---
title: "God of the gaps"
chunk: 2/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:30.815858+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== General usage ==
The term "God of the gaps" is sometimes used in describing the incremental retreat of religious explanations of physical phenomena in the face of increasingly comprehensive scientific explanations for those phenomena. Dorothy Dinnerstein includes psychological explanations for developmental distortions leading to a person believing in a deity, particularly a male deity.
R. Laird Harris writes of the physical science aspect of this:

The expression, "God of the Gaps," contains a real truth. It is erroneous if it is taken to mean that God is not immanent in natural law but is only to be observed in mysteries unexplained by law. No significant Christian group has believed this view. It is true, however, if it be taken to emphasize that God is not only immanent in natural law but also is active in the numerous phenomena associated with the supernatural and the spiritual. There are gaps in a physical-chemical explanation of this world, and there always will be. Because science has learned many marvelous secrets of nature, it cannot be concluded that it can explain all phenomena. Meaning, soul, spirits, and life are subjects incapable of physical-chemical explanation or formation.

== Usage in referring to a type of argument ==
The term God-of-the-gaps fallacy can refer to a position that assumes an act of God as the explanation for an unknown phenomenon, which according to the users of the term, is a variant of an argument from ignorance fallacy. Such an argument is sometimes reduced to the following form:

There is a gap in understanding of some aspect of the natural world.
Therefore, the cause must be supernatural.
One example of such an argument, which uses God as an explanation of one of the current gaps in biological science, is as follows:
"Because current science can't figure out exactly how life started, it must be God who caused life to start." Critics of intelligent design creationism, for example, have accused proponents of using this basic type of argument.
God-of-the-gaps arguments have been discouraged by some theologians who assert that such arguments tend to relegate God to the leftovers of science: as scientific knowledge increases, the dominion of God decreases.

== Criticism ==
The term was invented as a criticism of people who perceive that God only acts in the gaps, and who restrict God's activity to such "gaps". It has also been argued that the God-of-the-gaps view is predicated on the assumption that any event which can be explained by science automatically excludes God; that if God did not do something via direct action, that he had no role in it at all.
The "God of the gaps" argument, as traditionally advanced by scholarly Christians, was intended as a criticism against weak or tenuous faith, not as a statement against theism or belief in God.
According to John Habgood in The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology, the phrase is generally derogatory, and is inherently a direct criticism of a tendency to postulate acts of God to explain phenomena for which science has not (at least at present) given a satisfactory account. Habgood also states:

It is theologically more satisfactory to look for evidence of God's actions within natural processes rather than apart from them, in much the same way that the meaning of a book transcends, but is not independent of, the paper and ink of which it is comprised.
It has been criticized by both theologians and scientists, who say that it is a logical fallacy to base belief in God on gaps in scientific knowledge. In this vein, Richard Dawkins, an atheist, dedicates a chapter of his book The God Delusion to criticism of the God-of-the-gaps argument. He noted that:

Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it. What worries thoughtful theologians such as Bonhoeffer is that gaps shrink as science advances, and God is threatened with eventually having nothing to do and nowhere to hide.

== See also ==
Deism
Deus ex machina
Miracles (book)
Non-overlapping magisteria
Watchmaker analogy

== References ==

== Bibliography ==
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997 (ISBN 978-0-684-83827-4) "Letter to Eberhard Bethge", 29 May 1944, pages 310–312.
Richard H. Bube, "Man Come of Age: Bonhoeffer's Response to the God-Of-The-Gaps," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, volume 14 fall (1971), pages 203–220.
C. A. Coulson, Science and Christian Belief (The John Calvin McNair Lectures, 1954), London: Oxford University Press, 1955. Page 20, see also page 28.
Henry Drummond, The Lowell Lectures on the Ascent of Man, Glasgow: Hodder and Stoughton, 1904 (Chapter 10, containing the relevant text).

== External links ==

Miracles, Intelligent Design, and God-of-the-Gaps (PDF)
Skeptical Christian: God of the Gaps?