People think that epilepsy is divine simply because they don't have any idea what causes epilepsy. But I believe that someday we will understand what causes epilepsy, and at that moment, we will cease to believe that it's divine. And so it is with everything in the universe
HippocratesTags: knowledge ignorance understanding superstition fallacy epilepsy god-of-the-gaps
No one infers a god from the simple, from the known, from what is understood, but from the complex, from the unknown, and incomprehensible. Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.
Robert G. IngersollTags: science ignorance unknown incomprehensible complex god-of-the-gaps
Scientists rightly resist invoking the supernatural in scientific explanations for fear of committing a god-of-the-gaps fallacy (the fallacy of using God as a stop-gap for ignorance). Yet without some restriction on the use of chance, scientists are in danger of committing a logically equivalent fallacy-one we may call the “chance-of-the-gaps fallacy.” Chance, like God, can become a stop-gap for ignorance.
William A. DembskiTags: science biology ignorance chance evolution darwinism supernatural coincidence serendipity god-of-the-gaps
After all, is our idea of God anything more than personified incomprehensibility?
{Said in a letter to Voltaire}
Tags: fallacy voltaire personification god-of-the-gaps incomprehensibility voltaire-letter
If a faithful account was rendered of man's ideas upon the Divinity, he would be obliged to acknowledge, that for the most part the word Gods has been used to express the concealed, remote, unknown causes of the effects he witnessed; that he applies this term when the spring of natural, the source of known causes ceases to be visible: as soon as he loses the thread of these causes, or as soon as his mind can no longer follow the chain, he solves the difficulty, terminates his research, by ascribing it to his gods; thus giving a vague definition to an unknown cause, at which either his idleness, or his limited knowledge, obliges him to stop. When, therefore, he ascribes to his gods the production of some phenomenon, the novelty or the extent of which strikes him with wonder, but of which his ignorance precludes him from unravelling the true cause, or which he believes the natural powers with which he is acquainted are inadequate to bring forth; does he, in fact, do any thing more than substitute for the darkness of his own mind, a sound to which he has been accustomed to listen with reverential awe?
Paul-Henri ThiryTags: truth knowledge questioning philosophy religion atheism ignorance materialism gods divinity god-of-the-gaps
I've spent a life-time attacking religious beliefs and have not wavered from a view of the universe that many would regard as bleak. Namely, that it is a meaningless place devoid of deity.
However I'm unwilling simply to repeat the old arguments of the past when, in fact, God is a moving target and is taking all sorts of new shapes and forms. The arguments used against the long bow are not particularly useful when debating nuclear weapons, and the simple arguments against the old model gods are not sufficient when dealing with the likes of Davies et al.
For example, the notion that God didn't exist, doesn't exist but may come into existence through the spread of consciousness throughout the universe is too clever to be pooh-poohed along Bertrand Russell lines. And if I had the time I could give you half a dozen other scientific theologies that will need snappier footwork from the atheist of the future.
Tags: truth atheism argument bertrand-russell fallacy russell god-of-the-gaps moving-the-goalposts
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exist as an independent cause of natural events.
To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with the natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot. But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal.
For a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress.
- Science and Religion (1941)
Tags: science progress knowledge natural belief nature myth naturalism superstition fallacy god-of-the-gaps
The God excuse, the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument.
George CarlinTags: argument fallacy excuse pathetic god-of-the-gaps
[When asked by a student if he believes in any gods]
Oh, no. Absolutely not... The biggest advantage to believing in God is you don't have to understand anything, no physics, no biology. I wanted to understand.
Tags: science biology atheism ignorance understanding atheist physics watson nobel-laureate dna god-of-the-gaps double-helix watson-and-crick
If the ignorance of nature gave birth to such a variety of gods, the knowledge of this nature is calculated to destroy them.
Paul-Henri ThiryTags: knowledge nature atheism ignorance atheist destruction gods god-of-the-gaps
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