![\"Victoria](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2019\/02\/Welcome_to_Victoria_BC_4868076173.jpg\")
<\/a>(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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I published the following column in the Deseret News<\/em> back on 16 March 2017:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In pre-modern times, some explained lunar eclipses by a supernatural dragon devouring the moon. Before the identification of germs and viruses, diseases were often attributed to demonic powers. And how did the planets move continually in their regular orbits? Angels, it was thought, were pushing the planetary spheres. And thunderbolts were hurled to earth by the god Zeus.<\/span><\/p>\n Unfortunately, when natural causes were identified for such phenomena and direct supernatural agents were no longer required, this weakened some arguments for the existence of God. Critics of religious faith denounced appeals to a \u201cGod of the gaps\u201d \u2014 a term that refers to arguments for God (or, more generally, to theological ideas) that overeagerly seek to use God as an explanation for anything that current science can\u2019t explain, employing God to fill gaps in scientific knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n Perhaps, though, criticisms of the \u201cGod of the gaps\u201d can themselves be pushed too far. Sometimes they seem almost to result in an \u201catheism of the gaps,\u201d equal (though opposite) to the theistic error. Modern science proceeds on naturalistic assumptions, and it\u2019s entirely proper that it do so. It\u2019s achieved great things, and it\u2019s a great global enterprise that transcends national, cultural, ethnic and religious boundaries.<\/span><\/p>\n Sometimes, though, it\u2019s altogether correct to acknowledge consciousness and purpose. Intelligent agents shouldn\u2019t always be ruled inadmissible. Homicide investigators, for instance, need to distinguish a murder from natural or accidental deaths. Arson investigators who ruled intelligent agency out before even considering the evidence would be essentially useless. Dogmatic resistance to a \u201chuman of the gaps\u201d argument would leave many a case unsolved. Often, it would thwart justice.<\/span><\/p>\n The \u201cGod of the gaps\u201d argument has sometimes been crudely caricatured as \u201cI can\u2019t explain this, therefore God.\u201d And, plainly, such an argument will seldom be sound. But at least in its basic logical form, it\u2019s not fundamentally different from another argument: \u201cI can\u2019t explain this otherwise, therefore deliberate human agent.\u201d And that argument is often quite solid.<\/span><\/p>\n Imagine yourself cruising into the harbor at Victoria, British Columbia. On the lawn in front of the provincial parliament, flowers spell out \u201cWelcome to Victoria\u201d in large letters. Was their arrangement designed? Or did it result from astounding botanical coincidence?<\/span><\/p>\n Compare Mount Rushmore to the other mountains around it among South Dakota\u2019s Black Hills. Of course, rocks have to have some shape or other. So are those faces on Mount Rushmore merely the result of wind and water erosion, coupled with random chance and billions of years?<\/span><\/p>\n If a plausible human author or set of authors can\u2019t be found for the Book of Mormon, it seems reasonable at least to consider Joseph Smith\u2019s explanation. Are there intricate chiasms in the Book of Mormon? Not a big deal, a critic once told me; it had to be organized somehow! Which is plainly true. But repeated, complex chiasms seem \u2014 as a\u00a02004 BYU Studies article<\/a>\u00a0\u201cDoes Chiasmus Appear in the Book of Mormon by Chance?<\/a>argued \u2014 extraordinarily improbable unless they were deliberately created.<\/span><\/p>\n The perception of deliberate order in nature is both very ancient and natural. In fact, as the vocally atheistic evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has defined it, \u201cBiology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.\u201d Dawkins, of course, contends that the appearance of design is illusory.<\/span><\/p>\n However, \u201cUndeniable<\/a>: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition that Life is Designed\u201d (published by HarperOne), a recent book by\u00a0Douglas Axe<\/a>, contends that random neo-Darwinian mutations cannot account for observed biological reality. Axe\u2019s scientific credentials \u2014 undergraduate training at Berkeley, doctorate from Caltech, postdoctoral research at three laboratories in Cambridge, England \u2014appear to be solid. (The Jewish writer David Klinghoffer provides a sympathetic summary of Axe\u2019s argument under the title of \u201c\u2018Undeniable\u2019: Darwinian Explanations Not Just Unlikely, But \u2018Physically Impossible\u2019\u201d at\u00a0cnsnews.com<\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n The point, as I see it, is as follows: Proposed instances of intelligent design need to be examined on an individual basis, not dogmatically dismissed in advance. (Or, if that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing, we should be open and upfront about it.) Perhaps they\u2019ll withstand scrutiny. Perhaps they won\u2019t. But a dogmatic assertion that, someday, we\u2019ll be able to explain every single mystery as the result of purposeless natural forces isn\u2019t obviously superior to its mirror image, the \u201cGod of the gaps\u201d argument. An atheistic \u201cscientism of the gaps\u201d is a mere promissory note, not actual evidence. And, while science\u2019s credit rating is very high, it\u2019s not infinite. There\u2019s no guarantee that naturalistic science will ultimately explain absolutely everything.<\/span><\/p>\n Posted from St. George, Utah<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 I published the following column in the Deseret News back on 16 March 2017: \u00a0 In pre-modern times, some explained lunar eclipses by a supernatural dragon devouring the moon. Before the identification of germs and viruses, diseases were often attributed to demonic powers. And how did the planets move continually in their regular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n