"Science has made many advances over the years. There was a time we didn’t understand medicine and germs, for example, and many people explained these entirely supernaturally. As science advances, the need to use God to explain events decreases. Thus, although we do not know everything yet (like the origin of life), this is simply a gap that will close as science progresses. 1"
Response
- Origins vs. Description
Explaining how something works is not the same as explaining how it came to be. 2 For instance, we can explain with great detail how the human immune system works, but this does nothing to explain how the human immune system came to be in the first place.
– - Opening gaps
With the increase of science, we have more reason to believe in God, not less. For instance, we now know more of the complexity of DNA, the human immune system, and many other amazing biological designs.
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Debate
Evolutionist: Creationists teach that it is a virtue to not understand something. Thus, it is anti-scientific.
Response: Christians love science because it helps us understand more about God. Many leading early scientists were Christians. 3
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Sources
Coyne, J. A. (2009). Why Evolution Is True. New York: Viking.
McGrath, A. E., & McGrath, J. C. (2007). The Dawkins Delusion: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.
Notes
- Coyne, 2009, p. 137: “IDers argue that such traits, involving many parts that must cooperate for that trait to function at all, defy Darwinian explanation. Therefore, by default, they must have been designed by a supernatural agent. This is commonly called the “God of the gaps” argument, and it is an argument from ignorance. What it really says is that if we don’t understand everything about how natural selection built a trait, that lack of understanding itself is evidence for supernatural creation.” ↩
- McGrath, 2007, p. 38: “[Max Bennet and Peter Hacker suggest that] Scientific theories cannot be said to ‘explain the world’–they only explain the phenomena that are observed within the world. Furthermore, they argue, scientific theories do not and are not intended to describe and explain ‘everything about the world’–such as its purpose. Law, economics and sociology can be cited as examples of disciplines which engage with domain-specific phenomena without in any way having to regard themselves as somehow being inferior to or dependent on the natural sciences.” ↩
- McGrath, 2007, p. 29: “… Dawkins then weakens his argument by suggesting that all religious people try to stop scientists from exploring those gaps: “one of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.” While that may be true of some more exotic forms of Christian theology, it is most emphatically not characteristic of its approaches. It’s a crass generalization that ruins a perfectly interesting discussion.” ↩