God of the gaps

• What is the god of the gaps argument?

  Where science cannot explain something, God is used to explain it instead
• when science knows all there is to know…?

  there will be no place for god
• what is an example of god of the gaps?

  lightening was thought to be god showing displeasure with humanity
• what parable illustrates the idea of the god of the gaps argument?

  Flew’s parable of the gardener
• how does Flew’s parable of the gardener illustrate the idea of the god of the gaps argument?

  it shows that God is completely unscientific - no evidence could reveal him, the believer refuses to accept that God doesn’t act in the world - there will soon be no gap left for such a role
• what 3 theologians respond to the ‘god of the gaps’ argument?

  Tillich, Polkinghorne and Wiles
• what does Tillich argue?

  That God is not a being, but a ‘being-itself’ or the ‘ground of all being’
• if God is a being among others - indeed there is less and less room for him BUT…?

  He is both immanent and transcendent, he is the means by which the whole world exists
• any god found in a gap…?

  cannot be the god of classical theism
• what does Polkinghorne say?

  God doesn’t intervene in the world ‘crudely’ but instead influences it at the quantum level, because such activity there would be undetectable for humans
• since everything in the large-scale universe is effected by what happens at the quantum level…?

  God is active in the world, so there’s no ‘gap’ to fill
• what does Wiles believe?

  God performed one miracle… creating the world - but it is ongoing and includes everything
• what else does wiles believe?

  God is active, all of the time, everywhere, within AND beyond the universe
• is is any God whose activity is revealed only within the gaps left between scientific explanations…?

  an adequate God for Christian theism?