For a long time I have accepted that when a theist inserts God into some as yet not understood scientific matter, it constitutes a God of the gaps argument. As a theist myself, the problem with this for me, is that it implies an arbitrary limit on Gods ingenuity. For example, the idea that God created automatic processes to do certain things in nature, and yet with other things the need for a direct hand to either tweak or directly organise! These two are at odds because the question arises of why the need for a direct tweak when a very clever mind could include all that was needed in some original instant of creation? A seed doesn’t need someone to go in and adjust it at the half way point. Nature itself does the adjusting.
So to me what we call `processes` is at odds with direct intervention, less God be less ingenious than he could be. So it is a case of `processes` or direct input, which circumvents or eliminates the need for processes. Processes themselves simply put, are causes and their effects. Thus whatever effect is desired then the cause will be tailored accordingly as it were. Science deals with the study of such processes in nature and these can be understood because, from a theistic point of view, if they were not understandable, we as human beings could not navigate a seemingly random world and our freedom would be curtailed severely. Walking for instance is a process that can be understood. We understand that walking produces movement and in recent history the mathematical reason why this is so! One pushes in one direction and we go in the opposite direction. We can’t push the earth away, as it is so much bigger, so the energy pushes us forward instead relative to the earth because the energy has to go somewhere. God doesn’t have to push us along if we want to move. It all takes care of itself with the benefit that we can build, design, navigate, and so on because processes can be understood in a world that mathematically relates to itself in multiple ways.
However there is a problem in that the beginning point in nature, has to be either complex in order to accommodate the desired aims and directions of creation as with a seed, or simple but reliant on other pre-existing factors. What is implied by this is an infinite regression of unknown things before the universe came to be. In a sense there has to be some kind of nature outside of nature. One cause cannot create many effects, unless there were many things to be effected. Or one cause has to be many causes in one, in order to produce many effects.
So if there are somehow two types of nature as it were, then one might be classed as the supernatural and the other, natural. One is apparently finite and the other connected to some infinite regression thing. One is understandable and comprehensible, and the other not. If this is all true, it would mean science has a fundamental limit in that certain valid gaps in understanding could never be answered with a scientific method.
So there are two types of gaps. Theists often insert God into gaps in understanding when it is not warranted to do so in a vain hope to prove God in some material sense. They sometimes limit understating based on an over literalistic reading of Genesis and so forth. On the other hand, those who believe that science can understand everything, given enough time, might also be guilty of a similar sin to that of the God of the gaps literalists. It might be that some gaps are literally outside the domain of science. Some theists very easily try to insert God into unanswered questions, which as yet have no answer, when in many cases science indeed will come up with the answer in time. In some cases it has done so already. However some gaps may be outside of science itself. So when some say that science will in time come up with the answers to all the gaps, or that even if it doesn’t, the answer, even if forever out of sight, would be scientific in nature, they might be wrong.
Doesn’t science point to questions that seem to be outside of science in terms of the answer? Yes indeed! How can the laws of physics create the laws of physics, when there were no laws of physics would be one such question? Something outside of science is needed here it would seem? On the other hand, the question of how to get life from non-life would seem to be a question science should answer in time, less God be having to tweak his universe as result of not being clever enough to get the processes right in the first place! What goes on above, outside, behind the latitude of the human mind and the scientific finite universe, would seem to be a valid gap but not a scientific one.
The mere existence of what seem to be valid questions that pierce the limits of science, is itself evidence against the science only view. A fundamental separation of nature and the supernatural seems in order to me. Although the existence of the supernatural doesn’t prove God either in any objective and provable sense, it might well to some individuals on an individual level. This may or may not be the case but dogmatism seems rife on both sides of the theistic debate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL3096540179B12F8D&v=IF54xqYhIGA&feature=player_detailpage