Is Design a God of the Gaps Argument?

By Stephen C. Meyer

The origin of the material universe, like the origin of the fine tuning and the origin of novel forms of life, is an indicator of some past causal action. But what kind? What kind of cause best explains the events in question? By rejecting all explanations that posit a transcendent or intelligent agent as fallacious GOTG [God of the gaps] arguments, scientific materialists and theistic evolutionists effectively require scientists and philosophers to explain all events in the history of the universe materialistically.

Of course, those concerned about the God-of-the-gaps fallacy have their reasons for limiting acceptable explanations in this way. They assume that some material process or some law of nature will eventually provide an adequate explanation of every event in the history of the universe. But do we have good reason for believing this will necessarily occur? We have already seen that neither the origin of the universe nor the fine tuning of the laws of physics and initial conditions of the universe are the kinds of events that laws of nature or materialistic processes are likely to, or can in principle, explain. Similarly, as noted in Chapters 9 and 14, the origin of complex and specified information present in DNA cannot in principle be explained by forces of chemical attraction or underlying laws of physics and chemistry. Such considerations alone might alert us to a problem with the idea that all events can be explained by natural laws or materialistic processes. Yet there is a deeper logical problem with the blanket prohibition against intelligent agency as an explanation in natural history. Whether motivated by concerns about “gaps” or by a commitment to methodological naturalism (a convention requiring scientists to consider only materialistic explanations), the prohibition against explanations involving creative intelligence ends up assuming the very point at issue in the debate about origins.

To see why, consider the following illustration. Imagine someone mistakenly enters an art gallery expecting to find croissants for sale. That is, he thinks the gallery is actually a fancy bakery. Observing the absence of pastries and rolls, such a person may think that he has encountered a “gap” in the services provided by the gallery. He may even think that he has encountered a gap in the staff’s knowledge of what must definitely be present somewhere in the gallery. Based on his assumptions, the visitor may stubbornly cling to his perception of a gap, badgering the gallery staff to “bring out the croissants already,” until with exasperation they show him to the exit.

The moral of this vignette? The gallery visitor’s perception of a gap in service or in knowledge of the location of the croissants derives from a false assumption about the nature of this establishment or about art galleries in general and what they typically offer to visitors. In a similar way, perceived gaps in our knowledge of the materialistic processes responsible for key events in natural history are based on our background assumptions about the kind of processes or entities that ought to have been working in nature. In the debate about biological origins, theistic evolutionists and mainstream evolutionary biologists alike assume that all living systems necessarily were produced by some materialistic process and that their origin will, thus, ultimately have a completely adequate materialistic explanation. The assumption implicit in, for instance, the question “What chemical processes first produced life?” implies a gap in our scientific knowledge when it becomes apparent (as it has; see Chapter 9) that no materialistic chemical process has been discovered that can generate the information necessary to produce the first living cells. Nevertheless, our present lack of knowledge of any such chemical process entails a “gap” in our knowledge of the actual process by which life arose only if some materialistic chemical evolutionary process actually did produce the first life.

Yet if life did not evolve via a strictly materialistic process but was, for example, intelligently designed, then our absence of knowledge of a materialistic process does not represent “a gap” in knowledge of an actual process. It only represents a gap in materialistic accounts of the origin of life. In that case, the perceived gap in our knowledge would merely reflect a false assumption about what must have happened or about the existence of a certain kind of process—a materialistic one—with the creative power to generate life.

But what if such a strictly materialistic process did not produce either the first life or the universe and its fine tuning? Then our assumption about the ultimate sufficiency of materialistic explanations would be false. Consequently, prohibitions against explanations invoking creative intelligence, based upon an aversion to explaining events that generate such “gaps” in materialistic accounts, might cause us to miss the true cause and best explanation for the event (or discontinuities) in question.

It might cause us to ask: “So where are those croissants?”

A more intellectually rigorous approach to the challenge of explaining crucial events in the history of life and the universe would permit scientists and philosophers to consider competing possible explanations even if they posit the activity of a creative intelligence. The critical question is not “Which materialistic or naturalistic hypothesis best explains the origin of life and the universe?” but rather, “What actually caused life, the universe, and its fine tuning to arise?”

Seen in this light, the GOTG objection fades into insignificance. To make their case for the adequacy of a strictly materialistic approach to explanation in science and philosophy, defenders of this approach must first show that “gaps” in our knowledge of the materialistic causes of key events in the history of life and the universe can be filled with knowledge of an actual materialistic process capable of producing the events in question. But as I’ve shown in Chapters 4 through 19, this is exactly what scientific materialists have failed to do—and, indeed, look unlikely to do.

Indeed, if scientific materialists had discovered materialistic processes with the demonstrated creative power to explain the origin of life and the universe, they would not need to use the God-of-the-gaps objection to counter intelligent design arguments or science-based arguments for the existence of God. On the other hand, if there are positive reasons to consider creative intelligence as a crucial causal factor, and if, in addition to evidence against competing materialistic explanations, those reasons suggest creative and/or transcendent intelligence as a causally adequate and best explanation for the events in question, then so be it. Let the evidence and standard methods of scientific and philosophical reasoning based on metaphysically neutral criteria for assessing hypotheses determine the conclusion of the investigation, not a question-begging prohibition that smuggles in the answer to the question at issue from the outset. Yet currently that is precisely how scientific materialists and others use the God-of-the-gaps objection. Critics of intelligent design or theistic arguments assert that scientists shouldn’t invoke creative intelligence to explain events that leave gaps in our materialistic accounts of the origin of life and the universe. Why? Because we know (or assume) that natural laws or materialistic processes will eventually explain those events and close those gaps. How do we know that materialistic processes will eventually explain those events, considering that such processes haven’t yet explained them and look unlikely to do so? Because the only alternative to explaining such events materialistically would be to invoke creative intelligence and that would commit—you guessed it—a GOTG fallacy.

More succinctly, we cannot allow God as an explanation for events that leave gaps in our materialistic accounts of the origin of life and the universe, because we know that scientists will eventually develop adequate materialistic explanations of those events. How do we know that? Because the only alternatives to materialistic explanations commit the God-of-the-gaps fallacy.

And around and around we go.

— Stephen C. Meyer received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in the philosophy of science after working as an oil industry geophysicist. He now directs the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Washington. He authored Signature in the Cell, a (London) Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year.

Excerpted from Stephen C. Meyer, The Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries Revealing the Mind Behind the Universe (HarperOne, 2021). Find The Return of the God Hypothesis at HarperCollins, Amazon, and other major booksellers.

Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay

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