Apologist Abdu Murray explains why deeper scientific discovery need not push faith aside, but can lead to greater awe and curiosity about the world. Drawing on examples from biology, history, and philosophy, he argues that science and faith have long worked side by side - and that believing in God isn’t about filling gaps, but fuelling discovery.
A familiar challenge from a student
I received a thoughtful question when speaking with a group of college students in Michigan recently. A young atheist wasn’t seeking to argue. He was simply curious to hear my take on the idea that religions, both ancient and modern, are inventions of our own making to ease our discomfort with uncertainty.
Is God just a placeholder for what we don’t yet know?
He raised what is known as the “God of the gaps” argument: religious people wedge God in as an explanation for the gaps in our knowledge about how the natural world works. But as science expands our knowledge, there is less room for God as an explanation. And the more enlightened we become, the less God we need.
It’s a “whack-a-mole” kind of argument. It isn’t new, but no matter how many times it is answered, it continues to pop up.
Why that argument falls short
The argument assumes that the scientific method, focused on what we can know, test, measure and quantify, is the only reliable arbiter of truth. In his 1748 work An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume famously cast suspicion on claims that could not be grounded in empirical observation. But one problem with this way of thinking is that it can treat science as the only path to truth, even though science itself depends on philosophical assumptions that it cannot prove by experiment alone. The fact is that fields like philosophy, sociology, ethics and theology can also contribute much to our understanding of the world.
Science and faith have long worked side by side
But that is not the argument’s only flaw. “God of the gaps” advocates often forget that many scientific pioneers throughout the ages have been religious believers, including Christians. Figures like Gregor Mendel, Galileo Galilei, Nicolaus Copernicus and Tycho Brahe did not see scientific inquiry and belief in God as mutually exclusive.
Modern scientific minds like John Lennox, Hugh Ross, Erica Carlson and Rosalind Picard have made the same point in different ways. None of them hangs up their faith on a hook as they don their lab coats. Instead, they enter their fields inspired by a desire to understand more deeply the world they believe was made with order and meaning.
What biology is still revealing
Even scientists who don’t practise a religious faith continue to uncover layers of complexity in the natural world that invite deeper reflection. In 2024, Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of microRNA and its role in gene regulation.
For years, parts of the genome that do not code directly for proteins were often described as “junk DNA”, suggesting they had little or no function. But research over time has shown that at least some of these non-coding regions play important regulatory roles. The ENCODE Project and other studies have helped reveal that the genome is more complex and functionally rich than earlier models sometimes assumed.
That does not settle the question of God, of course. But it does challenge the idea that apparent “gaps” in our understanding always shrink into meaninglessness. Sometimes the deeper science goes, the more order, complexity and intelligibility we find.
Faith doesn’t stop discovery. It fuels it
Instead of hindering us, the Christian faith impels us to seek and discover the world that God made.
For example, studying art helps us understand how Rembrandt created his masterworks. Our awe of Rembrandt and his work does not diminish because we know that Rembrandt created the painting. In fact, the more art theory we learn, the more in awe of Rembrandt we become.
A biblical case for curiosity
In Proverbs 25, we read: “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings. As the heavens are high and the earth is deep, so the hearts of kings are unsearchable” (vv. 2–3).
In other words, God doesn’t keep explanations from us so that we ignore them with God-shaped Band-Aids. He delights in watching us discover the world he created. God is not the crutch of our ignorance, but the lamp of our inspiration.
Abdu Murray is a speaker, author and attorney who specialises in questions of faith, culture and worldview. He is the founder of Embrace the Truth and the author of several books, including Saving Truth, More Than a White Man’s Religion and Fake ID: How AI and Identity Ideology Are Collapsing Reality - and What to Do About It.
