The Atheism of the Gaps

Greg Perkins, writing at Noodlefood in 2008 (“Why the New Atheists Can’t Even Beat D’Souza: The Gap in Religious Thought“), criticizes Dinesh D’souza’s article, “Taking Aim at God, and Missing,” wherein D’souza essays a defense of the “God hypothesis.” There is much to criticize about D’souza’s argument, but Perkins — an Objectivist and therefore, I assume, an atheist — should have looked in a mirror before writing this:

…Dinesh D’souza continues his counters to “New Atheists” such as Christopher Hitchens. This time we find him saying that “Thanks to the astounding discoveries of modern science, I think the God hypothesis has a lot more going for it today than it did in the eighteenth century.”…

[H]istory is littered with examples of something “supernatural” being arbitrarily asserted as the explanation, only to be retracted later as our knowledge expanded….

In other words, science will explain all and nothing will be left to God. That is the import of Perkin’s post, at any rate. He does precisely what he accuses D’souza of doing; that is, “not knowing the answer to a puzzle” (the basis of existence) entitles Perkins “to go and make one up.” The gaps in scientific knowledge do not prove the existence of God, but they surely are not proof against God. To assert that there is no God because X, Y, and Z are known about the universe says nothing about the creation of the universe or the source of the “laws” that seem to govern much of its behavior.

If theists of D’souza’s stripe are guilty of assuming the answer they seek, atheists of Perkins’s stripe are equally guilty of the same thing. Both want to generalize from evidence whose limitations cannot be guessed at. “Unknown unknowns” dominate the mystery of existence.

This is my position:

If the world as we know it — our universe — is not the product of chance, what is it? A reasonable answer is found in another post of mine, “Existence and Creation.” Here is the succinct version:

  1. In the material universe, cause precedes effect.
  2. Accordingly, the material universe cannot be self-made. It must have a “starting point,” but the “starting point” cannot be in or of the material universe.
  3. The existence of the universe therefore implies a separate, uncaused cause.

There is no reasonable basis — and certainly no empirical one — on which to prefer atheism to deism or theism. Strident atheists merely practice a “religion” of their own. They have neither logic nor science nor evidence on their side — and eons of belief against them.

Related posts:
Atheism, Religion, and Science
The Limits of Science
Three Perspectives on Life: A Parable
Beware of Irrational Atheism
The Creation Model
The Thing about Science
Evolution and Religion
Words of Caution for Scientific Dogmatists
Science, Evolution, Religion, and Liberty
The Legality of Teaching Intelligent Design
Science, Logic, and God
Capitalism, Liberty, and Christianity
Is “Nothing” Possible?
Debunking “Scientific Objectivity”
Science’s Anti-Scientific Bent
Science, Axioms, and Economics
The Big Bang and Atheism
The Universe . . . Four Possibilities
Einstein, Science, and God
Atheism, Religion, and Science Redux
Pascal’s Wager, Morality, and the State
Evolution as God?
The Greatest Mystery
What Is Truth?
The Improbability of Us
A Digression about Probability and Existence
More about Probability and Existence
Existence and Creation
Probability, Existence, and Creation