Very few arguments for the existence of gods have been as enduring as the God of the Gaps Fallacy. It was very likely the first argument which emerged, and currently it is the only one which has remained. Forget the cosmological argument, the complexity argument, the "prime mover" argument, the wager; the one remaining argument for God is hinged on the power of sheer ignorance alone. It manifests in two general varieties - "I don't know the answer to this question, therefore God" (personal incredulity), or "There is currently no scientific answer to this question, therefore God" (gap in knowledge, hence God of the Gaps). And no one is better at finding the right God-sized gaps than one of Jamaica's more vocal theologians Rev. Clinton Chisholm, who wrote the column "Scientific Problems for Atheists" in the Gleaner of Monday August 31st.Before I address the main point of Rev. Chisholm's column, it's important to speak generally about, what appears to be, the last remaining gap for the kingdom of heaven - the origin of life. Not too long ago, this gap was a little bigger since it extended to the origin of mankind, but it has since shrunk given the overbearing evidence that modern humans evolved from earlier hominid species, just like all modern life forms evolved from earlier ancestral progenitors. No scientist of any repute today doubts that evolution is a fact - the fossil record and the genetic information proves that ALL life on our planet evolved from a single biological source. So, that gap in knowledge has been plugged for quite some time now; what remains a mystery is how exactly this life form emerged. And this new gap is where God has crammed his entire kingdom - it is an extremely tight fit, and given the recent advances in the field of abiogenesis, the lease is running out on that gap too. God and company will soon be homeless.
Turning now to Rev. Chisholm's column, what we find is nothing new. Chisholm resurrects the usual tired tactics of creationists - referencing once prominent scientists who slipped into senility and then ended up on the payroll of some fundamentalist Christian "science" board (e.g. Dean H. Kenyon); citing from work which has been been heavily discredited for decades (e.g. "Evolution from Space"); and worst of all putting words into the mouths of authors (e.g. Chisholm wastes no time in suggesting that the authors are "hinting" at the supernatural, even though they said no such thing). This, of course, is expected. Men steeped in theology have a tenuous grasp on scientific concepts at best. Chisholm himself doesn't actually know what Darwin's theory of evolution is, as evidenced by his Facebook post:
Darwin neither claimed, nor believed anything of the sort. Darwin set out to explain how it is we have so many different species of animals on the planet, NOT how the first life form originated. Darwin noticed that animal and plant breeders could modify a variety of traits in different species of livestock and plant life by a process called "artificial selection." He then wondered, and demonstrated, that an unaided parallel process is at work in nature doing the same thing - "natural selection." The discovery and study of DNA was the last piece of the puzzle to vindicate Darwin. The mystery of the origin of that first life form is certainly an attractive gap to stuff the supernatural, but given the fact of evolution, we have already erased the possibility of a literal creation story a la the book of Genesis. If evolution is a fact, and it is, then Genesis must be a fairy-tale. How do conservative Christians like Chisholm deal with this problem? Do they scramble to revise their theology and produce ideas like "theistic evolution" or do they buckle down on old time creationism and weather the onslaught of being called "dunce?" (Just take a peek at the comments under Chisholm's article to see what I mean).
All in all, there is one thing we cannot forget whenever God apologists like Chisholm step up to dazzle us with theological gymnastics. To date, not ONE single supernatural occurrence has ever been verified. The tally for religions demonstrating supernatural occurrences sits comfortably at an embarrassing 0 (zero) and has been that way since the beginning of religion. Science, on the other hand, has overturned religious claims time and time again, ad nauseum. Why should we think anything is going to be different now? Every claim to the supernatural has either been convincingly proven false, or else cannot be proven at all (yes, how could one "prove" imaginary creatures like angels have wings?) With a track record like that, why even bother giving serious attention when they cry for wolf (or God) yet again?
- Cool Dude.
