God of the Gaps
God of the Gaps
Another argument frequently advanced against virtually any piece of natural theology is the God-of-the-gaps charge. In fact, this is one of the most popular items in the atheist playbook. We know from the history of science that many things that were thought in the past to require an explanation in terms of divine agency are now known to have naturalistic explanations. Rainbows, for example, were once thought to have been put in the sky as a sign; we now know that they can be naturalistically explained in terms of light refraction. Various biological systems show a harmony between means and ends which in the past were cannon fodder for the design argument but are now explicable in terms of random variation and natural selection. So if we think something cannot be explained in physical terms, just give scientists some time, and they'll figure it out sooner or later.
An instance where the God-of-the-gaps objection appears strong is in the case of Newton's account of the orbits of the planets. His theory would have expected the orbits to go somewhat differently from the way they go, and so he postulated God as the one who keeps the planets in line. Laplace later developed a theory that didn't require this kind of divine tinkering, and when asked about Newton's theistic theory, he said,“I have no need of that hypothesis.”
However, I am not sure that every argument that points to an explanatory difficulty for the naturalist can be effectively answered with a God-of-the-gaps charge. Consider, for example, being at a dinner party with someone who is given a large amount of water and creates from it an equal volume of wine. (It tastes like really good wine, not that cheap stuff.) Can we reasonably say that we just have a gap in our understanding? As Robert Larmer points out, our understanding of how wine is made is precisely what makes it so difficult to explain naturalistically:
What should be at issue in assessing“God of the gaps” arguments is whether they have met these conditions. Claims regarding events traditionally described as miracles and claims regarding the origin and development of life are where“God of the gaps” arguments are most commonly met. In the case of events traditionally described as miracles, it seems very evident that our increased knowledge of how natural causes operate has not made it easier, but more difficult, to explain such events naturalistically. The science underlying wine-making is considerably more advanced today than it was in first century Palestine, but our advances have made it even more difficult to explain in terms of natural causes how Jesus, without any technological aids, could, in a matter of minutes, turn water into high quality wine. Indeed, it is the difficulty of providing a naturalistic account of such events that leads many critics to deny that they ever occurred; though this looks suspiciously like begging the question in favour of naturalism. It is clear that if such events have occurred, the advance of science has made them more, rather than less, difficult to explain in terms of natural causes. Employing a“God of the gaps” argument that the occurrence of such events would constitute good evidence for supernatural intervention within the natural order seems entirely legitimate.23
I maintain that there are gaps and there are gaps. It's not just pointing to an unsolved engineering problem in nature. First, the categories of the mental and the physical are logically incompatible categories. You start attributing mental properties to physics and you might end up being told that you are no longer describing the physical at all. Purpose, normativity, intentionality, or aboutness—all of these things are not supposed to be brought in to the physical descriptions of things, at least at the most basic level of analysis.
Let's consider the gap between the propositional content of thought and the physical description of the brain. My claim is that no matter in how much detail you describe the physical state of the brain (and the environment), the propositional content of thought will invariably be undetermined. This isn't my claim or C. S. Lewis's; this argument was made by the archnaturalist W. V. Quine. It's not a matter of getting a physical description that will work. The logico-conceptual gap is always going to be there regardless of how extensively you describe the physical. Bridging the chasm isn't going to be a matter of simply exploring the territory on one side of the chasm.
I conclude, therefore, that God-of-the-gaps or even a soul-of-the-gaps response to the argument from reason does not work. I am not saying that we just cannot figure out right now why the mental states involved in rational inference are really physical; I am suggesting on principled grounds that a careful reflection on the nature of mind and matter will invariably reveal that there is a logical gap between them that in principle can't be bridged without fudging categories.