God of the gaps
Theological argument
God of the gaps is a term used to describe observations of theological perspectives in which gaps in scientific knowledge are taken to be evidence or proof of God's existence.
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Quotes
edit- How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (1967), p. 311
- And so the fighting retreat continues. Each time science advances, a new bastion forms…a new line, defining some remnant territory to be kept forever holy, mystical, and vague. Safe from profane hands. Until the next scientific advance, that is.
- David Brin, Kiln People (2002), Chapter 24 (ISBN 0-765-34261-8, p. 252)
- Yet where were answers to the truly deep questions?
Religion promised those, though always in vague terms, while retreating from one line in the sand to the next. Don't look past this boundary, they told Galileo, then Hutton, Darwin, Von Neumann, and Crick, always retreating with great dignity before the latest scientific advance, then drawing the next holy perimeter at the shadowy rim of knowledge.- David Brin, Kiln People (2002), Chapter 57 (ISBN 0-765-34261-8, p. 482)
- The God of the Bible is not a God of the gaps.
