God Of The Gaps

"God of the gaps" arguments are fallacious attempts to argue for the existence of God based upon a lack of knowledge about a given thing, especially a lack of knowledge about the natural world.  The phrase is derived from the manner in which some theists identify a "gap" in knowledge, assert that the unexplained phenomenon in question is confirmation of God's existence, and then treat God's existence as if it is something obvious from a cursory examination of nature.  Appeals to ignorance such as this are inescapably unsound.  No matter how they are described by their adherents, they always involve belief in something on grounds that are uncertain.

All design arguments reduce down to god of the gaps claims, simply because it does not follow from the appearance of design that design is present or that a designer exists.  As I have explained before [1], design arguments for the existence of God have to assume that a designer exists to even posit that nature is designed to begin with.  Since the existence of a designer must first be proven for the existence of design to be established, design arguments are inherently circular, since they try to approach God's existence the other way around.

Typically, proponents of design arguments will try to subjectively persuade someone that a designer exists by giving example after example of allegedly "unexplainable" things.  If pressed, they might admit that their arguments do not amount to logical proofs, but this does not dissuade them from pretending like design arguments are rational.  Oftentimes, they will even deny that they are using god of the gaps fallacies at all.

The irony is that they consider those who do not regard design as obvious to be irrational, as if to demonstrate the errors in design arguments is an offense against reality.  Even when their supporters fail to grasp their mistakes, god of the gaps errors are at the forefront of design arguments, since those who advocate such arguments are merely assuming that design exists because they perceive orderly behaviors of matter.  In other words, though it does not follow from observing order in the natural world that the natural world must have been fine-tuned by God, these particular theists claim that a lack of verifiable alternatives clearly means that God exists.

Every argument from seeming design to designer fails.  To prove that a designer exists, one must prove that there is an uncaused cause [2] and then show that this entity is a designer.  Any other sequence is riddled with fallacies.  There is only one legitimate proof of God's existence, and it does not start with metaphysical assumptions or fallible scientific judgments about the natural world.  Demonstrating the existence of God as an uncaused cause is a relatively simple thing, but god of the gaps fallacies and the erroneous persuasion that order must signify design have nothing to do with it.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/11/why-design-argument-fails.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-uncaused-cause.html