God of the Gaps

Greetings Heretics,

“Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance. You cannot build a program of discovery on the assumption that nobody is smart enough to figure out the answer to a problem. Once upon a time, people identified the god Neptune as the source of storms at sea. Today we call these storms hurricanes. We know when and where they start. We know what drives them. We know what mitigates their destructive power. And anyone who has studied global warming can tell you what makes them worse. The only people who still call hurricanes “acts of God” are the people who write insurance forms.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

Several weeks ago, Ray Comfort’s minions descended upon OSU and campuses nationwide to distribute “enhanced” copies of Darwin’s The Origin of Species. These copies featured a fifty page introduction intended to defame the name of Charles Darwin and make the case for intelligent design. One of the arguments they try to make in favor of intelligent design involves the claim that many of the great intellects of the past relied on faith, and believed in the “God of Creation”. I felt that this argument seemed particularly weak considering that most of the scientists they referenced were prominent long before The Origin of Species was published. Nonetheless, it’s one of the more common claims I hear from creationists, so I thought I’d give it a look. (Let me say that as far as I’m concerned, creationism is intelligent design. You can change the packaging, but the product stays the same.)

The question that must be asked is simple. Would these men have been in lockstep with the people who lobby out of the Discovery Institute, or were these men merely victims of their own limited tools and resources?

In the second century AD, Ptolemy conceived the geocentric theory of the universe, which prevailed for centuries. At the boundary of his primitive understanding of the universe, he had the following to say about his observations, “I know that I am mortal by nature and ephemeral, but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies, I no longer touch earth with my feet. I stand in the presence of Zeus himself, and take my fill of ambrosia.” I’d like to think that if Ptolemy were alive today, he would have at worst been a deist. His curiosity and inquiring mind were unique in his time. Still, to tout someone who lived nearly two millenia ago, and had the tools to acquire only the most basic understanding of our planet and its processes seems to be a stretch.

Galileo, whose conflicts with the religious establishment were well documented, seemed to understand that religion had its limits when it came to describing the physical properties of the universe. He is famously quoted to have said, “The Bible tells you how to go to heaven, but not how the heavens go.” This great mind was reprimanded repeatedly for the heresy of insinuating that humans were not at the center of the universe. His heliocentric view caused him to be placed under house arrest by the Catholic Church, but his work helped to establish the independence of science from the dogma of religious authority.

Despite Galileo’s obvious disdain for the long reach of religiousity, you will often hear creationists say that much like Galileo’s Heliocentric Theory, intelligent design is often dismissed as absurd. They infer that their views haven’t been given a fair shake, like Galileo’s, and that they are being shut out by the close-minded scientific establishment. These people try to pretend that they are the advocates for critical thinking. There are not two sides to this issue. There is science, and then there are things that masquerade as science.

Sir Isaac Newton, sometimes regarded to be the most brilliant man who ever lived, created calculus on a whim. He single-handedly discovered the laws of motion, force, and gravity without once invoking an intelligent designer. Predictably, when he struggled to describe the stabilization of the forces in the solar system, he realized he had reached his limits. “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the council and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being,” Newton decreed. This quote is often touted by Intelligent Design proponents as evidence that Newton himself would have subscribed to this theory. They fail to notice that these great minds only invoke a creator at the boundary of their understanding, if they do at all. I highly doubt Newton would have espoused this belief in the twenty-first century in the face of all the advances in astronomy, physics, and mathematics.

What would have happened if the many brilliant minds of our species had failed to move past the boundaries of contemporary understanding, but had instead accepted the roadblocks their predecessors ran into as inevitable and a result of the mysterious will of a supernatural being. You will often hear from religious types that the great scientists of the past were aware of their limits and believed that ultimately God was responsible for everything we observe in the universe. This is supposed to convince us heathens of our own arrogance in the contrast to the humility and concessions to design made by these intellectual giants. What you are not likely to hear is that these men only conceded the rest to a supernatural being where they could not continue on the strength of their own abilities. Progressive waves of scientists would expand on the limits put forth by their predecessors.

In the United States, almost 90% of the public believes that a supernatural being is responsible for the existence of the universe. Even more shocking, nearly half of these people believe this process took place close to six thousand years ago. A scant 10% of people believe in the accepted naturalistic view of evolution, and we wonder why math and science literacy in this country is so low?! We must learn the lessons of history and accelerate our understanding of the natural world by denouncing the use of mythology and irrationality to bridge the gaps in our knowledge. I think that those who would say, “Yes, I can see clearly that I would be a great fool to deny the evidence for evolution and the origin of our cosmos, but what came before that?” These people need only look to the greatest minds of our time and understand that had these brilliant men not become victims to the limits of their intellect, they would have continued to dazzle the world with their discoveries.

There is so much left to be discovered in our cosmos. For all we know, understanding the origins of this universe could only be the beginning. Even as we speak, physicists at the Large Hadron Collider are whizzing protons around at just under the speed of light in the hopes of unraveling the secrets of the first moments of the Big Bang. (They are also crafting hilarious music videos detailing this process.) Would we be doing experiments such as these had creationists gained access to our classrooms. I suspect not. Incredible intellectual progress is limited by the halting force of religion. When one admits with great humility that he or she does not know the answer, but is currently striving to find and identify the solution, this is seen as weakness and far too often god is used to fill the gap.