Gaps You Can Drive a Freight Train Through

Why the God of the Gaps Argument Exposes an Ignorance of Who God Is

Perhaps you’ve been the victim of the accusation that you believe in the “god of the gaps.” Atheists have used this pejorative for over a hundred years or more. It has especially been bandied about for the past couple of decades.

The argument goes like this. Ignorant and superstitious people in bygone eras experienced phenomena they couldn’t explain. Because humanity always wants to find an explanation for the unexplained, they imagined a supernatural being to fill the gaps in their knowledge.

For example, imagine a group of cavemen sitting around a campfire when a loud clap of thunder sounds overhead. The cavemen immediately look up and wonder what happened. Since their knowledge of static electricity and the charges generated by thunderstorms was limited, one of the men postulates his theory that a giant man lives in the sky and makes this noise when he plays games. The rest of the clan thinks, “Yeah, that explains it!”

But there are problems with this imagined scenario. First, it is the product of “chronological snobbery.” They believe that anyone who existed more than two hundred years ago was unintelligent and gullible. Sure, our technological advances have made life easier, but we shouldn’t peer down our noses at ancient peoples. They may have possessed a wisdom that our technological age has stifled.

Second, we may be more enamored with the world we think we perceive than is warranted. We experience the universe through our five limited senses. Materialists, who believe nothing exists outside of the natural world, assert that if it can’t be seen, heard, tasted, smelled, or touched, it doesn’t exist. But any veterinarian will tell you there is a world of sounds and smells that our pets know which we never will experience. Just as we can’t see infrared light or hear sounds above 20,000 Hz, there may be a spiritual world that can’t be perceived with our natural senses or detected with scientific instruments. That doesn’t mean angels, demons, and other spiritual beings are imperceptible or don’t exist. Jesus often remarked, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” (See Matt. 11:15; Mark 4:9; Luke 14:35 and others) This isn’t because his disciples were missing their ears. Jesus was speaking of spiritual ears. He was talking about spiritual perception. As the Apostle Paul puts it, “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” – 1 Corinthians 2:14 NKJV.

Finally, modern men have a strange way of determining what’s true. They decide what they want to believe about the world and look for evidence to support their claim. If you show them evidence that contradicts their beliefs, they may proclaim. “That’s your truth. I have my own truth!” You may only pay attention to the podcasts, influencers, and news stories that support your view and ignore any that offer an alternative view. This is called “confirmation bias” by philosophers. You will only watch MSNBC or listen to NPR and never turn to Fox News. Unbelievers are often guilty of this, but Christians and conservatives can be blinded by confirmation bias too.

So, the next time an unbeliever accuses you of believing in the “god of the gaps.” Remind them that if there is a God who created everything and superintends over the natural world, we should expect to find him in all the gaps of our knowledge. It isn’t only ignorant people who propose God as the ultimate answer behind life’s mysteries. Some of the greatest and most profound scientists who explored the natural world were also believers in God. Men like Newton, Kepler, Descartes, Pascal, and Faraday were not only brilliant scientific minds; they were also very devout in their belief in God.

You might also point out that without God to fill the gaps in our scientific knowledge, we are left with gaps in the science you can drive a freight train through. When scientists assert that we are “very close” to a breakthrough that will explain everything through natural causes, it is often because they haven’t realized how complex the answer really is.

For example, when Charles Darwin speculated that a lightning strike on a warm pond created the first single-celled living organisms over a billion years ago, he thought that cells were simple globules of protoplasm. A hundred years later, we had learned that “simple” cells were highly complex, miniature factories that respond to computer-like programming in it’s DNA. The more we learn about the microscopic world of the cell, the more we realize how far away from a workable scientific theory of the beginning of life we are. So far, we are clueless as to how non-living matter can spontaneously produce living organisms. We may figure it out someday, but currently, we’re not even close.

Here’s another puzzle for the materialists. If there is no such thing as an immaterial soul, how do we make independent decisions or choices apart from the chemical interactions and electrical impulses in the synapses of our brains? To the materialistic scientists who don’t believe in a spiritual world, we are not souls who have a brain, we are only brains in a body and what we perceive as ourselves is only a complicated illusion. They believe that we don’t choose red as our favorite color. Our brains have that proclivity hard-wired into it. According to them, we are predestined to like red and dislike green. What we believe, who we love or hate, and even our political choices are the result of our DNA and environment, so they say. The problem with this view of the world is that it is self-contradictory. If all our thoughts are predetermined, why would you trust any idea that anyone else suggests, like the idea that we are only fatalistic brains with no souls to make independent decisions?

In conclusion, let me ask one more question. Without God to fill the gap in our understanding, how do the materialists explain why anything exists instead of nothing. A century ago, most materialistic scientists thought the universe was eternal. They believed it had always existed and didn’t have a beginning. Even the great intellect, Albert Einstein believed this. That is, until the evidence of the “Big Bang” became overwhelming. Einstein had to admit that the universe had a beginning. He concluded with the others that it emerged from a hot, dense speck a long, long time ago. But if the universe had a beginning, who or what made it begin? If the Big Bang is true, who banged it? It’s not the scientists who had it right all along, it was the ancient theologians who first recited, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” – Genesis 1:1 NKJV. As the German astronomer, Johannes Kepler expressed his views of his discoveries, he was, “merely thinking the thoughts of God after him.” God is delighted when we explore his universe and make discoveries about his creation. But until we know as we are fully known, God is a great filler for the gaps in our knowledge and understanding.