Why We Need to Stop Playing the “God of the Gaps” Game
Religion versus science. It’s the debate that just won’t die. If you’re the type who loves politics or if you’re an atheist, this topic will eventually pop up and smack you in the face.
Let me be straight with you for the 208412038th time: I’m an atheist. Have been for 15 years.
I used to spend my time raging at the screen, ready to disprove every single point a religious person would throw out. “You’re wrong because blah blah buri buri,” was my battle cry. Pretty exhausting, in retrospect.
But that’s not why we’re here today.
Today, we’re talking about something specific: “But scientists cannot explain ____, therefore God.”
No. Just no.
I mean, that’s it. That should be the punchline, but let’s write some more for the sake of it.
In this line of thought, you can replace “God” with literally anything in that argument. Can’t explain the pyramids? Well, clearly it was aliens. Or maybe we’re all plugged into the Matrix and the pyramids aren’t real.
Why stop at God? Bring out the wildest shit you can come up with. If we’re going to be stupid, let’s be creative at least.
What we’re dealing with here is a classic fallacy psychologists call the “argument from ignorance.” I prefer to call it “The God of the Gaps.” It’s this sneaky little trick where people jam God into any gap in scientific knowledge.
It’s like gods and ignorance go hand in hand. Didn’t expect that one eh?
Let me give you an example. The whole evolution debate has been hotter than the singularity at the center of the Big Bang recently.
Naturally, I decided to wade into one of those dumpster fire Facebook debates — you know, the ones where a bunch of fundies (fundamentalists, for the uninitiated) have digital wiener measuring contests with ardent atheists until it’s decided who has that extra millimeter. To my complete and utter (un)surprise, there it was: “Evolution cannot explain abiogenesis, therefore God.”
Someone slap me, please.
Before we move on, let’s just clear something up: evolution and abiogenesis are not the same thing. In fact, they’re not even in the same ballpark. But no matter what, these fundies love to conflate the two and act like Darwin hasn’t had a software update since the 1800s.
Now that we cleared that up, not understanding how the first living cell formed totally means the answer must be some guy in the clouds who, rather than just getting rid of Satan, prefers an overly complicated scheme involving his son, a ghost, and a lifetime of not wearing mixed fabrics and not eating pork, all “because he loves you.”
Right? No? You mean we actually have to spend decades or perhaps hundreds of years researching the subject? Crap. And here I thought I could win the next Nobel Prize in biology (Or is it microbiology?) just by believing harder.
Speaking of shit we don’t know. You know what else we didn’t fully understand until recently? The sun. For centuries, we didn’t have the faintest clue why that giant ball of fire kept burning. Did people start saying, “Well, scientists can’t explain it, so it must be God up there toasting marshmallows”? Ah, sh…. Well, probably.
I’m just rambling at this point, so let’s end this.
The point? Stop inserting God into every equation just because science hasn’t caught up yet. Oh and double check that it hasn’t actually caught up before you go on rambling.
Alright, I’m done ranting for today. Gonna get drunk and high. Birthday stuff.
Ciao.
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