The sure sign that summer is here can be seen out many windows right now: fireflies, or “lightning bugs” as we used to call them. Their luminescence is one of the mysteries of biology, not to mention evolution more specifically. And thus the firefly nicely illustrates the problems created by the “God of the gaps” approach – i.e. appealing to God as the explanation for all the things we cannot currently explain.
Not only do gaps in our knowledge and understanding get filled, but they also get separated from one another. Now that we can conduct genetic analysis, there is no longer any doubt about the evolutionary relationships between different insects, and given enough time, presumably scientists with the necessary technology could make incremental changes that could have come about naturally and reconstruct each step along the evolutionary pathway. So now, rather than the firefly being but part of a larger inexplicable mystery, the firefly’s glow is an island of mystery in a well-researched and often well-understood field.
This leaves the person with the God of the gaps approach forced to believe that God created life, then let insects evolve, and then appeared on the scene again because he thought glowing bugs would be prettier than the non-glowing ones that evolved naturally.
Make no mistake. If you want to believe in a God who is responsible for everything, then you need to find a way of believing in God that can co-exist with natural explanations for biological developments, for weather, and for various other elements of our experience. Otherwise, you are in essence left worshipping Beelzebub, the “Lord of the Flies”. Does anyone know what the Hebrew name for “Lord of the Fireflies” would be?
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