"God of the Gaps"

If you've ever been involved in, or witnessed a debate between a theist and an atheist on the issue of God's existence, you may have encountered the 'God of the Gaps' argument. The argument usually takes the form of this:

1. Ancient peoples often attributed explanations of physical phenomena to direct interactions by God or gods. i.e. Rainbows occur because the god of rainbows shoot them out of his belly
2. As scientific knowledge increases explanations for the mechanisms behind these physical phenomena are discovered. i.e. rainbows occur due to refraction of the light spectrum when passing through water molecules (or something like that)
Therefore
3. God's explanatory role is diminished, and his existence becomes progressively less likely. God retreats into gaps of understanding, once the gaps are filled, he is forced to retreat further and further.

Sam Harris is a popular atheist who often make this argument (his professional atheist contemporaries don't make it nearly as often as he does). Stressing the strengths of modernity, and the idea that religion is a 'failed science'.

The key problem with this argument is right in the title. "God of the gaps". Clearly, if we look at the argument in the form presented God himself does not have a diminished role, God himself is not forced to retreat, God himself is completely unaffected by the increase in information. If God exists, then he exists in exactly the same form that he did prior to the increase in information. If God does not exist, then he didn't exist prior to the increase in information and still doesn't.

The only thing that is affected by the increased information is people's perception of God (or gods) and how He interacts with his creation. Clearly these advances in knowledge and understanding have the capacity to falsify a particular belief about the specific manner in which God behaves. Clearly God doesn't shoot Rainbows out of his belly. Clearly God doesn't physically grasp the 'edge' of the Earth and shake it to cause an Earthquake. So any person who believed these things, was wrong, and their false conception of God's nature is forced to retreat.

Also notice that the argument does nothing to decrease the likelihood that God is ultimately behind, and ultimately responsible for any particular physical phenomena. If the ancient person said 'God created rainbows' rather than 'God makes rainbows BY shooting them out of his belly', then the ancient person is just as likely to be correct once we understand the physical mechanisms involved in making rainbows as he was before we did. God is still just as likely to have created rainbows (or created the mechanisms that cause rainbows) before and after our increase in understanding. The likelihood that he exists, and the likelihood that he created rainbows, is exactly the same before and after. The only thing that is falsified are claims that God created rainbows using some specific methodology that has been shown to be false.

That pretty much completely neutralizes the argument. The argument is more appropriately titled "people's-conception-of-God-of-the-gaps". And yes, admittedly, as the limited beings that we are, our conception of God and how he works is always changing, always incomplete, and often flat out wrong. This is not evidence against his existence, however. Merely evidence of our own shortcomings.

Abortion - From a Materialist/Secularist Perspective

As a Christian I find it rarely makes sense to try to convince a non-believer of some religious, spiritual principle, if they do not share the same foundation for establishing truth. However, when it comes to extremely important issues, issues that effect life and death, issues that effect public policy and legislation, which in turn affect us all, Christians understandably want to reach non-believers with their message. When this is the case Christians need to resist the urge to say that 'The Bible says ____', because, as it relates to public policy, and as it relates to convincing non-believers, what it says is not going to be relevant from their perspective.

Thankfully God has made many truths accessible even to those who do not believe. The most obvious way is through authoring the human conscience. However some issues are murky even to those of us who possess a conscience. Our conscience can tell us that ending a human life is wrong, for example, but our conscience can't tell us whether or not a just-conceived embryo constitutes a 'human life'. Luckily, modern science (i.e. embryology) can.

Since the pro-choice position is more prevalent among non-religious people, one would expect that the argument against abortion to be at least partially grounded in supernatural, religious presupposition and dogma. This turns out to not be the case. What we actually find is that the Christian argument against abortion is not contingent upon any specific scriptures (though it is often supplemented by them), or commands from God, and is an argument that can be made completely independent of any belief in any particular God. Though the Christian argument is often made with reference to the soul, and to various scriptures suggesting the soul is present at conception, it is not necessary to posit a soul at any point in order to show that abortion is wrong.
You need only to assert that the wanton destruction of a unique, innocent, human life is wrong (a point virtually all secularists and humanists will grant you), and that a just-conceived embryo is all of these things (which is almost just as obvious, but will take a little more to convince them of). Which, per the definition of each adjective, it factually is.

Thanks to modern science we know that conception is the point at which we become 'unique' (that is, when our own DNA is formed). Just before conception the unfertilized egg and the sperm are still parts of the person they came from, and, as such, the destruction of either the unfertilized egg or the acting sperm would not represent the destruction of a unique, individual entity. The secularist should grant 'unique' without any difficulty, I only mention this to preemptively counter slippery slope arguments such as 'well then is contraception/masturbation murder also?' No, they aren't, for the reasons stated.

'Innocent' should be no problem for the secularist to concede. That one is actually a more interesting debate among and between believers, rather than when dealing with non-believers.

'Human' should be fairly intuitive. The embryo has human DNA, not duck DNA, or platypus DNA, or pterodactyl DNA. This also should be granted readily, and if it isn't then whoever you are trying to convince is probably conflating 'Human' with the philosophical issue of 'personhood', which is not what this is about, because we are arguing the issue from a strictly materialist perspective. It's simply about which particular mammalian species we are discussing.

'Life' might be the only slight sticking point, though it simply is biologically, factually, just that. Biology recognizes single-celled organisms as life, and an embryo consists of many thousands (possibly millions? Biology experts help me out) times more than a single cell.

Thus, if you are against the wanton destruction of unique, innocent, human life, you must be against abortion.

Also, as an addendum, the secularist will often appeal to the social benefits of abortion in arguments that they make, however, even if there are many, I submit that IF we know that an embryo is a human life with rights, then whatever social ills (or benefits) that come from it existing are moot. There are many social benefits to be derived from euthanasia and genocide as well, but few would make the argument that those benefits make euthanasia or genocide justifiable.

Lastly the secularist will appeal to the rights of the mother. And in situations where the life of the mother is in danger, then this becomes relevant. Other than that though, your rights end where the rights of another begin, and the right to life trumps the right to choose.

I've always found it peculiar that the abortion issue is often fought along religious lines, or is at least perceived to be. Pro-life, anti-abortionists should be able to find allies in all walks of life, and across spiritual divides. I think this fact is illustrated well in Christopher Hitchens. He is of course a militant atheist, fervently anti- all things God, but he believes that abortion is wrong on materialist grounds (presumably arriving at that conclusion using some line of reasoning similar to what I have presented).