God of the gaps

Natural History, Feb, 2006 by Jack V. Zamboni

Neil deGrasse Tyson points out the scientific pitfalls of invoking the "God of the gaps" to explain currently unknown features of the natural world. Christian thinkers have also noted the problems of that strategy from a theological perspective.

Sitting in a Nazi prison cell in 1944, the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know; God wants us to realize his presence, not in unsolved problems but in those that are solved.

To invoke the "God of the gaps" is bad science and worse theology. It is one reason many American Christians share scientists' concerns about the attempts by some fundamentalists to promote intelligent design in our schools and in our country.

The Reverend Jack V Zamboni, Rector

Grace--St. Paul's Episcopal Church

Mercerville, New Jersey