Interesting Creationists Point (*Shudder*)

[SkepticalScience]

Not sure if this should be in Religion & Philosophy or in Science. . . but I just read an interesting article.

The author of the piece raised a question to Dawkins that I never fully thought through:

-------------------------Begin Quote-------------------------
Creationists view God as the ultimate cause of all we see in the universe and thus are not surprised when some aspects of the observable world are inexplicable by purely scientific means. Naturalists assume that all events may be explained, given enough time, by naturalistic means.

My question for Dawkins is this: How many gaps must there be before the underlying assumption itself is brought into question?
-------------------------Begin Quote-------------------------

I admit to holding the naturalistic assumption myself.

What are good ways to defend the assumption? The best two reasons I thought of were:

1. There isn't anyway for me to experience the supernatural. I've slept in suposedly haunted houses, carry cursed items in my pocket, and played with a Oija board - and nothing supernatural has ever happened. So why believe in supernatural explanations, when nothing I do can ever lead me to a supernatural experience?

2. Applications. The naturalistic assumption leads to all kinds of practical products, cures, and general advances to society. But I don't see the same things coming out of scientits that operate on the supernatural assumptions.

Any other thoughts on this piece??
SS

oh, the full article I read was here: http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/opinion/12102479.htm

[Bronze Dog]

How many gaps must there be before the underlying assumption itself is brought into question?
What gaps?

But, more seriously: Any gaps are a lack of knowledge. The natrualistic point of view has been steadily filling them, whereas supernatural explanations tend to rely on mankind's alleged inability to fill those gaps. Emotionally speaking, I'd rather we keep trying to fill the gaps, rather than risk giving up early by moving to the supernatural.

[pgwenthold]

Originally posted by BronzeDog
What gaps?

But, more seriously: Any gaps are a lack of knowledge. The natrualistic point of view has been steadily filling them, whereas supernatural explanations tend to rely on mankind's alleged inability to fill those gaps. Emotionally speaking, I'd rather we keep trying to fill the gaps, rather than risk giving up early by moving to the supernatural.

Oh, there are so many responses here. There's the old, "For every gap we fill, we create two more." How's that for an implication? By this guy's argument, the more we learn, the more gaps we create and therefore the more we should resort to God!

OTOH, my response would be, "How many gaps do we have to fill before you accept the likelyhood that we will ultimately fill them all?"

[Yahweh]

Originally posted by SkepticalScience
-------------------------Begin Quote-------------------------
My question for Dawkins is this: How many gaps must there be before the underlying assumption itself is brought into question?
-------------------------Begin Quote-------------------------
This is an utterly bizarre question, and I almost question whether it merits the time and energy to discuss it.

If there are "gaps" in a theory, it only means the theory in its current form lacks explanatory power (this isnt really a problem), not that its underlying assumptions are wrong. If a better theory comes along, or more details are discovered to fill the gaps, all the better.

The time to to start questioning an assumption is when its predictions dont match our observations.

[Mojo]

My question for Dawkins is this: How many gaps must there be before the underlying assumption itself is brought into question? A point to make here, of course, is that the gaps are getting smaller with each new piece scientists fit into the puzzle.

The "how many gaps" in the quotation sounds like a variant of the standard creationist approach to what they claim are gaps in the fossil record. They'll point to two species and say something along the lines of "where's the intermediate form? There's a gap here." If an intermediate form is discovered, they will then point out that there are now two gaps, and so on.

ETA: Got to learn to type faster!

[SkepticalScience]

Yahweh - The underlying assumption the author is talking about is, "All phenomena, given enough time, can be explained by purely naturalistic means".

I get what everyone is saying though - it didn't really occur to me.

For every new bit of information we discover, it obviously will raise a bunch of new questions about that new discovery.
Which leads to more "gaps" to insert jeebus.

Hmm. . . I need to muddle on this for a minute

[SkepticalScience]

pgwenthold - that's a great answer.

I think that's what I was looking for.

SS

[Ossai]

Let’s illustrate the creation of new gaps.

Original gap
__ ........................ ___
xx|........................|xx
xx|........................|xx
xx|........................|xx
xx|______________|xx

Fill in a bit

__......... ___ ...... ___
xx|........|xxx|......|xx
xx|........|xxx|......|xx
xx|........|xxx|......|xx
xx|_____|xxx|___|xx

Gasp now there are two gaps. Oh woe, wailing and gnashing of teeth.
:rolleyes:
(using dots because it didn't like spaces in formating)

[CurtC]

I don't think you can compare general "gaps" in our knowledge to gaps in the transitional fossil record. With the latter, finding a new transitional form will make two smaller gaps where there was only one larger one before, but this doesn't apply to gaps in knowledge of how the bacteria flagellum could have evolved, how blood clotting could have evolved, etc.

Once we fill those gaps, they're just filled. It does seem to me, though, that there are a practically limitless number of these kinds of gaps, and science will never fill them all. But science's success in filling them so far does seem to be painting this "god of the gaps" into an ever-smaller role.

How small does this role have to be, in other words, how inconsequential do the gaps have to become, before creationists admit that they don't need to use that as an explanation anymore?

[pgwenthold]

Originally posted by CurtC
I don't think you can compare general "gaps" in our knowledge to gaps in the transitional fossil record. With the latter, finding a new transitional form will make two smaller gaps where there was only one larger one before, but this doesn't apply to gaps in knowledge of how the bacteria flagellum could have evolved, how blood clotting could have evolved, etc.

Once we fill those gaps, they're just filled. It does seem to me, though, that there are a practically limitless number of these kinds of gaps, and science will never fill them all. But science's success in filling them so far does seem to be painting this "god of the gaps" into an ever-smaller role.



OTOH, consider the common phrase, "The more we learn, the more we don't know"

It isn't technically correct, but even the correct statement "The more we know, the more we know we don't know" indicates that knowledge reveals gaps that we did not know about before.

For every question we answer, there is usually about 5 new questions that we discover. Granted, those 5 questions were always there, but we didn't know about them before.

I think the sentiment stands.

[BillHoyt]

The point we seem to be dancing around here is that the question is simply an argument from ignorance: "You don't know, therefore I can make sh** up." The discussion about each new bit of information creating two more gaps, while certainly true, is a corollary to the more fundamental error.

[Ohmer]

Originally posted by SkepticalScience

-------------------------Begin Quote-------------------------

My question for Dawkins is this: How many gaps must there be before the underlying assumption itself is brought into question?
-------------------------Begin Quote-------------------------


This is like asking “How ignorant must one be to assume God did it?�

The "God as ultimate cause" assumption has zero explanatory power. It explains everything and nothing at the same time. This makes it scientifically useless.

[patnray]

From Godel's Theorem, in any logical system which is internally consistent it is ALWAYS possible to ask questions which can't be answered within that system. That doesn't mean the questions cannot be answered, but we must construct a new, more comprehensive system, to answer those questions.

There will always be questions we can't answer, because as we learn more we learn to ask more difficult questions. Many of the gaps in our knowledge today concern questions we could not even ask a hundred years ago...

That does not invalidate science, just as the fact that we can never enumerate all the numbers between two integers does not invalidate mathematics.

Religion, OTOH, can always provide an answer because religious thought is not constrained by the requirement that it be logical or consistent....

[Stimpson J. Cat]

My question for Dawkins is this: How many gaps must there be before the underlying assumption itself is brought into question?
This clearly shows that the person asking this question holds a fundamental misconception about the nature of scientific theories. No gaps are needed to bring the theory, or any of its assumptions, into question, because they are already in question. The entire scientific process is one of questioning our current theories, actively trying to show them to be insufficient, and then finding new better ones.

The author seems to think that if we find that there are many things which we do not yet know how to naturally explain, that we should question our naturalistic assumptions. Of course we should question it. But should we abandon it? Not unless it is shown to not work (and so far it works great). After all, even if evolutionary theory is dead wrong, it is still the best we've got right now. It isn't as though throwing away our scientific theory somehow means that the one specific religious theory that guy has in mind, must be the right one.

I wonder what it would take for him to question his assumptions about God? The fact that he apparently still believes in God pretty clearly indicates that it will take far more than what he is suggesting should convince us to question naturalism.


Dr. Stupid

[headscratcher4]

Can't the question be turned back?

How much fill-dirt do you need to see shovled into the hole before the "elf with a shovel" explaination begin to seem implausible?

[Odin]

My question for Dawkins is this: How many gaps must there be before the underlying assumption itself is brought into question?


It doesn't matter how many gaps there are. However this sounds like rejecting any supernatural explanations from the start. But if there was evidence of the supernatural to fill the gap then it would be relavent. The question supposes that a sufficient absence of an explanation is evidence in itself, but this leads to the problem of what god, gods, aliens e.t.c fill the gap, so positive evidence is still required.

[MRC_Hans]

I really see it as an argument from ignorance. A theory is formed from what we know not from what we don't know. Thus pointing out what we don't know should not change the theory.

Hans

[CurtC]

I can sort of see where the creationists are coming from on one aspect of this. They assume that it's most likely that a designer was responsible for some steps in the process, and complain that we "evolutionists" are demanding only naturalistic explanations for everything. From their point of view, there are certain gaps that will never be filled by naturalistic explanations, and evolutionists will overlook these, since explanations have not been found, and still claim that everything can be explained without god, because all the things we know how to explain by definition don't require god.

For this reason, simply stating that ID is an "argument from ignorance" is not persuasive to them. What would the world look like if god really did intervene in some of these gaps? It could be just like it does now, where we're trying to figure out abiogenesis and explanations for how protein machines in cells could have come to be naturally, but we haven't found it because goddidit.

I think a more effective rebuttal is to point out how 150 years ago, these gaps in our knowledge were giant chasms, with explanations being the exception rather than the rule, and people then attributed god to these giant gaps. Over the decades, as our knowledge has taken great strides in filling in the landscape naturalistally, and the gaps, assumed to be god's role by many, has been steadily shrinking. At this point in the accumulation of our knowledge, we can explain so much of the history of evolution naturally that any role for god is brief and almost insignificant. Is this the way they want to define their god, inhabiting smaller and smaller gaps in our knowledge, becoming less and less significant? Why would you want to worship a god like that? It doesn't sound very god-like to me.

[MRC_Hans]

Well, you are right, but my point is that a theory is not evaluated by its gaps, it is evaluated by its evidence. So when we assume evolution to be true, it is because we consider the present evidence to be adequate. Thus, the number and size of gaps is irrelevant as long as nobody can fill them with contrary evidence.

And you are right that god of the gaps is a lame god. A real looser, in fact.

Hans

[pgwenthold]

Originally posted by CurtC
I think a more effective rebuttal is to point out how 150 years ago, these gaps in our knowledge were giant chasms, with explanations being the exception rather than the rule, and people then attributed god to these giant gaps. Over the decades, as our knowledge has taken great strides in filling in the landscape naturalistally, and the gaps, assumed to be god's role by many, has been steadily shrinking. At this point in the accumulation of our knowledge, we can explain so much of the history of evolution naturally that any role for god is brief and almost insignificant. Is this the way they want to define their god, inhabiting smaller and smaller gaps in our knowledge, becoming less and less significant? Why would you want to worship a god like that? It doesn't sound very god-like to me.

And remember, the "God of the Gaps" goes back much farther than that. At one time, it covered things like why a rainbow forms or even why the sun moves across the sky. People saw things they didn't understand and invented a god to explain it.

Yeah, we know a lot more now, but why is invoking a god to explain current gaps in knowledge any different than Appollo's chariot in ancient times?