t yet provide the answer to many questions, that doesn’t mean they will not one day discover the answer or that there isn’t a natural explanation. There is an illustrative anecdote that captures this point: The French mathematician and astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace published a series of books in the early 19^th century titled Treatise of Celestial Mechanics. In these works, he improved upon Newton’s celestial model, and used entirely naturalistic explanations without resorting to any divine intervention, as Newton’s model had done. When Napoleon Bonaparte inquired as to why Laplace didn’t mention God in his books, he famously replied, “Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis.” Similarly, the argument goes, although we may still be at the stage of Newton where we lack a full scientific understanding, we should not assume that there won’t be a future Laplace who can complete the model without the need for God.

Opponents of this concept argue that this is an irrational faith in science. Why should we simply believe that science will provide the answer? Furthermore, this is equivalent to an a priori belief that materialism is true, and you are therefore refusing to consider any evidence which indicates you might be wrong. Such an approach is unfalsifiable (as all evidence of the supernatural will be tossed out as God of the gaps), and could be equally used to reject any proposition, regardless of the evidence supporting it.

There are two responses often made to defend the concept of God of the gaps. One is fallacious, while the other is worth considering. The incorrect response is as follows: Look at history! Didn’t people think in the past that x would never be explained, and yet we now have an explanation? Shouldn’t this pattern tell you that the same will happen to observation y?

This reasoning is flawed because it fails to address the theist’s objection. If this method can indeed be used to dismiss any given hypothesis, it may very well be wrong and we would have no way of knowing. Furthermore, assuming God is the explanation for a given phenomenon implies that in principle, there is no material explanation to be found. As such, it is not comparable to any previous scientific discoveries, which do indeed have naturalistic causes. Hence, the argument is circular, as it rests on the prior conclusion that everything can be accounted for without resorting to supernatural causes.

A more robust way to explain this concept would be to appeal to induction. Since the vast majority of observations we make can be accounted for by the laws governing the physical world, we should therefore have high confidence that this pattern will continue, and there are naturalistic explanations behind observations for which we cannot provide an explanation.

To illustrate this point, imagine we conduct an experiment on the effects of a particular illness on a specific organ, and it yields a result which seems inexplicable. Assuming this result is conclusive, would anyone declare with confidence that no further studies will turn up a sufficient answer. or would we instinctively assume that we are simply missing some of the relevant information to form a solid theory? I would venture to say that any rational person would conclude that we are just lacking a fuller understanding of the illness. Why is this rational? Maybe we have just discovered the limits of science and this is indeed a supernatural occurrence? This would justifiably be dismissed, as there is no particular reason to assume the processes which govern virtually every other biological system do not extend to the system in question. On a larger scale, this reasoning can be applied to virtually any phenomenon for which we don’t yet possess a full understanding, and we should retain our assumption that it too operates within a naturalistic framework.

However, there are two constraints which limit the use of this induction. The first aims to weaken the induction itself and provide grounds to assume that there are indeed events which truly don’t operate within this naturalistic framework, while the second seeks to define the limits of this induction and identify categories which should not be assumed to be included in this pattern.

The first constraint could have been defensible prior to the advent of evolutionary theory in the 19^th century (or for those today who reject this theory on scientific grounds). Absent such a theory, much of the natural world seems to defy explanation through physical principles, and one could argue that this pattern does not apply when discussing the origins of life and the world as we know it. Since this involves a broad array of our observations, it remains an open question whether we truly observe a robust trend of naturalistic causes being sufficient to account for the totality of empirical data. This was undoubtedly true before the formulation of the laws of gravity and possibly held before Darwin's theory of natural selection. However, I would contend that since we can now account for biological systems through mechanistic processes, this objection has lost much of its force and no longer weakens the induction substantially. Furthermore, the fact that such seemingly insurmountable challenges have been resolved serves to greatly strengthen the overall pattern and greatly bolsters the power of this induction. (Of course, one who denies evolutionary theory retains this argument, but only if the rejection is on purely scientific grounds, as a theological rejection would render their stance circular.)

The second limitation on this inductive reasoning concerns the scope of phenomena to which we can extrapolate this pattern. For instance, when addressing the hard problem of consciousness, many philosophers argue that subjective experience is fundamentally different from any objective realities, making it impossible to apply materialist assumptions drawn from physical patterns. A similar argument appears in the context of the kalam cosmological argument, which seeks to demonstrate that an immaterial cause initiated the Big Bang. When critics claim this argument relies on a God of the Gaps fallacy, suggesting that even though science cannot yet explain the cause of the Big Bang, we should still assume a physical explanation will emerge, the kalam proponent may respond that in principle, the Big Bang required a fundamentally different kind of cause, as it preceded the existence of the material world. Likewise, proponents of the fine-tuning argument regarding the initial conditions and laws of the universe maintain that this too, in principle, falls outside the realm of material explanations, as the cause must transcend the laws of nature themselves.³

Although these arguments are subject to other critiques and are heavily debated, I want to further explore whether the God of the Gaps reasoning can be fairly applied to them.

Regarding the hard problem of consciousness, some would argue that it is fallacious to presuppose that consciousness belongs to an entirely different category from physical processes. This objection can be made through critiques of substance dualism or panpsychism, but it can also be challenged based on the claim itself. Ancient thinkers believed that various aspects of the physical world were in a distinct category similar to how some view consciousness today, and many of these beliefs were later discredited. For instance, the Greeks held that the cosmos consisted of a different substance than Earth, with distinct laws governing celestial bodies. However, modern science has conclusively shown that outer space is composed of the same materials as Earth and obeys the same physical laws. This misconception arose due to limited observations and an incomplete understanding of natural processes. The cosmos appeared to operate under separate principles, but it was eventually proven that the entire observable universe follows the same fundamental rules. This should encourage greater confidence in monism (the idea that all existence stems from a unified substance), and caution us against hastily declaring that consciousness is fundamentally separate from physical systems.⁴

As for the kalam cosmological argument (at least its scientific aspect) and the fine-tuning argument, we need to critically examine what should be considered the true limits of nature. The established facts are that our observational capabilities cannot extend beyond the Big Bang, and the laws of physics as we know them collapse when we attempt to describe events beyond classical spacetime. However, we cannot conclusively assert that the fundamental laws of physics do not apply in such contexts, and all discussions about events beyond spacetime become difficult to frame coherently. Is it presumptive to claim that this marks the absolute boundary of the laws of physics? Can mathematical language still be applied in these contexts? Is it an observational bias that leads us to argue that this lies beyond the domain of scientific inquiry? (Here, I’m not referring to empirical research, as one could argue that events beyond the cosmic event horizon are unobservable in principle, or that we may be inherently incapable of developing models that are so far removed from experience. The real question is whether this falls entirely outside the scope of materialism itself.) This is a highly contentious issue, and I am skeptical that anyone can provide definitive answers to these questions with any real confidence.⁵

1. This suggests that God may have calculated which laws would govern these outcomes. However, this touches on the broader question of how nature and God interact, which I discussed in a previous post. It’s important to note that these laws govern the entire universe, not just celestial orbits, implying that the laws themselves may have caused these outcomes, and not that God wanted it specifically this way. Claiming that one set of natural laws coincidentally aligns with many outcomes God desired is a more extraordinary claim than asserting that natural laws alone produced these results. I plan to explore this further in a future post.

2. I recognize that some reject this theory, but it is not central to the argument presented here, so please bear with me.

3. It is worth noting that biological design was also at a time considered to be outside of the purview of science in principle, as it is a discussion of origin, and was not seen as a process which could be conceived within the existing framework of nature. Similarly, the notion that physics is a discussion of origin may very well be overturned when science improves its understanding of the fundemental laws.

4. This argument is far from conclusive, but it is worth considering, and there are other arguments against the view that consciousness is not reducible to physical processes.

5. Even if the God of the Gaps objection fails on these arguments, they remain open to other critiques not covered here.