The God of the gaps argument for God fails when a plausible scientific account for a gap in current knowledge can be given. I do not dispute that the exact nature of the origin of the universe remains a gap in scientific knowledge. But I deny that we are bereft of any conceivable way to account for that origin scientifically. Victor J. Stenger
About This Quote

Many people believe that for every gap between the known and the unknown, there is an alternate explanation for it. They believe that if there is no scientific explanation for something, you can simply come up with a guess and push it to the side. However, this is a flawed argument. The God of the gaps argument fails in a number of ways.

It does not provide a way in which we can actually know a gap in knowledge in a scientific sense. It is simply a belief that when we have no scientific explanation for something, there must be another explanation for it. This assumption is incorrect.

If we have no scientific explanation for something, then there is no way to prove or disprove that there is another explanation for it. In other words, just because we don't have an answer does not mean that there isn't another one.

Source: God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist

Some Similar Quotes
  1. It happens like this. "One day you meet someone and for some inexplicable reason, you feel more connected to this stranger than anyone else--closer to them than your closest family. Perhaps this person carries within them an angel--one sent to you for some higher purpose;... - Lang Leav

  2. A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous. - Ingrid Bergman

  3. Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman: the lover,... - William Shakespeare

  4. Two words. Three vowels. Four constenants. Seven letters. It can either cut you open to the core and leave you in ungodly pain or it can free your soul and lift a tremendous weight off you shoulders. The phrase is: It's over. - Maggi Richard

  5. Remember how it was when we kissed? Armfuls and armfuls of light thrown right at us. A rope dropping down from the sky. How can the word love and the word life even fit in the mouth? - Jandy Nelson

More Quotes By Victor J. Stenger
  1. As he becomes self-conscious, he's no longer part of nature.

  2. What the mind cannot accept, the heart can finally never adore.

  3. This is the picture of a woman cast in the role of a learner, a pupil, even a rabbinic student. Quite obviously this is a prohibited role for women in those days and in that culture. Yet Jesus affirms Mary in that role. Martha, however,...

  4. Whatever it was that people experience in Jesus has today come to be identified with medieval doctrines based on premodern assumptions that are no longer believable. That identification means that serious theological discussion seems to accomplish little more than to erect a division between the...

  5. If you begin to give people hope that there is a brighter future, there is a new tomorrow, then the people who were yesterday's terrorists become tomorrow's elected officials and they're part of the system.

Related Topics