"Is Intelligent Design a form of god-of-the-gaps? If you appeal to God for the origin of life/universe, why don’t you appeal to God to explain AIDS, natural disasters and photosynthesis? "
I agree heartily about the danger of appealing to the god-of-the-gaps in explaining unknown phenomenon. When the natural causes are known later, this ‘god’ becomes unnecessary and his domain became smaller.
But let me clarify firstly that I do not believe in Intelligent Design because of something I can’t explain or don’t know about abiogenesis. It’s not a default position based on what we don’t know (god of the gaps), but rather on what we DO know scientifically about the fine tuning of the universe, the intricate information in the DNA blueprint and the irreducible complexity of living systems. If you are interested to pursue this, I’d be happy to clarify in more details later.
Secondly, it’s simply absurd to suppose that if I can appeal to extraordinary stuffs like falling meteorites to explain the extinction of dinosaurs or benevolent UFOs for the origin of life, then I’d open up the door for others to explain floods, boiling water and weather forecast by appealing to UFOs/meteors!
I’m sure Francis Crick (Nobel Laureate who appealed to UFO to explain the origin of life on Earth) doesn’t appeal to UFOs to explain photosynthesis. As a scientist, he only appeals to extraordinary explanations when ordinary, natural means fail to account for abiogenesis.
Why? Because the origin of life (like the ‘sudden’ extinction of dinosaurs) is such an extraordinary phenomenon that warrants extraordinary, outlandish hypothetical causes. I don’t look for natural, gradual causes of death when I see a man with five gunshot wounds on his chest.
In the same way, I appeal to an Intelligent Designer based on what we do know about DNA, fine-tuned universe etc because of the very extraordinary nature of the phenomenon we’re trying to explain. I don’t need to appeal to God as the immediate cause of ordinary phenomenon like boiling water.
I agree heartily about the danger of appealing to the god-of-the-gaps in explaining unknown phenomenon. When the natural causes are known later, this ‘god’ becomes unnecessary and his domain became smaller.
But let me clarify firstly that I do not believe in Intelligent Design because of something I can’t explain or don’t know about abiogenesis. It’s not a default position based on what we don’t know (god of the gaps), but rather on what we DO know scientifically about the fine tuning of the universe, the intricate information in the DNA blueprint and the irreducible complexity of living systems. If you are interested to pursue this, I’d be happy to clarify in more details later.
Secondly, it’s simply absurd to suppose that if I can appeal to extraordinary stuffs like falling meteorites to explain the extinction of dinosaurs or benevolent UFOs for the origin of life, then I’d open up the door for others to explain floods, boiling water and weather forecast by appealing to UFOs/meteors!
I’m sure Francis Crick (Nobel Laureate who appealed to UFO to explain the origin of life on Earth) doesn’t appeal to UFOs to explain photosynthesis. As a scientist, he only appeals to extraordinary explanations when ordinary, natural means fail to account for abiogenesis.
Why? Because the origin of life (like the ‘sudden’ extinction of dinosaurs) is such an extraordinary phenomenon that warrants extraordinary, outlandish hypothetical causes. I don’t look for natural, gradual causes of death when I see a man with five gunshot wounds on his chest.
In the same way, I appeal to an Intelligent Designer based on what we do know about DNA, fine-tuned universe etc because of the very extraordinary nature of the phenomenon we’re trying to explain. I don’t need to appeal to God as the immediate cause of ordinary phenomenon like boiling water.
Comments
I will begin this article with two postulates: 1) God has created this universe, 2) He has brought man in this universe with some purpose.
I am not claiming here that these two postulates are true, or that I can prove them to be true. But I want to show here that if these two postulates are true, then God will always be the God of the gaps. Anyone who will be reading this article should not forget that there is an “if” clause in the last sentence.
Now I will begin with the supposition that God has created this universe. If God has created this universe, then He could have created it in four different ways: 1) He created it in such a way that there was no necessity for Him to intervene in it after creation, 2) After creation He intervened in it, but these interventions were a bare minimum, that is, He intervened only when these were absolutely necessary. In order to clarify my point here, I will say that He intervened only when He found that without His intervention the universe would come to a standstill, 3) He created the universe in such a way that in order to keep it going He had to make very frequent interventions in it, 4) God's total intervention after creation.
If it was the purpose of God to keep mankind crippled in every possible way, then He would have adopted either the third or the fourth way while creating the universe. This is because in these two cases man, in spite of his having sufficient intelligence and reasoning power, will fail to unveil the secrets of nature, because in almost every phenomenon of nature that he will decide to study he will ultimately find that there always remains an unknown factor, for which he will have no explanation. For him the book of nature will thus remain closed forever. But if it were God's purpose that man be master of His creation, then it is quite natural for Him that He would try to keep the book of nature as much open to him as possible, so that with the little intelligence he has been endowed with man will be able to decipher the language of nature, and with that acquired knowledge he will also be able to improve the material conditions of his life. In that case God will try to adopt the policy of maximum withdrawal from His creation. He will create the universe in such a way that without His intervention the created world will be able to unfold itself. However that does not mean that He will never intervene. He will definitely intervene when without His intervention the created world would become stagnant. In such a scenario man will be able to give an explanation of almost all physical events in scientific language. But in those cases where God has actually intervened, he will fail to do so.
So I think there is no reason for us to be ashamed of the "God of the gaps" hypothesis. Yes, if God has created the universe, and if God’s purpose was that man be master of His creation, then He would try to keep as little gap in His creation as possible. But the minimum gap that would be ultimately left can never be bridged by any sort of scientific explanation. God will also reside in that gap. Why should we be ashamed of that?
Therefore, I can conclude this article in this way: If God created this universe, and if God wanted man to be the master of His creation, then God would willingly choose to be “God of the gaps”.
A theistic God will always prefer to be the God of the gaps.