JONATHAN MCLATCHIE
RESIDENT BIOLOGIST AND FELLOW, CENTER FOR SCIENCE AND CULTURE
Jeffery Jay Lowder is an atheist philosopher and author, whom I would rate as among the top tier of intellectual critics of theistic belief (you can watch him debate Frank Turek here). Not only is he an extremely balanced and nuanced thinker, but he is also quite amicable. I consider him a friend, and we have met for dinner or drinks a couple of times. On Twitter (I refrain from calling it by its hideous new name, “X”), he goes by the handle “Secular Outpost.” Recently Lowder posted the following remark:
Unpopular opinion (among nontheists): the arguments for intelligent design defended by the likes of Moreland, Craig, and Meyer are NOT god of the gaps arguments.
My colleague David Klinghoffer asked Lowder to clarify his thinking on this. In response, Lowder linked to two blog posts he had written addressing the subject. The first, published in 2016, responds to Victor Reppert, who had asked whether there is “any theistic argument [from/in natural theology] that can’t be accused of being a god-of-the-gaps argument,” and if this rejoinder may serve as “an all-purpose reply to all natural theology.” Lowder answers the first of those questions in the affirmative and the second in the negative.
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