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“God of the gaps" is a term used to describe observations of theological perspectives in which gaps in scientific knowledge are taken to be evidence or proof of God's existence. The term was invented by Christian theologians not to discredit theism but rather to point out the fallacy of relying on teleological arguments for God's existence.[1] Some use the phrase to refer to a form of the argument from ignorancefallacy.” (Wikipedia)

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So Paley’s argument essentially just says: “Some things are the kinds of things that seem to be so simple that we can describe them without talking without talking about how they are designed, and some things are the kind of things that have to be discussed in terms of their design in order for us to understand how they work.”

But this does not mean that eyes and galaxies are in fact designed. It only means that the kind of dialogue in the English language was set up in such a way in the early 1800s that we talked about them using those kinds of words.

So, Paley’s argument is far from convincing. At the same time, it doesn’t shut the book on the possibility of intelligent design
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First and foremost, philosophical arguments have suffered from the lack of recognition of one simple fact: God is just a word- a symbol. The symbol “God” or “Designer” signifies different things to different people. Trying to prove or disprove the existence of God as such is therefore a fruitless exercise unless the meaning of the word “God” or “Designer” is given a strict definition.

If we define “God” as “That which determines what is True”, we can begin to examine the two principal lines of evidence in favor intelligent design.

• According to the Big Bang theory, the leading scientific account of universal origins, the beginning of the universe is said to have begun when the space-time of the Universe, which existed in the form of a singularity, began to spontaneously expand at a rate much faster than the speed of light. The acceleration and mass of the expansion were precisely those that allowed for cosmological constants which would facilitate a stable universe in which increasingly complex levels of order could exist. If the mass or acceleration had differed by even the slightest amount- trillionths of a second- the universe would exist in complete chaos. To date there is no satisfactory explanation for A) why the singularity expanded at all or B) why the cosmological constants are what they are (typically the answers to this question are, “because if they were any different, then we wouldn’t be around to experience them!”- Which is obviously circular reasoning- or “We are the one stable universe in a set of infinite mostly chaotic multiverses” ).

• Natural selection does not appear to adequately explain the physiology of the human brain. The human brain rapidly expanded regions completely that appear to be devoted to abstract reasoning, like Brodmann area  10 (which appear s to be correlated primarily with abstract reasoning) and Brodmann areas 44 and 45 (which appear to be correlated primarily with language use). While these brain regions are very useful in modern society, the selective advantage of relative encephalization among them in prehistoric eras remains unclear, particularly because the use of symbols did not develop until the last 7000 years or so, and the rate at which they and other brain regions developed is uncharacteristic of natural selection. Simply put, evolution appears to be speeding up in highly complex systems like humans.

Now, the astute atheist may say that we are simply doing the same thing Paley did, playing “God of the Gaps”: He may say that the fact that we don’t understand some facts about the big bang, or about physical anthropology YET is not a reason to invoke “God” as an explanation.
And perhaps he is right.

Perhaps one day, scientists will create a complete and consistent mathematical model of the universe. HOWEVER, there is one problem: it’s already been proven that it is impossible to do so. In 1910, Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead began publishing a book called Principia Mathematica: “PM, as it is often abbreviated, was an attempt to describe a set of axioms and inference rules in symbolic logic from which all mathematical truths could in principle be proven.”

In other words, they were trying to show that any and all mathematical truths which are possible to prove can in fact be proved. To their dismay, in 1931 Kurt Godel set forth the incompleteness theorems, which state that: “Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete.”

Simply put, no system of math can prove all truths without contradicting itself. Conversely, if a system of math is established with no contradictions, then there are Truths which it cannot prove.
The linguistic corollary to the Godel’s theory, the undefinability theorem was set forth in 1936 by Alfred Tarski: “The undefinability theorem shows that this encoding cannot be done for semantical concepts such as truth. It shows that no sufficiently rich interpreted language can represent its own semantics.”

In science, not only is the universe modeled mathematically, but observations are designated using semantic concepts (words): “electron”, “mass”, “calcium”, “energy”, etc. The definition for each of these words is given in the same semantic set (language) in which the word exists: English. But Tarski shows that after you have defined every single word, there is one word you cannot define in English itself: “Truth”. In order to define “Truth”, you have to start giving examples of things you consider to be true. But this is circular. The point is that no complete proof can ever be constructed with an assumption that everyone agrees about what the Truth is.

And now we return to our working definition for “God”:  “That which determines what is True.” Some may object, “WE determine what is true!” But most scholars would disagree: we attempt to dis-cover what is True.

This, of course, proves no-thing.  But perhaps that is the point. Perhaps we can determine only determine truths when we slice up our experience into bits and pieces and start naming it, “this thing” and “that thing”, and asking ourselves questions about them, and how they relate to each other. Perhaps what ought to be- but isn’t- the obvious resolution to the descriptive incompatibility between special relativity and quantum mechanics, to the incompleteness theorem, to the undefinability theorem, is that there are no things. Perhaps the only way to get a conceptual sense of the Truth is to analogize, as with Plato’s Ouroboros, Hinduism’s Brahman, and Lao Tzu’s Tao:

The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of myriad things
Thus, constantly without desire, one observes its essence
Constantly with desire, one observes its manifestations
These two emerge together but differ in name
The unity is said to be the mystery
Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders
Tao Te Ching, Chapter 1

Bill_Oreilly said:

here we go again.

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Bill_Oreilly said:

here we go again.

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...YET is not a reason to invoke “God” as an explanation.
And perhaps he is right.

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Perhaps one day, scientists will create a complete and consistent mathematical model of the universe.

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The unity is said to be the mystery
Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders

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zZZz said:

did ur homie need it for a science project or sumthing?

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