Atheism, Evidence and the God-of-the-Gaps

[Whateverist]

Seriously.  I don't know how is not proof of any particular how.  That's all there is to the god of the gaps fallacy. 

Yeah it isn't really the case that atheists have no answer to the 'really big questions' while theists do. Theists just assert that they have answers which surpass what science can vouchsafe. Like theists, atheists don't have answers to such questions either. The difference is we're not claiming any secret friend who whispers the answers in our ears, or into the ear of a bible scribe 2000 years ago.

[Faith No More]

What a weird argument. Arguing that atheism is unfalsifiable is arguing that you can't prove your God exists, and since you can't do that, boom, I'm an atheist.

[comet]

line up what ya got.
decide on a story that seems to fit best. There can be more than one.
change story as more info is gained.

many people have trouble with those simple steps. And the worst of us think that what they know is all one needs to know.

[robvalue]

Weak atheism makes no claims of either belief or knowledge. It is a state of mind; all you could reasonably say is that someone is lying a about their own lack of beliefs, or can't correctly describe their lack of beliefs. Otherwise, there is nothing to falsify.

Slinging mud at atheism makes theism no more rational.

You could change an atheists mind of course. That is a different matter. Fallacious arguments and repeatedly pointing to a book are probably not going to cut it, though.

[TheRealJoeFish]

If God did this, then surely we would know he existed, right? Well, why wouldn’t this kind of evidence also be subject to the “God-of-the-gaps” objection? Just because we don’t know how a giant man can appear in the sky doesn’t mean there is no natural explanation for him. Maybe aliens or time-travelers are at work, deceiving us?

Even “low-key” evidence is vulnerable to the “God-of-the-gaps” objection. Some atheists say that if Christian preachers could heal amputated limbs, that would convince them God existed. But once again, aren’t we just taking a gap in our knowledge (“I don’t know how these limbs are being healed”) and filling it with, “Therefore, God did it?”

This argument contains a sneaky fallacy, or, perhaps, mis-definition.

First, let's talk about proof.  "100% proof" isn't going to be attainable for any statement other than the Cartesian "I exist."  I could be a brain in a jar.  But, hell, to become a theist, I (speaking for myself here) would not need 100% proof of god - that is, to be shown that it is certain there is a god.  I would not need to be shown that god is more likely to exist than not.  I would need to be shown that there is a not-infinitesimally small chance that there is a god.  Let's say, 1%.

Next, let's take this premise:  For any "event" X, either:

1. X is explainable with our current scientific knowledge (that is, explainable by purely natural processes that we are aware of).
2. X is not currently explainable with our current scientific knowledge, but is actually a natural, repeatable thing that obeys the laws of the universe (that is, X comports with a scientific, materialistic worldview, but we aren't currently aware of it).
3. X is not currently explainable with our current scientific knowledge, and that's because it's actually a miracle (that is, no consistent, complete scientific framework could account for X).

Events in category 1 aren't evidence for god.
Events that aren't in category 1 are either in category 2 or 3, but by definition we don't know which until scientific knowledge catches up.

The God-of-the-Gaps argument is not that "every possible event that can occur will be a category 1 or category 2 event."  The God-of-the-Gaps argument is that "non-category 1 events are not sufficient (or even remotely effective) evidence for god unless it can be shown that it is more likely (or, even, there is a 1% possibility) that it is a category 3 event rather than a category 2 event."  That is to say: when something occurs that we can't explain right now, one can't reasonably point to it as evidence of god unless it seems to fall so far out of step with what we already know that it is logically more likely to be supernatural than natural.

And here's the thing: if one wants to prove god, the scientific method should be one's best friend.  If something occurs that we can't currently explain, you should be trying to get a bajillion scientists together to figure out how it works.  If they can, well, our knowledge was just incomplete, and it was never evidence to begin with.  If they can't explain it after repeated tests and theories and decades of study, then it starts to become more and more likely that the event is a category 3 event - a true miracle.

I can't speak for everyone here, but seeing an amputee - who I know to have really lost their arm, and such - walk up to the alter, grasp the host, utter a short prayer, and regrow their arm in front of my eyes would be enough to knock me down to true agnostic.  Then we'd have to find another true believer, take them to that church, and see if they could do something similar (to rule out the possibility of the first person "cheating" with some kind of regeneration serum).  Then a third would have to do it in a different church (to make sure it wasn't some regenerative property of that church - although, if it was, testing could determine if it was something we could explain or not).  And if scientists couldn't come up with a framework for how it happened, couldn't duplicate it... then the odds that the event was a Category 3 event would be sufficient to constitute proof of god.

So, to sum up (TL;DR):  God-of-the-Gaps is NOT an assumption of an inability to prove god.  It is an observation that those who wish to "prove" the existence of god have artificially depressed standards of evidence, and are likely to assume currently unexplainable events are supernatural when there's no good reason for it.

***Disclaimer: wrote this at 2 AM. Was tired.***

[Aoi Magi]

Atheism will remain unfalsifiable as long as the theist claims remain unfalsifiable.

[robvalue]

Urg. Never mind. Gotta stop getting sucked in.

[Thumpalumpacus]

So, where's this God fella been the last couple of millenia? Totally missed him. Of course, I went out for a waffle breakfast last Tuesday, he might have shown up then?

Seriously, "NO U" is shitty argumentation, befitting only someone of kindergarten intellect.

[looks at OP]

Oh, that explains it.

[Longhorn]

Rather than argue from what we don’t know (or “God-of-the-gaps”), good arguments for theism take what we do know and show how it logically leads to the transcendent creator of the universe.

EVEN IF through your apologetic bullshit you somehow manage to get to 'a creator' there is still a Grand fucking Canyon sized leap you need to take to magic your pet deity into existence, wooist rituals et all.

I won't hold my breath.

[robvalue]

I think the idea that god's greatest concern is whether or not some life forms on a planet in the middle of nowhere are continually sucking up to him and following a bunch of rules in a book is rather insulting to him. How petty and pathetic is he in that case?

Give the big man some credit. The more powerful people make God out to be, the more ridiculous this idea becomes.