God of the Gaps fallacy

Arguments from ignorance [which is what a GOTG is] occurs when evidence against one proposition is offered as the sole grounds for accepting an alternative. Thus, they have the following form:

Premise: Cause A cannot produce or explain evidence C.

Conclusion: Therefore, cause B produced or explains C.

It's easy it is to identify this type of fallacy, and how unreasonable it would be to use such thinking to try to prove any conclusion. Atheists and other skeptics often claim that the argument for God’s existence based on intelligent design is guilty of this type of illogical thought. How can the theist who is using the design argument show that it is not a God-of-the-gaps argument from ignorance?  

To depict proponents of the theory of intelligent design as committing the GOTG fallacy, critics must misrepresent the case for it. This misrepresentation of the design argument looks like this:

Premise: Material causes cannot produce or explain specified information.

Conclusion: Therefore, an intelligent cause produced the specified information in life.”

If this were how the design argument actually worked, there would be serious problems with it, and the skeptic would be right to challenge it as false. However, that this misrepresentation of the design argument leaves out a very important premise. The design argument includes the positive evidence that it implies:

Premise One: Despite a thorough search, no materialistic causes have been discovered with the power to produce large amounts of specified information necessary to produce the first cell.

Premise Two: Intelligent causes have demonstrated the power to produce large amounts of specified information.

Premise Three: Intelligent design constitutes the best, most causally adequate explanation for the origin of the specified information in the cell.”

Notice that there is no gap in the properly stated form of the design argument. 

1) We have been doing scientific research for hundreds of years. 

2) We have discovered that intelligence is the only entity capable of producing large amounts of specified information. 

3) We see large amounts of specified information in cells. 

4) Therefore, we are forced by what we know about intelligence from centuries of scientific research to conclude that the specified information in cells is the product of an intelligent Creator. 

On the other hand, we also know enough about how matter behaves to conclude that it is impossible to get the specified information from materialistic causes. Origin-of-life experiments have been done for decades that have shown how matter does and does not behave. In every single experiment done to date, we have seen that natural processes not only do not produce life, but they cannot produce life. This is not a gap in our knowledge. The argument for design is based on what we know to be scientifically valid in every instance.

Why, then, are so many skeptics convinced that the design argument is a God-of-the-gaps logical fallacy?

The reason for this is a prior commitment to naturalism - the idea that only the physical exists. If a person begins by assuming that there has to be a naturalistic process that brought about life, then that person is forced to see a gap in our current knowledge, since no naturalistic processes have ever (in any experiment under any circumstances) even come close to producing a living cell. 

What chemical [or other natural] process first produced life? Since no such chemical process has been discovered, we are told this is simply a gap in our current knowledge that will be filled in the future. 

Nevertheless, our present lack of knowledge of any such chemical process entails a “gap” in our knowledge of the actual process by which life arose, only if some materialistic chemical evolutionary process actually did produce the first life. Yet if life did not evolve via a strictly materialistic process but was, for example, intelligently designed, then our absence of knowledge of a materialistic process does not represent “a gap” in knowledge of an actual process. Stephen C. Meyer (2021), Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries that Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe pp 424

An illustration that a “gap” only exists if a person begins by assuming that all scientific explanations must be materialistic:

Imagine someone mistakenly enters an art gallery expecting to find croissants for sale. That is, he thinks the gallery is actually a fancy bakery. Observing the absence of pastries and rolls, such a person may think that he has encountered a gap in the services provided by the gallery. He may even think that he has encountered a gap in the staff’s knowledge of what must definitely be present somewhere in the gallery. Based on his assumptions, the visitor may stubbornly cling to his perception of a gap, badgering the gallery staff to “bring out the croissants already,” until with exasperation they show him the exit. Ibid., p. 424.

The moral of the story? The gallery visitor’s perception of a gap in service or in knowledge of the location of the croissants derives from a false assumption about the nature of this establishment or about art galleries in general and what they typically offer to visitors.

There is only a gap if a person will not accept what we know scientifically to be true. We “do have extensive experience of intelligent agents producing finely tuned systems such as Swiss watches, fine recipes, integrated circuits, written texts, and computer programs.” Furthermore, “intelligence or mind or what philosophers call ‘agent causation’ now stands as the only known cause capable of generating large amounts of specified information.” And “it takes a mind to generate specified or functional information, whether in ordinary experience, computer simulations, origin-of-life simulation experiments, the production of new forms of life, or, as we now see, in modeling the design of the universe.” Ibid., pp 338, 187, 385

Conclusion

The design argument for the existence of God is not an argument from what we do not know, or we do not understand about the Universe and life in it, but instead is an argument based on the aspects of nature that we have reasons to conclude to be true. As John Lennox has stated, “I see God not in the bits of the Universe that I don’t understand, but in the bits that I do.” 

Why the Puddle Analogy Fails against Fine-Tuning

Many people are fascinated by the fine-tuning argument for God’s existence. The late Christopher Hitchens called the fine-tuning argument “the most intriguing.” Physicist Sean Carroll referred to it as “the best argument that the theists have when it comes to cosmology.”

But just like other arguments for God’s existence, there are rejoinders. One popular-level response is called “the puddle analogy.” The analogy was originally expressed in Douglas Adams’s The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time:

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, “This is an interesting world I find myself in—an interesting hole I find myself in—fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!” This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.

Some think the puddle analogy deals a fatal blow against the fine-tuning argument. If the pondering puddle shouldn’t be surprised about its existence, we shouldn’t either. But does the analogy work? Are advocates of the fine-tuning argument engaging in “puddle thinking?”

Arguments from analogy are a kind of inductive argument. Basically, they reason that because two things are similar, what is true of the first is also true of the second. For an argument from analogy to work, the analogy has to be a good analogy

Of course, no analogy is perfect—there will always be differences. But for an argument from analogy to work, the similarities have to be significant, and the differences have to be superficial. But if the opposite is true—if the differences are significant and the similarities are superficial—well, then, we have a problem. In other words, if the analogy fails, so does the argument.

Puddle Problems

In a recent article titled “The Trouble with Puddle Thinking,” astronomers Geraint Lewis and Luke Barnes explain why this analogy fails.

Consider more closely the puddle’s reasoning. Let’s name our puddle Doug. He has noticed a precise match between two things: 1) his shape and 2) the shape of the hole in which he lives. Doug is amazed! What Doug doesn’t know is that, given A) the fluidity of water, B) the solidity of the hole, and C) the constant downward force of gravity, he will always take the same shape as his hole. If the hole had been different, his shape would adjust to match it. Any hole will do for a puddle. [Emphasis added.]

This is precisely where the analogy fails: any universe will not do for life. Life is not a fluid. It will not adjust to any old universe. There could have been a completely dead universe: perhaps one that lasts for 1 second before recollapsing or is so sparse that no two particles ever interact in the entire history of the universe. [source]

In the puddle analogy, the puddle can exist in any hole. That’s how puddles work. The shape of the hole is irrelevant to the existence of the puddle. If you change the shape of the hole, the shape of the puddle changes, but you always get a puddle.

The problem is, life doesn’t work like that. Life cannot exist in any universe. The evidence from fine-tuning shows that a life-permitting universe is extremely rare. If you change certain conditions of the universe  just slightly, you cannot get life anywhere in the universe. For instance, slightly increase the mass of the electron or the up quark, and get a universe with nothing but neutrons. No stars. No planets. No chemistry. No life.

The significant difference:   We know that changing the dimensions of a hole does not affect the existence of the puddle. Any old hole will do. There is no fine-tuning for puddles. However, we also know that changing the conditions of the universe does affect the existence of life. There is fine-tuning for life.

So, the puddle analogy has a problem. And it’s a big one. It’s a false analogy. The analogy doesn’t work because getting a life-permitting universe is vastly different from getting a puddle-permitting hole.

If God has perfect foreknowledge how can humans have free will?

What is critical to free will is not being caused to do something by causes other than oneself. It is up to me how I choose, and nothing determines my choice. Philosophers sometimes call this agent causation. The agent himself is the cause of his actions. His decisions are differentiated from random events by being done by the agent himself for reasons the agent has in mind. And from determined events that are outside their control.

Thought experiment:

Let's say Grace builds a time machine and decides to travel to the future and see what her friend Anna has for breakfast tomorrow. After she comes back to the present day, she now has prior knowledge of a freely chosen future event. Therefore, there doesn't seem to be any inconsistency with God having perfect foreknowledge of the future and humans have free will.

Objections:

A) Let's say Anna changed her mind at the last second and decided on something else for breakfast.

The reply: Grace would have seen that, and Grace would know of that change. Remember, we are speaking about perfect foreknowledge of the future

B) The idea of a time machine is incompatible with logic and therefore not possible for even an omnipotent being to accomplish, so using it as an example doesn't really resolve the issue.

The reply:

A time machine may not be compatible with physics/metaphysics, but it’s compatible with logic. But it's not meant as the way it was done, but more as an illustration of how prior knowledge doesn't refute the idea of freewill.

The Inference to the Best Explanation

Offering an inference to the best explanation occurs when we conclude that the best available explanation of the current data is probably true because it’s the best addresses all or most of the data or observations. A little more formally:

S is a state of affairs; a collection of data, facts, observations, givens.
H hypothesis, would, if true, explain S.
No other hypothesis [A, B, C] can explain S as well as H does.
Therefore, it is probable that H is true.

Inferences to the best explanation are common in all fields of inquiry, including scientific, and everyday life. For a more thorough exploration:

Inference to the Best Explanation - Peter Lipton

Inference to the Best Explanation - An Overview

Pushbacks

We may be choosing the best of a bad lot, and that we have no way of knowing whether the truth is contained in our set to begin with.

Reply: Scientists don't claim to have completely certainty on any scientific fact, no fact from any field of inquiry does. We've gone from Newtonian physics to special and general relativity, and guess what? Einstein's work is likely to only be partially correct. Qualms with IBE on this account are off base. Abductive inferences [IBE] are used in every field of inquiry, including science, history, linguistics, and everyday life,

Explanations help us to understand why something happened, not simply convince us that something happened. However, there is a common kind of inductive argument that takes the best explanation of why x occurred as an argument for the claim that x occurred. For example, suppose that your car window is broken and your iPod (which you left visible in the front seat) is missing. 

The immediate inference you would probably make is that someone broke the window of your car and stole your iPod. What makes this a reasonable inference? What makes it a reasonable inference is that this explanation explains all the relevant facts (broken window, missing iPod) and does so better than any other competing explanation. In this case, it is perhaps possible that a stray baseball broke your window, but since (let us suppose) there is no baseball diamond close by, and people normally don’t play catch in the parking garage you are parked in, this seems unlikely. 

Moreover, the baseball scenario doesn’t explain why the iPod is gone. Of course, it could be that some inanimate object broke your window and then someone saw the iPod and took it. Or perhaps a dog jumped into the window that was broken by a stray baseball and took your iPod. These are all possibilities, but they are remote and thus much less likely explanations of the facts at hand. The much better explanation is that a thief both broke the window and took the iPod. 

This explanation explains all the relevant facts in a simple way (i.e., it was the thief responsible for both things) and this kind of thing is (unfortunately) not uncommon—it happens to other people at other times and places. The baseball-dog scenario is not as plausible because it doesn’t happen in contexts like this one (i.e., in a parking garage) nearly as often, and it is not as simple (i.e., we need to posit two different events that are unconnected to each other—stray baseball, stray dog—rather than just one—the thief). Inference to the best explanation is a form of inductive argument whose premises are a set of observed facts, a hypothesis that explains those observed facts, and a comparison of competing explanations, and whose conclusion is that the hypothesis is true. The example we’ve just been discussing is an inference to the best explanation. 

Explanation: The hypothesis that a thief broke the window and stole your iPod provides a reasonable explanation of the observed facts.

Comparison: No other hypothesis provides as reasonable an explanation.

Conclusion: Therefore, a thief broke your car window and stole your iPod.

Notice that this is an inductive argument because the premises could all be true and yet the conclusion false. Just because something is reasonable, doesn’t mean it is true. After all, sometimes things happen in the world that defy our reason. So perhaps the baseball-dog hypothesis was actually true. In that case, the premises of the argument would still be true (after all, the thief hypothesis is still more reasonable than the baseball-dog hypothesis) and yet the conclusion would be false. 

But the fact that the argument is not a deductive argument isn’t a defect of the argument, because inference to the best explanation arguments are not intended to be deductive arguments, but inductive arguments.  That isn’t a defect of an inductive argument, it is simply a definition of what an inductive argument is! As we’ve seen, in order to make a strong inference to the best explanation, the favored explanation must be the best - i.e. the most reasonable. 

But what makes an explanation reasonable? There are certain conditions that any good explanation must meet. The more of these conditions are met, the better the explanation. The first, and perhaps most obvious condition, is that the hypothesis proposed must actually explain all the observed facts. 

Commonly acknowledged criteria for inference to the best explanation

1. Explanatory scope. The best hypothesis will explain a wider range of data than will rival hypotheses.

2. Explanatory power. The best hypothesis will make the observable data more epistemically probable than rival hypotheses.

3. Plausibility. The best hypothesis will be implied by a greater variety of accepted truths, and its negation implied by fewer accepted truths than rival hypotheses.

4. Less ad hoc. The best hypothesis will involve fewer new suppositions not already implied by existing knowledge than rival hypotheses.

5. Accord with accepted beliefs. The best hypothesis, when conjoined with accepted truths, will imply fewer falsehoods than rival hypotheses.

6. Comparative superiority: The best hypothesis will so exceed its rivals in meeting conditions (1) through (5) that there is little chance of a rival hypothesis’s exceeding it in fulfilling those conditions.

It’s Turtles All the Way Down - the Infinite Regress Problem

Those who propose an infinite universe, what do you do about the problem of an infinite regress of causes?

In other words, a series of things that are each ontologically dependent on the next; in this case, the singularity, the singularity -1, the singularity -2, the singularity -3....

How do we reach the singularity if there is an infinite/endless series of causes?

For example, if a giraffe had an infinitely long neck, he would die of starvation - even if he had eaten for an infinite amount of time - since the food would always have another inch to travel before it reached the stomach. So this string of infinite causes would always have another casual step to take before the singularity happened.

To say that "that there is no first moment, because every moment is preceded by earlier moments" is to be logically and philosophically hanging in midair.

Christians would say that God is a metaphysically necessary [efficient] cause for the material universe, thus avoiding regress problems.

Infinite regress can be a problem because it can lead to answers that never terminate. When people ask for justification for something, they want an answer that is compelling. However, answers that result in an infinite regress aren't rationally compelling

It’s more logical to believe in an uncreated Creator/cause than a created one. Why? Because If God had a creator [or a cause had a cause] who brought Him into existence, then we could ask “who created that God?” 

Ockam’s Razor - the philosophical principle used in science that suggests you shouldn’t multiply causes to explain something beyond what’s necessary - would suggest that we not have a regression of creators at all. The one who brought our universe into being is the uncreated one.

This isn’t special pleading for God. This is what the atheist has typically said about the universe; that the universe is uncreated and eternal in its existence. No atheist was asking “Who created the universe”? They thought the universe was “Just there,” that it was a brute fact. Although that conclusion is now invalidated by powerful scientific evidence and philosophical arguments.