Here’s a new cartoon by reader Pliny the in Between, from his/her site, Pictoral Theology.
Does this remind you of a famous Sidney Harris cartoon? And who does that Sophisticated Theologian™ look like?
God of the gaps
November 6, 2014 • 9:57 am
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
It does and I dunno. And sub.
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William Lane Craig™
If that’s supposed to be Craig then he’d be doing the kalam — the Big Bang proves God.
The first guy in blue looks like Craig (he also has a cross.) His equations would have “God” in them. I’m going to guess the second man, holding the Bible, is more Sophisticated — and I don’t recognize him.
Craig? Raspberries on Craig.
[Copied from Wiki]:
How can anyone believe this crap?
P4: an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists
C2: an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists
This is just the classical dodge:
P1: Everything that exists has a cause
Dodge 1: [Except my God, shhhh, don’t say anything]
P2: The universe exists
C1: The universe has a cause, and it is God
Also, there’s an equivocation on “everything”, even granting universal causation.
Any individual event (note: not thing, but to be charitable) has a cause, but it does not follow from this that the cosmic process (concatenation of all the events forever and everywhere) does. In fact, this is precisely, once again, a matter of conservation laws.
(Craig has been told this, too, repeatedly, but he seems to be the sort of “good” charlatan – never let a refutation, even a philosophy 101 level one, spoil your fun.)
It seems to me that there are two ways to stick God into a gap. The first way — which this cartoon illustrates — is to find some ambiguous area where God “might” be able to work without anyone expecting to see anything. You’re looking for a vacant place which is basically inert and unimportant. God is crumpled up and hiding here.
The second, more popular way to stick God into a gap is to look for something which has not yet been explained (or which you for some reason think is forever inexplicable) and use God as the explanation. Don’t understand consciousness? God. The Big Bang? God. Altruism? God. God is the explanation for what we don’t know. God is standing here and waving His arms.
That second one is risky — but in a strange way I think it’s more honest because it is risky. It treats God as a hypothesis. We’re supposed to believe in God for a reason.
But the namby pamby sophisticated theologian in the cartoon is less concerned with reason and much more concerned with faith. Look, we NEED to believe this. Find something inert — and then we’re suddenly going to smuggle in action! I think I find this even more distasteful than the ordinary appeals to ignorance.
“Mind the Gap – stand clear of the closing doors…”!
+1
Junk God of the Gaps.
I prefer the MGI… A God for Each Gap.
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Faith uses a ‘smuggler’s entrance’. By definition the gap is provided by science. Theists never understand that there is no gap without science.
Numerous occasions I am accosted with, “God is Dark Energy”, “God is Dark Matter”, “God is the Uncertainty Principle (that you physicists can not even get right)”.
Just sod off all of you faith smugglers.
I’ve found that the best way to stick god into a gap is to just smear it with the finger. Some people prefer credit cards, and there’re even fancy overpriced tools for the job, but the finger works just fine. Just lay a good bead out of the god gun along the gap and run your finger along it. Be sure to have a rag handy to clean up!
b&
Some disinfectant helps, too.
God caulk?
Yes, but be sure to match the measures to the god. For example, all you need is to be up to date with your tetanus booster when working around Hephaestus, and you should clean the casks with bleach before brewing a new batch with Bacchus…but you’d definitely want a condom for Aphrodite, and a full HAZMAT suit anywhere near Jesus….
b&
Yes, smearing God in with the finger gets God in there good. Just remember to wear gloves. You don’t want to get God on your hands and spread him around unknowingly.
Who does the physicist look like?
That’s no physicist!
The S.T. Looks like W.L.C., and the bible thumper; the bad guy from Potergeist II.
Poltergeist.
A potergeist is a spirit that drinks a lot, rather than throwing things around.
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LoL
I thought it was a spirit who danced to oompah music. Oh wait, no, that’s a polkageist.
No, that’s a Poletergeist.
b&
And of course ghosts haunting lowlands reclaimed from the sea are Poldergeists
Poldergeists. +1
…and those who haunt fields where people play hockey on horseback are pologeists….
b&
+1
Not sure which one is supposed to be sophisticated, but the one on the right looks like Adam West.
Hmm, not Adam West, maybe Fred Phelps.
Yeah, guy on right is dead ringer for Phelps. But wouldn’t this be totally out of character for Phelps? I’d have thought he’d have stayed as far away from any legitimate classrooms or physics equations as possible.
I thought Adam West too.
Sadly, knowing my inherent limitations as an artist, I must inform you all that any answer to Jerry’s second question is a form of Pareidolia.
OK, but what’s the formula?
Apparently, this is writing out a wave function in terms of a basis (of the observables?)
David Berlinski
Bingo.
Although it really doesn’t make sense for him to be holding a Bible. A bucket of obfuscation, sure, but a Bible…
The comic it reminds me of (maybe it is the Sidney Harris one you’re referring to) is two scientists looking over a long equation filling a blackboard in which one of the terms is “a miracle happens here,” and one scientist is pointing to the miracle term and saying “I think you need to be more specific here.
That’s the one.
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It looks like William Lane Craig and Fred Phelps.
Neither of whom make sense, of course.
Fred Phelps left his earthly existence on 19/3/2014. He is now in heaven, at last free from those hated gays who are roasting in hell for their sins.
In the words of Sergeant Major Shaddup, “Oh dear.
What a pity.
Never.
Mind.”
You could even add a “how sad” in there too, for the full effect of not giving a single faecal coliform bacterial colony.
Did someone buy up his cemetery yet and open a dance hall?
As greeted the death of the Maggon, “Stamp the soil down well.”
Everyone knows that evolution started when God put his magic wand (snigger snigger) into the primordial soup and made it have biological characteristics. 🙂
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That God in the hand really cracks me up. I think this is my favourite Plint the in Between comic.
On the subject of the tendency of god to become fag-paper thin (to fit into the ever-decreasing gaps), I just had another bit of whale evolution (OK, cetacean evolution) pass into my ken a couple of hours ago. New fossil remains from the Pliocene Koetoi Formation of northern Japan provide insights into growth rates and the vertebral evolution of porpoises. It’s Open Access (well, it’s APP, and power to their elbows over it), so dig in if you like your Japanese porpoises, but not as sushi.
Which gap has been closed, and which opened? Well, what seemed to be a more-or-less sequential trend of lengthening of the neural spines on the vertebrae (a character associated with increasing back musculature, and hence swimming speed) now has an earlier example which suggests either convergent evolution of this trait early on, or multiple independent development of other traits in porpoises.
What, me? Enjoying slamming doors on the fingers of god-of-the-gaps arguments? But of course I do. would you prefer me to pull the wings off flies, or indulge in some such barbarism?
For the benefit of Americans ‘fag paper’ is nothing to do with homosexuals, but means cigarette paper in British slang.
Dang, there goes my entry for the “creative ambiguity on a blo^H^H^H website” Oscar.
On the one hand, it would seem strange that the same discovery should excite both the rockhounds and the bug collectors. On the other hand, that’s kinda the whole point of Evolution, that the history of life on Earth is written on the pages of the sedimentary layers.
Must really bake some Creationist noodles, that inconvenient fact.
b&
Baked creationist noodle? What, soft and floppy?
Yes — and, thick as a brick.
b&
My company, as do many around the world, performs gap analysis all the time. Nary a god has been found…
Latest cartoon from Non Sequitor, just a brilliant riposte to all the anti-science jokers out there.
http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2014/11/07
This post reminded me of that comic 🙂 http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/gallery/math/math07.gif
Yes, that’s gotta be the one.