What The 'God Of The Gaps' Teaches Us About Science

[NeoGreen]

https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/04/08/398227737/what-the-god-of-the-gaps-teaches-us-about-science

"... then God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance."

What The 'God Of The Gaps' Teaches Us About Science

"God of the Gaps": When God is invoked to fill in the blanks in scientific knowledge. An old-fashioned and doomed theological approach, but one that is nevertheless very much alive in the minds of many.

In the General Scholium, a sort of epilogue to his monumental Mathematical Principles of Mathematical Philosophy (here is a translation of the 3rd edition by Ian Brice available on the Web; there are others), Isaac Newton wrote (I use the I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman translation):

"This most elegant system of the sun, planets, and comets could not have arisen without the design and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.

And if the fixed stars are the centers of similar systems, they will all be constructed according to a similar design and subject to the dominion of the One ... And so that the system of the fixed stars will not fall upon one another as a result of their gravity, he has placed them at immense distances from one another."

(snip)

The interesting part of this story comes when Laplace gives Napoleon a copy of his Celestial Mechanics, describing in great detail the motions of the planets and comets in the solar system. Napoleon invites Laplace to his palace and, after congratulating the sage, expresses his astonishment at not seeing God mentioned in the manuscript. Laplace's famous answer tells it all: "Sir, I have no need for that hypothesis."

Emphasis added.

[DetlefK]

1. Flat-Earthers use "God of the Gaps" a lot.

Whenever they are confronted with some fact that would make Flat-Earth impossible, they postulate some hitherto unknown physical phenomenon that makes Flat-Earth possible anyways.

(And for hobby-scientists, they are shockingly uneducated about basic things like inertia and momentum. They parrot talking-points, but they don't understand what they are talking about.)

[NeoGreen]

2. Yes, very much so, and when...

...there is the question proposed "where do you find god(s)?"...the answer isn't "in the gaps", for all that lies within the "gaps" is ignorance.

So, unless one were to accept a definition of "god(s)" as nothing more than mere ignorance, the question is as meaningless as god(s) are a phantasm.

[RussBLib]

3. Thanks for posting

I don't believe I'd seen that episode. I love Neil. Visiting the Hayden Planetarium is high on my list.

[Pope George Ringo II]

4. "I have no need for that hypothesis"

I had heard about that quite some time ago, but in this context it strikes me as the perfect response to the "Atheism is a belief" strawman.

[MineralMan]

5. Nobody has a need for that hypothesis.

Education and research are the answers. Eventually. Until we know the answers, we simply have not discovered them yet. As we have seen, we will, though, in time.

When we answer, "I do not know," that is optimism speaking. "I do not know" is simply yet another thing to discover. "God did it" is a cheap excuse for a lack of curiosity.

[NeoGreen]

6. I would argue that...

...it is worse than a mere "cheap excuse", it is willful ignorance with arrogance and very negative consequences, and is derived from the same emotion that give rise to the hateful conservatism we see today. Fear.