The God of the gaps: (No, not the clothing store). This thought seems like a good follow-up to my last post about the knots that string theory is getting tied up into these days. Ever since the days of Galileo and Newton and Darwin, theologians have been playing catch-up ball regarding how God fits in with what we know about the universe. Sometimes, when the scientists are in a especially triumphant mood, they tell us that there’s no room left for an all powerful and yet all loving God who watches over us and makes things go for or against us in our daily lives, in accordance with the ultimate meaning of it all (which we see but dimly through a glass, to paraphrase St. Paul, or only as shadows on a cave wall, in the Platonic sense).

A lot of scientists today seem to follow Einstein’s lead in asserting that there in fact is a “God” of sorts, but not a God with a mind and a free will anything like our human consciousness. The concepts of chance and randomness, so important to understanding the workings of the sub-microscopic quantum world, seem to rule out for them any “master plan” behind it all and any cosmic consciousness with the power to make choices. (Yes, I read Chance and Necessity by Monod).

The theologians have shot back at these ideas. One of their weapons is the “God of the gaps” theory. If I understand it correctly, the rationale is that science always leaves something unexplained, some shadow where a traditionalistic God can lurk. I was reading an article recently that disparaged the “God of the gaps” idea as rather lame and pathetic. And yet, a few days later I read that physicists today admit they still can’t answer many of the most obvious questions about the Universe (e.g., in what medium did the Big Bang come about). In other words, the more we humans know, the bigger the gaps seem to get.

The physics of our world are very messy and strange, without any grand patterns that apply against the largest scales (e.g., galaxies and galaxy clusters) and the smallest (photons and quarks). If the Universe was in fact designed by a master consciousness, that master was certainly not interested in organization and consistency. But then again, none of the great artists were neat and tidy. Any masterpiece is messy when you look at it up close; only when you step back and take in the whole do you sense the genius behind it. Scientists could tell us many things about a Rembrandt painting or a Michelangelo sculpture. But they would still leave many gaps, gaps where an artistic inspiration could reside. Ponder that, good atheist friends, next time you stroll down the aisles of a museum gallery. And as to you believers — I’d suggest that you spend a Sunday morning (or whenever you habitually pray) in an art gallery and rethink some of the articles of your faith. Perhaps there are things more strange and wonderful lurking in those shadowy “gaps” than your traditional beliefs would imagine.