God (of the Gaps) is Dead
Robert Larmer of the University of New Brunswick has written an outstanding article for International Journal for Philosophy of Religion entitled Is there anything wrong with “God of the gaps” reasoning? This article, copyrighted 2002, has popped up on several of the websites to which we link ( The Thinking Christian and Dangerous Idea to name two), and I thought that I would add my own comment. The point of Dr. Larmer's lengthy article is that the leap to the conclusion that any appeal to God where science fails to provide an answer is often immediately, but wrongly, dismissed as an appeal to "God of the Gaps". The only problem is that the underlying logical fallacy, argumentum ad ignorantiam , is being misused in most cases. Dr. Larmer says: The artificiality that plagues the short discussions of argumentum ad ignorantiam found in so many textbooks on informal logic results from the fact that in real life it is difficult to find arguments based simply on ignorance. It ...