The Fantasy of the Gaps Move

Feb 13

Feb 13 The Fantasy of the Gaps Response

Cosmological argument, Creation, Evolution, Existence of God, Faith and Science, Intelligent Design, Kalam Argument, Science

*Fairy of the Moon* by Hermann Faulbach, circa 1885

Several weeks ago I was invited to participate in an atheist’s livestream discussion on the topic of the ‘god-of-the-gaps’ fallacy. (1) Afterward, as I reflected on our discussion, I noticed something rather remarkable.

Just as some theists may be tempted to invoke a god-of-the-gaps argument as an explanation for something that we may not yet understand, so a non-theist is often prone to making a fantasy-of-the-gaps move when the science and logic begin to actually point to God. For the fantasy-of-the-gaps move, a person denies what science and logic say and, instead, appeals to various imaginary scenarios that sound scientific but do not map to reality in one or more essential aspects.

The casual listener, not versed in distinguishing between science and science fiction, is often enthralled by what sounds like the latest in scientific theories. The result is that positive scientific and logical evidence for theism is, in their mind, assumed to be neutralized by what, in reality, is imaginary.

It is important, therefore, to tune one’s mind to recognize the ‘fantasy-of-the-gaps’ move so that we do not set aside evidence that might point to something far more important than we had realized.

Scientific explanation vs science fiction: A valid scientific explanation must be testable, observable, and repeatable. If it is not, then it is, at best, an inductive leap and it reduces to “fantasy” or science fiction.(2)

When a gap becomes a problem: Given the track record of science in explaining how nature works, there is reasonable justification for assuming that a natural explanation will emerge for some phenomenon for which we currently have no good scientific explanation. There is a significant problem with maintaining that explanation, however, if, as science advances, the gap becomes larger or the imaginary scenarios and mathematical models are forced to become increasingly more creative and less credible. This is especially problematic when the evidence starts substantially tipping in the direction of an intelligent creator.

Let’s look at some fantasy-of-the-gaps moves, one dealing with the origin of nature, and the other with the origin of life.

The fantasy of mathematical models: Some years ago I dropped by the campus office of theoretical physicist William G. Unrau at the University of British Columbia with a question about the announcement of a new mathematical model as to how the universe originated. Very shortly into our conversation, he pointed out something that could be described as a ‘mic-drop moment’ …

No mathematical model for the origin of the universe works in reality.

To clarify, every mathematical model will have a variety of components, including one or more that are essential. By “essential,” I refer to a component without which the model will not work. To map to reality, not every component of the model must do so, but the essential components must, at the very least, approximate to some counterpart in the real world. For every mathematical model designed by cosmologists, each one has at least one essential component that has no counterpart in material reality or is incompatible with/contradicts material reality.

Example: Perhaps the single greatest mistake in thinking a mathematical model of an eternal universe shows that the actual universe could be eternal, is that in mathematical models, a completed countable infinity (e.g., an infinite past) can easily be mathematically dealt with as a mathematical object. (3) In the natural world, however, the past does not elapse as a single mathematical object in ‘one fell swoop’, but must be traversed one interval at a time (e.g., one year at a time or, in an expanding and contracting universe, one expansion and contraction at a time). Thus, although it is relatively easy to create a mathematical model of a universe with an eternal past, none of them work in reality.

Some recent articles in journals of science have begun to call out these untestable kinds of speculations as “fantasy” and “threats to the integrity of physics.” (2) Unfortunately, most physicists utterly fail to point out to their popular audience the essential difference between fantasy and reality with the result that many people take concepts such as the multiverse and Lawrence Krauss’s ‘universe from nothing’ as established scientific fact—a completely untestable theory that plays on the word “nothing” and is, itself, based upon another untestable theory.

Math in reality vs math in fantasy: One of the greatest challenges to the atheistic belief that there is no God is the fact that the universe had a beginning. Not only does the weight of scientific observations show this, but a property of countable infinities reveals with absolute certainty that real-time must have a beginning. (4) Since it is logically impossible for nature to bring itself into existence (think of the problem of a woman giving birth to herself), a person who is committed to the philosophical position of materialism must both deny the science as well as the mathematical principles of countable infinities and appeal instead to what is now being called out as “fantasy” by devising mathematical models that contain an infinite past. We can do that in mathematics because we can treat completed countable infinities as a single mathematical object (3) whereas in reality, the real-world past is an arrow of time that moves forward, one interval at a time, in sequence. The result in reality is that an infinite past would never, ever elapse through a countable infinite number of intervals such that we could arrive at this point, or any other point in actual history.

If the positive scientific evidence is backed up by what mathematics itself demands when applied to reality, and what formal logic requires, then to deny all that and invoke mathematical fiction is an example of ‘fantasy-of-the-gaps’ denial that flies in the face of reason. The primary motive seems to be an a priori commitment to deny the existence of God at all costs, including the abandonment of rational inference.

Mathematical science fiction: I became a voracious reader of science fiction in high school and continue to enjoy the occasional well-done sci-fi book or movie to this day. When someone says the phrase “science fiction” the vast majority of people think of a literary work. What very few people realize, however, is that we can use mathematical concepts that do not map to reality to create mathematical works of science fiction as well. Both, however, have one thing in common—there will be at least one essential component in both the literary and mathematical work of fiction that does not have a counterpart in reality or, even worse, contradicts a key aspect of reality.

Origin of life fantasy: A rather shocking example of a wholesale dive into fantasy is found in a paper by internationally respected evolutionary biologist Eugene Koonin. One of the more popular scenarios for the origin of life is the RNA world hypothesis (5) held by many scientists. Koonin, however, has correctly pointed out that the probability of a natural occurrence of RNA replication is so small, that we should not expect it to occur anywhere in the universe over its entire history. (6 ) For both Koonin and the reviewers of his paper, this raises some obvious implications for an intelligent mind behind life, which they were committed to deny at all costs. His solution, therefore, was to propose an infinite multiverse. With an infinite number of universes, in his mind, the probability for the emergence of RNA replication by chance is inevitable. The final sentence in his paper starkly exposes his motivation for appealing to an infinite number of unseen, untestable entities when he states that it “leaves no room whatsoever for any form of intelligent design.” So when forced to choose between just one unseen mind that might have encoded the genomes of life (and intelligent minds are the only testable, repeatable option science actually has for generating and writing significant levels of functional information), or an infinite number of unseen entities, Koonin sets aside Ockham’s razor and goes for the infinite number of unseen universes option, which is not testable and which has been labelled “fantasy” by other scientists simply for that fact. It is interesting to read the reviewers’ comments at the end of the paper and to observe just how committed they are to denying any evidence for intelligent design no matter what the cost, even up to invoking an infinite number of universes to solve a probability problem that is easily overcome by a highly intelligent agent.

‘Lack-of-data-words’ in creative evolutionary story-telling: During my Ph.D. program, I was carefully going over a paper with my Ph.D. supervisor, prior to submitting it to a peer-reviewed journal for publication. In my concluding remarks, he spotted the phrase, “These results suggest …” and he immediately asked if I had data to support that. I replied that I did not—the results only suggested a possibility. My supervisor told me to remove that from the paper, indicating that good science should be data-based, not embellished by hopeful suggestions. I replied that evolutionary biology papers use all sorts of words in the “suggests” category, but his response was that we don’t do that here in biophysics.

It was at that moment that the lights came on for me, significantly changing how I read science papers and articles describing the latest imaginary scenarios for the origin and diversification of life. Once I began to see all the ‘lack-of-data’ words and phrases, I was astounded at how prevalent they are in Darwinian storytelling.

As an example, consider the short, two-page article ‘The Origin of the Very First Species and the Start of Darwinian evolution.’ (10) There are a total of 28 ‘lack-of-data’ words in that short article such as “presumably,” “probably,” “might have,” “possible scenario,” “could have,” “proposed,” and many others including the ultimate lack of data phrase, “is conceivable.”

But isn’t God a fantasy?: Should the concept of God be included in the fantasy-of-the-gaps move? It is a fair question and one that is debated at the highest levels, but there are two things that need to be pointed out:

There is a strong correlation between those who insist God is fantasy and those who are most guilty of using the fantasy-of-the-gaps dodge to escape the evidence for God. If the evidence points to an intelligent creator, then it is no longer fantasy.
The key reason God cannot simply be relegated to the category of fantasy is the extent and scope of the evidence and arguments for God’s existence and involvement in human history. These arguments and data may not be ‘proof’ in the checkmate sense, but they are substantive enough to be seriously discussed at the highest level in academic institutions around the world.

Takeaway: The evidence for the existence of God has sharply increased over this past century with the advance of science to the extent that the two largest gaps in scientific knowledge (the origin of the universe and the origin and diversity of life) have become much more difficult, if not impossible, to explain without resorting to the fantasy-of-the-gaps move. A critical part of rational thinking is the ability to separate fact from fiction. Fiction is rife in modern science which often confuses creative story-telling and imaginary mathematical or computer models with the real world. (8) The takeaway is the importance of recognizing when a fantasy-of-the-gaps move is being made and improving one’s skill in identifying instances of fantasy and imagination when it is presented as science, or used as a dodge when the evidence for God is becoming stronger by the decade.

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