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by hnracer 2076 days ago
This sounds like the God Of The Gaps line of fallacious reasoning. Once we figure out where radium came from then God will be inserted just before that new discovery, ad infinitum, turtles all the way down
3 comments

Sure but it's a way to integrate science and religion and ultimately science doesn't really have an way to answer 'why' for any of this. Even if there's not an actual answer it just happens to be that way and we're a happy little accident of the universe for a lot of people that's kind of unsatisfying. Even if they're wrong to people want to ascribe meaning to their lives, it's why philosophy and religion will probably never leave us.
The God of the Gaps reasoning always seemed dangerous to me. It creates a system where each scientific discovery diminishes God, pitting religious people against the advancement of science. As the gaps grow smaller so does God. In the long run you're in danger of reducing God to some mathematical constants.
Sure, that's the Prime Mover theory, which would be extraordinarily hard to prove or disprove. I don't think it's fallacious reasoning.
It's fallacious to put God one step before everything we don't know (radium, etc), while forgetting the numerous times this was done in the past (rainbows, etc) only to be demonstrated false once science advances. That's quite different to the Prime Mover hypothesis.