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John Lennox on the god-of-the-gaps and the progress of science

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The god-of-the-gaps fallacy is a charge made by naturalists against theists.

First, some introduction. Naturalists believe that every effect in the universe has a material cause. Theists believe that it is possible that God, who is not material, can cause effects in nature. Theists think that these effects are detectable because the creating/designing capabilities of material causes are insufficient to explain certain effects either deductively (creating out of nothing) or probabilistically because of the limits of time and space available for material processes to act within (biological information). The naturalist thinks that all effects in nature have physical causes, the theist things that some effects in nature are caused by non-material causes.

In the past, some effects in nature were thought to be caused by God but later were found to be the result of natural (material) processes, often through the scientific method. Because the trend has been to explain these “gaps” in our knowledge with material causes, the naturalist now assumes that every effect in nature will be found to have natural causes. Even discontinuities in nature that are real, like the Big Bang, the fine-tuning, the origin of biological information, etc. are now assumed to have material causes, even though the progress of science has made these effects MORE DIFFICULT to explain with natural causes. The naturalist calls any attempt to attribute an effect in nature to a Creator/Designer a “god-of-the-gaps” fallacy, because the naturalist points to the past and asserts that a natural material cause will eventually be found for whatever gaps we have in nature.

But suppose a material explanation of every effect in nature could be found. Does that mean that there is no role for God anywhere?

Glenn Peoples writes:

Let’s imagine that the following is true: God does not intervene in the world. Once upon a time people who were more ignorant than we are thought that gods, angels, demons, spooks or spiritual forces lurked behind everything that we didn’t have a handy natural explanation for. But in fact, this is all god of the gaps reasoning, and God doesn’t intervene in nature at all. Never. There is a true natural account for everything that goes on in the universe that we know of.

If you don’t think that’s true, relax. We’re imagining, OK? I don’t think that the above is true, since I’m one of those crazy people who thinks that at least some miracles have taken place. But let’s suppose that the above account were true. Here’s where things take a step off the cliff of logic. Take the above account, and then add the following statement: “Therefore, since God isn’t required to explain any phenomenon, we have no need of the God hypothesis at all, and we have as good as shown that he need not be thought to exist.” God, some have said, can now be treated as a redundant hypothesis that explains nothing at all. Nothing.

And then Glenn cites John Lennox:

Science has been spectacularly successful in probing the nature of the physical universe and elucidating the mechanisms by which the universe works. Scientific research has also led to the eradication of many horrific diseases, and raised hopes of eliminating many more. And scientific investigation has had another effect in a completely different direction: it has served to relieve a lot of people from superstitious fears. For instance, people need no longer think that an eclipse of the moon is caused by some frightful daemon, which they have to placate. For all of these and myriad other things we should be very grateful.

But in some quarters the very success of science has also led to the idea that, because we can understand the mechanisms of the universe without bringing in God, we can safely conclude that there was no God who designed and created the universe in the first place. However, such reasoning involves a common logical fallacy, which we can illustrate as follows.

Take a Ford motor car. It is conceivable that someone from a remote part of the world, who was seeing one for the first time and who knew nothing about modern engineering, might imagine that there is a god (Mr Ford) inside the engine, making it go. He might further imagine that when the engine ran sweetly it was because Mr Ford inside the engine liked him, and when it refused to go it was because Mr Ford did not like him. Of course, if he were subsequently to study engineering and take the engine to pieces, he would discover that there is no Mr Ford inside it. Neither would it take much intelligence for him to see that he did not need to introduce Mister Ford as an explanation for its working. His grasp of the impersonal principles of internal combustion would be altogether enough to explain how the engine works. So far, so good. But if he then decided that his understanding of the principles of how the engine works made it impossible to believe in the existence of Mr Ford who designed the engine in the first place, this would be patently false – in philosophical terminology he would be committing a category mistake. Had there never been a Mr Ford to design the mechanisms, none would exist for him to understand.

It is likewise a category mistake to suppose that our understanding of the impersonal principles according to which the universe works makes it either unnecessary or impossible to believe in the existence of a personal creator who designed, made, and upholds the universe. In other words, we should not confuse the mechanisms by which the universe works either with its cause or its upholder.

John C. Lennox, God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (Oxford: Lion, 2007), 43-44.

I’m with Glenn – I think that God is a real agent who exists in time subsequent to Creation just like you and I. He can cause effects in nature like you and I, the same way that you and I can – by using our immaterial minds to affect the natural world freely. But even if everything has a mechanistic explanation – which I don’t for a minute agree with – that still would not rule out an intelligence acting to bring the entire universe into being fine-tuned for complex life, with certain potentialities that would unfold over time.

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Sean McDowell on whether Christians should embrace postmodernism

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The article by Sean McDowell is here.

Excerpt:

In Postmodern Youth Ministry, for example, Tony Jones argues that postmodernity is the most important culture shift of the past 500 years, upending our theology, philosophy, epistemology (how we know things), and church practice. It is an “earthquake that has changed the landscape of academia and is currently rocking Western culture.” (p. 11). Thus, to be relevant in ministry today, according to Jones and other postmodernists, we must shed our modern tendencies and embrace the postmodern shift.

For the longest time I simply accepted that we inhabit a postmodern world and that we must completely transform our approach to ministry to be effective today. But that all changed when I had the opportunity of hearing philosopher William Lane Craig speak at an apologetics conference not too long ago.

[…]In the introduction to Reasonable Faith, Craig provocatively claims, “Indeed, I think that getting people to believe that we live in a postmodern culture is one of the craftiest deceptions that Satan has yet devised” (p. 18). Accordingly, we ought to stop emphasizing argumentation and apologetics and just share our narrative. Craig develops this idea further:

And so Satan deceives us into voluntarily laying aside our best weapons of logic and evidence, thereby ensuring unawares modernism’s triumph over us. If we adopt this suicidal course of action, the consequences for the church in the next generation will be catastrophic. Christianity will be reduced to but another voice in a cacophony of competing voices, each sharing its own narrative and none commending itself as the objective truth about reality, while scientific naturalism shapes our culture’s view of how the world really is (p. 18-19).

In a personal email, Craig relayed to me that he believes postmodernism is largely being propagated in our church by misguided youth pastors. While he meant the comment more to elicit a smile than to be taken as a stab in the back, I can’t help but wonder if he is right.

There was a podcast that Sean did a while back on the worldview of Christian youth, where he explains how they think that religious claims are all basically personal preferences, not real knowledge that can be reasoned about and supported by evidence. It really eats into their ability to act in Christian ways when they don’t think Christianity is true.

My personal experiences with “Christian” postmodernism

Growing up, I was often confronted with the idea that God was not somehow insulated from logic and evidence. The main people who asserted that idea were the church leaders and campus club leaders. They were very skeptical of controversial doctrines like Hell, exclusive salvation, inerrancy and authorial intent. They didn’t like the law of non-contradiction, and they didn’t like historical or scientific evidence. Some others didn’t even like the idea that the Bible could override their emotions and intuitions.

As I grew older, I began to uncover why the postmoderns in leadership believed that God is not bound by the laws of logic, and that evidence was not as authoritative as personal experiences and stories. It was because of their desire for popularity. They did not want to have to confront people with exclusive and judgmental Christian claims. They did not want to have defend orthodox Christianity as true, using logic and evidence. The leaders even attacked the people who tried to introduce thinking and reasoning about Christian claims.

Postmodern Christians want to be able say to offer Christianity as one choice in a buffet, with the goal of addressing people’s felt needs. They say things like, “Christianity is true for me, and Hinduism is true for you“, in order to be accepted. And they feel, emotionally and intuitively, that non-judmentalism and non-exclusivism are right. Postmodernism helps them to justify their focus on popularity and their refusal to learn apologetics. They don’t want to learn facts, because they don’t want to have to defend Christianity as being objectively true.

Postmodern Christians are opposed to the idea that Christianity is knowledge, because “knowing for certain” takes away their ability to have “wiggle-room” when they want to do what all the other people are doing. They want to be able to keep God at arms-length when he is morally demanding, while keeping him within arm’s reach for emotional support, when needed – maybe just in private. God “exists” for postmoderns when they need comfort, and he doesn’t “exist” when they want autonomy from the moral law.

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Should Christians abandon changed-life evangelism?

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Here’s a post by Biola University professor Clay Jones again.

Excerpt:

One of the most common approaches to witnessing is to tell people how your life was transformed from awful to awesome. You know what I mean. Something like “before I was a Christian my marriage was on the rocks, I was depressed, was on the verge of being fired from my job, and wondered whether life was worth living. Once I became a Christian, however, my marriage improved, I started getting along better with my boss, and I’m happier.” The idea behind this is that if you come to Jesus your life will get better here. I call it “improved lifestyle witnessing.”

Many Christians encourage this as a method of evangelism. After all, it is easy to do, it is something you can remember because it is about you, and it is irrefutable because you are telling people things that actually happened to you. As a method of evangelism then, what’s not to like? Right?

Wrong.

He then goes through a half-dozen or so problems with lifestyle evangelism.

Here’s my favorites.

First, consider that just about every cult and religion in the world does the same thing. How many cults or false religions say, “Come to us and your life will get worse”? Of course not! They promise a better life here.

Second, postmodern hearers, who believe that all truths are small “t” truths, will receive this approach as “good, I’m glad that worked for you.” And sometimes they will then add that what works for them is Baha’i, or Zen, or therapy, or Prozac, or “I get high on life” or “I don’t need a crutch,” and so on.

I don’t think we should be selling Christianity as a means to make yourself happier in this life. I don’t see many happy people in the New Testament – I see many joyful people suffering under harsh conditions. And if you substitute a changed life for apologetics, then I really think you’ve gone wrong. The gospel is always presented as a true solution to the problem of sin – never as a placebo to make us feel better. Either it’s true or it isn’t – whether it makes us “better people” or not is irrelevant.