Research of the Gaps

1) Research of the Gaps, 2) Her Examples Analysed

Greta Christina's Blog : "You Can't Disprove Religion": Three Counter-Examples
http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2009/10/you-cant-disprove-religion-counterexamples.html

The blog post is well worth studying closer, but I am taking a first bite at it and leaving aside things like:

"Well, of course," the trope continues, "many outdated religious beliefs -- young-earth creationism, the universe revolving around the earth, the sun being drawn across the sky by Apollo's chariot -- have been shown by science to be mistaken. But modern progressive and moderate beliefs -- these, you can't disprove with science. These are simply matters of faith: things people reasonably choose to believe, based on their personal life experience."

None of these have been disproven by science.

Chariot being drawn by horses possibly. Its belonging to Apollo is definitely disprven not by science but by Christianity. Apollo, the wicked deity of Delphy, is called "pythonic spirit" and "Apollyon" in the Bible and can certainly not get as far up as the Sun's orbit around Earth.

But I am leaving them aside for this giant first bite:

I will acknowledge freely: We don't yet understand consciousness very well. The sciences of neurology and neuropsychology are very much in their infancy, and the basic questions of what exactly consciousness is, and where exactly it comes from, and how exactly it works, are, as of yet, largely unanswered.

But research is happening. The foundations for our understanding of consciousness are beginning to be laid. There are a few things that we do know about consciousness.

And among the things we know is that, whatever consciousness is, it seems to be an entirely biological process.

In other words, since research has not shown what consciousness is, it has neither shown that consciousness is an entirely biological process, and therefore has no more claim on our confidence on such claims than the kind of theology (whether actually existing among Christians or not) which has been called "God of the gaps":

The usual atheist reply to this is to cry, "That's the God of the Gaps! Whatever phenomenon isn't currently explained by science, that's where you stick your God! What kind of sense does that make? Why should any given unexplained phenomenon be best explained by religion? Has there ever been a gap in our knowledge that's eventually been shown to be filled by God?"

Well, I deny the charge of believing in a "God of the gaps" and reply with a charge materialism is indulging in "research of the gaps" - sticking their materialistic definitions of consciousness exactly where it has not yet been proven wrong to the satisfaction even of such obtuse researchers as soul denialists.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Vigil of St Joseph
18-III-2015