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"God of the gaps" is a term used to describe observations of theological perspectives in which gaps in scientific knowledge are taken to be evidence or proof of God's existence. The term was invented by Christian theologians not to discredit theism but rather to point out the fallacy of relying on teleological arguments for God's existence.〔See, for example, ("Teleological Arguments for God's Existence" ) in the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''.〕 Some use the phrase to refer to a form of the argument from ignorance fallacy. ==Origins of the term== The concept, although not the exact wording, goes back to Henry Drummond, a 19th-century evangelist lecturer, from his Lowell Lectures on ''The Ascent of Man''. He chastises those Christians who point to the things that science can not yet explain—"gaps which they will fill up with God"—and urges them to embrace all nature as God's, as the work of "... an immanent God, which is the God of Evolution, is infinitely grander than the occasional wonder-worker, who is the God of an old theology."〔See Thomas Dixon ''Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction'' p. 45〕〔 p. 333〕 During World War II the German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer expressed the concept in similar terms in letters he wrote while in a Nazi prison.〔 Bonhoeffer wrote, for example: :how wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know.〔Dietrich Bonhoeffer, letter to Eberhard Bethge, 29 May 1944, pages 310–312, ''Letters and Papers from Prison'' edited by Eberhard Bethge, translated by Reginald H. Fuller, Touchstone, ISBN 0-684-83827-3, 1997; Translation of ''Widerstand und Ergebung'' Munich: Christian Kaiser Verlag, 1970〕 In his 1955 book ''Science and Christian Belief'' Charles Alfred Coulson (1910−1974) wrote: :There is no 'God of the gaps' to take over at those strategic places where science fails; and the reason is that gaps of this sort have the unpreventable habit of shrinking.〔Charles Alfred Coulson (1955) ''Science and Christian Belief'', Oxford University Press, p. 20, Fontana Books 1958 and later (paperback) p. 32.〕 and :Either God is in the whole of Nature, with no gaps, or He's not there at all.〔Coulson, Fontana edition, p. 35.〕 Coulson was a mathematics professor at Oxford University as well as a Methodist church leader, often appearing in the religious programs of British Broadcasting Corporation. His book got national attention,〔The Fontana edition cites reviews from The Times Literary Supplement, New Statesman, and Manchester Guardian,〕 was reissued as a paperback, and was reprinted several times, most recently in 1971. It is claimed that the actual phrase 'God of the gaps' was invented by Coulson.〔C. Southgate et al.(1999), ''God, Humanity and the Cosmos: A Textbook in Science and Religion'', T. & T. Clark, p. 247.〕〔A. Hough, (Not a Gap in Sight: Fifty Years of Charles Coulson's Science and Christian Belief, ) ''Theology'' 2006 109: 21−27. Hough writes, p. 24: :The concept was certainly present, but according to Southgate it was Coulson who devised the actual terminology which we now use and which has been adapted to provide the title of the present article. The idea that Coulson coined this phrase is supported by the fact that he used it without reference or explanation and as a natural self-explanatory part of his argument. 〕 The term was then used in a 1971 book and a 1978 article, by Richard Bube. He articulated the concept in greater detail in ''Man come of Age: Bonhoeffer’s Response to the God-of-the-Gaps'' (1978). Bube attributed modern crises in religious faith in part to the inexorable shrinking of the God-of-the-gaps as scientific knowledge progressed. As humans progressively increased their understanding of nature, the previous "realm" of God seemed to many persons and religions to be getting smaller and smaller by comparison. Bube maintained that Darwin's ''Origin of Species'' was the "death knell" of the God-of-the-gaps. Bube also maintained that the God-of-the-gaps was not the same as the God of the Bible (that is, he was not making an argument against God per se, but rather asserting there was a fundamental problem with the perception of God as existing in the gaps of present-day knowledge).〔(''Man Come of Age: Bonhoeffer’s Response to the God-of-the-Gaps'' ). Richard Bube. ''Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society''. Volume 14. 1971. pp.203–220.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「God of the gaps」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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