I just figured out why something that has been bothering me for months has been bothering me. Over the last couple years Ive been discussing theological issue with a friend of mine from the U.S. In the course of that discussion Ill often ask a question and then get pointed to Answers in Genesis or the Institute for Creation Research. Inevitably I tend to disagree with the second source because of the fact that their articles are fairly terribly written from a logical standpoint. Even more so though I have always had a problem with trying to prove the existence of God by exploiting gaps in our current level of scientific knowledge and the ICR guys were guilty of this in both of the articles that my friend posted this morning. In one case it pointed to something that cant be currently explained about particle physics and said that because we cant explain it were going to use it to prove that particle physics is wrong and God exists. In the seconds article (full of all kinds of speculation) it pointed to a difference in their research (not peer reviewed) and the research of biological scientists (almost completely peer reviewed) in DNA studies and declared that the ICR research proved a young earth and therefore is supporting evidence for God. Both of these articles reduced God to a God of the gaps in an attempt to prove His existence. For those not familiar with the phrase the God of the gaps is a type of theological perspective in which gaps in scientific knowledge are taken to be evidence or proof of Gods existence. The big problem with this is that is is a form of the argument from ignorance (aka an appeal to ignorance) fallacy. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false (or vice versa). This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that there is insufficient investigation and therefore insufficient information to prove the proposition satisfactorily to be either true or false.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 18:03:03 +0000
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