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“God of the Gaps”?
“God of the Gaps”?
Many atheists argue gods were invented to fill missing gaps in our knowledge. With the rise of scientific discovery, we no longer need a divine explanation. For instance, ancients believed gods controlled the actions of almost every aspect of nature. One god controlled the sun, another the moon, another the ocean, rivers, rain, lightning, etc. Atheist scientists today view those people as primitive and ignorant. The reason, they argue, people believed there were gods behind nature was simply because they didn’t know how those things worked. Now that science has explained to us how the sun, moon, and stars work and how the rain cycle works with evaporation, condensation, and precipitation, there’s no longer any need for assigning those things to a god. They make the same argument against the One True God of the Bible.
However, ancient people didn’t believe there were gods behind nature because they were dumb, but because they recognized the power of what they saw in nature. It wasn’t ignorance, it was humility! They recognized how small they were compared to the sun and moon. They saw the power of ocean waves to decimate their ships and drown them at any moment. They understood how they were completely subject to the weather and had no control over anything in nature. The One True God forbid nature worship because He knew how tempting it was to be seduced by its power (Deuteronomy 4:19).
How absurd to think just because we can draw cute little diagrams of the rain cycle in a textbook that we should lose our sense of awe. Even Richard Dawkins, leader of the new atheist movement said in a debate, “I think that when you consider the beauty of the world and you wonder how it came to be what it is, you are naturally overwhelmed with a feeling of awe, a feeling of admiration and you almost feel a desire to worship something.” Atheist scientists use the “god of the gaps” theory to argue we’ve moved from primitive to enlightened. The truth is, we’ve moved from humility to arrogance. Since we can make a styrofoam replica of the solar system, we’re no longer brought to our knees by the real thing.
Here’s a new “gap theory” to consider. Scientific discovery may close some gaps in our knowledge, but it also opens up new gaps we didn’t even know existed! The more gaps we close, the more gaps we open. The more we know, the more we realize we don’t know. Therefore, the real gap theory should state that the more we discovery scientifically about our universe, the more we need God to explain it. Specifically, the more we need the One True God who exists outside of nature, controls it, and holds it all together so that we can live here on this earth and draw our cute diagrams. “Since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20)
