Michael Shermer EXPOSES David Wood’s “God of the Gaps” Argument

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]If you invoke the God hypothesis, there's a creator did all this. Any being capable of designing particles, atoms, molecules, DNA, protein chain, cells, organisms, planets, stars, and universes can't be simple. Hey everyone, welcome back. Genuinely glad you are here for this one because this video is something else entirely. So, what we have here is a debate between Dr. David Wood and Dr. Michael Shurmer. And the topic is about as big as it gets. Does God exist or is religion something humanity created to explain what it could not yet understand? Michael Shurmer comes in as a historian of science and a longtime skeptic. And David Wood comes in swinging with arguments rooted in the scientific revolution itself. And I have to be honest, some of what gets said in this clip genuinely stopped me mid reaction.

[00:00:57]Do yourself a favor and stay all the way through this one because the argument that lands in the final section is the kind of thing that stays with you long after the video ends. Also, before we jump in, drop a comment and let me know where in the world you are watching from right now. Seriously, every time I do this, it blows me away how far this community reaches. So, say hello and tell me where you are from. All right, let's get into it. It's irrelevant the religion of the scientists who pioneered science. Some of this was correct, some of it not quite. It's a little more subtle than that. I'm a historian of science, but it's like saying, you know, all the great art in in medieval Europe was done by Christians. All the great music was done by Christians. Everybody was a Christian. It was almost against the law in some countries to not be a Christian.

[00:01:52]So who was going to do the music? Who was going to do the art? Who was going to do the science?

[00:01:58]In any case, it's irrelevant what the the might as well say that that they were all dog owners. So what? It's irrelevant. Doesn't matter.

[00:02:09]As for atheism, atheism isn't a thing. It's just a lack of belief in God. That's it. Full stop.

[00:02:18]I'm also an an a Bigfootist. I'm an a UFOist. I'm an a uh I was going to say Trumpist or something, but I didn't get politics in there. Um it it's not a belief system. There's no like set of tenants. This is what atheists believe.

[00:02:37]It's just what we don't believe. We just don't believe in God. Full stop. That's it. Now, let's talk about something else.

[00:02:44]If you don't believe in God, but you believe in, say, civil rights, civil liberties, human rights, women's rights, gay rights, animal rights, you believe that people should be treated equally under the law and so on and so forth.

[00:02:56]You're probably a humanist or a secular humanist or enlightenment humanist. But it's irrelevant. You can be a Christian and believe all those things. You can be an atheist and believe all those. It doesn't matter. So, this is a complete nonsequiter. This is not an argument for anything because there is no atheist worldview.

[00:03:14]All right.

[00:03:17]Now, on a point of logic, the burden of proof is on David to prove the existence of God, not on me to disprove the existence of God. I can't disprove Apollo and Zeus and all that, but we can we can sort of shade our probabilities of belief by the accumulative evidence for or against the God hypothesis.

[00:03:44]There is no atheist hypothesis.

[00:03:47]That isn't a thing. Either you think there's evidence for God or or you don't. And and there's no alternative to that that has to be defended.

[00:03:57]All of these arguments, by the way, look like this. God, X looks created. Whatever it is, the eye, the universe, planets, DNA.

[00:04:10]I can't think of how X was created naturally. Therefore, X was created supernaturally.

[00:04:17]This was in essence the argument he was making by rattling off all the scientists, Tiko, Brah, Cernicus, Galileo, Newton, and so on. You know, they ran up against certain mysteries in their fields and said, 'Well, I can't figure it out. I guess God did it.

[00:04:33]Newton has a famous quote. I'm surprised that my intelligent design creationist friends don't use this quote, in which he talks about the stunning alignment of all the planets in this flat plane, the plane of the ecliptic, which all the planets are going around in the same direction. They're all in this flat plane except for Pluto, which is no longer a planet, so it's not a problem.

[00:04:53]and he says, uh, you know, it's it's just I can't explain. I can't figure out how this could have come about. This must have been the providence of the divine creator. But no one makes that argument anymore, which is why my intelligent design creations friends don't use that quote because we now have a cogent theory for how solar systems are formed. Naturally, all you need is gravity and some stuff in certain right configurations of how far apart they are and so on, and planets naturally form. We now know that virtually every star in the galaxy has a planet. Completely natural. You don't have to have an intervening god to step in to stir the particles to make that happen. This is the moment that completely dismantles the foundation of David's entire opening argument. And here is what makes it so satisfying.

[00:05:41]Michael Shurmer does not even need to raise his voice to do it. David spent a significant portion of his time listing every famous scientist from the scientific revolution. Capernacus, Galileo, Newton, Kepler, and essentially saying, "Look, they were all Christians, therefore Christianity caused science."

[00:06:01]That was his argument. And on the surface, to someone who has never studied history, that might actually sound convincing. But here is what people do not realize. Michael pointed out something that any historian of science already knows. Medieval Europe was almost entirely Christian. It was not just culturally Christian. In many places, it was legally enforced. So when David lines up all these Christian scientists as evidence for God, Michael basically responds, "Who else was going to do it?" He pointed out, "It is like saying all the great art and music of that era was done by Christians, too.

[00:06:39]Does that mean Christianity caused art?

[00:06:41]Does that mean God caused music? You have to understand what this does to David's argument. It does not just weaken it. It completely removes the foundation. Because if everyone in your civilization shares the same religion, then the religion of the people who achieved great things tells you almost nothing. You need contrast. You need to show that religious belief specifically was the reason, not just that it was present. And then Michael lands something even sharper. He points out that the burden of proof does not sit on the atheist side at all. Michael said this, "The burden of proof is on David to prove the existence of God, not on Michael to disprove it." This matters enormously because David framed the whole debate as though atheism needs to defend itself. Michael just flipped the entire table and then he breaks down the structure of every single design argument David used. He describes the pattern.

[00:07:43]Something looks created. I cannot explain how it happened naturally.

[00:07:48]Therefore, God did it. He called it out by name. He described it as the exact reasoning behind listing all those scientists.

[00:07:59]And he is right because the moment you accept that pattern as valid logic, you have basically agreed that human ignorance is evidence for God.

[00:08:12]That is not science. That is a gap dressed up as an argument.

[00:08:18]In the long history of science, this is what happens. People invoke the gap.

[00:08:25]They say, "Well, I can't think of how this could have come about naturally.

[00:08:28]Therefore, it must have been supernaturally. The gaps are being filled. That's what scientists do. And they're graduate students especially.

[00:08:39]That's what that's what graduate students are for fill gaps. And eventually those gaps will be filled.

[00:08:46]And then where goes your religious faith? If you hook your faith to some there's this gap here. These guys can't explain this thing here. Whatever it is, the fine-tuness of the cosmos, DNA, the eye, whatever. You can't explain that that I'm hooking my uh oh, he explained it. Everyone accepts it. Happened naturally. Uh-oh. Now what? Now what do I do with my faith? Okay, that's the problem. In any case, if you invoke the God hypothesis, there's the creator did all this. Any being capable of designing particles, atoms, molecules, DNA, protein chains, cells, organisms, planets, stars, and universes can't be simple.

[00:09:27]Such a being would have to be as complex as or more complex than her creations.

[00:09:36]Thus, by all theistic arguments for God's existence, there must be a God's God who created the Christian God. And if you continue to make that argument, then there has to be a God's God's God that made the Christian God at infinitum.

[00:09:52]Now, you can't just say, "Well, you got to stop the causal chain somewhere, and I'm stopping it at my God." Why? You're the one who initiated the argument that there has to be a designer behind the complex system. So, who designed the designer? Well, the designer is that which does not need to be created. Why can't the universe be that which does not need to be created? Because the universe is a thing and it has to be created. Well, maybe God is a thing. No, God is not a thing. God is an agent. I'm an agent. You think I was created, so therefore God would need to be created and so forth.

[00:10:27]So that's the problem with all those uh arguments.

[00:10:31]Now, I'm going to make two arguments tonight against the idea that there's a God and in favor of the idea that we invented God. This is the part that blows my mind every single time I think about it because Michael Shurmer does not just punch holes in the argument. He shows you why the holes keep appearing and why they will keep getting filled. He uses Newton as the example and it is perfect.

[00:10:59]Newton himself, one of the greatest scientific minds in human history, looked at the alignment of the planets in the same flat plane and said he could not explain it. He attributed it to divine creation. And for a long time, that was the answer people accepted. But here is the thing. We now have a complete mathematically supported observationally confirmed theory for how solar systems form naturally. All you need is gravity and the right starting conditions. And today, virtually every star we have ever observed has planets around it. Completely natural. No divine stirring of particles required. So what happened to Newton's gap? Science filled it. And this is the pattern Michael is pointing to, not to embarrass religious people, but to show that historically every time someone said, "I cannot explain this. Therefore, God science eventually came back with an explanation every single time. And then Michael drops the argument that I think is the most structurally devastating thing said in this entire debate. He points out that if you invoke a god who designed the universe, that god must be at least as complex as everything it created, if not more complex. So now you have something more complex than the universe that also needs an explanation. And if you say, "Well, God does not need an explanation," Michael immediately fires back. Why can't the universe be the thing that does not need an explanation?

[00:12:37]You are the one who said complex things need a designer. So who designed the designer? Think about what this does. It does not just challenge the design argument. It turns the design argument against itself because the very logic David used to argue for God applies even more forcefully to God itself. And the only escape is to say God is exempt from the rules. But that is not logic. That is just a preference.

[00:13:10]Michael said this directly. You cannot just say you are stopping the causal chain at your god. Why there and not somewhere else? That question never gets a clean answer. And it did not get one here either.

[00:13:28]The biggest problem I see for a theist is the problem of evil. So pick two.

[00:13:35]One, God is all powerful. Two, God is all good. Three, evil exists.

[00:13:40]You can have two of those. Can't have all three.

[00:13:44]Here's a few numbers for you. According to UNICEF, about 29,000 children under the age of five die each day, mainly from preventable causes. That's 21 dead children every minute. 10.6 million a year. That's the equivalent of a holocaust every year.

[00:14:06]More than 70% of these 10.6 6 million children deaths every year are attributable to six causes: diarrhea, malaria, neonatal infection, pneumonia, preterm delivery, or lack of oxygen at birth.

[00:14:18]Science's responses, well, give them those things. Religion's response is those are part of God's plan.

[00:14:27]Really, what kind of plan is that? What kind of God who is all powerful and all good would not stop that? Now, I'm not talking about homicides, gang warfare, civil wars, and strife in Syria. Not talking about that. I'm talking about innocent children who have no free will. They're not freely choosing to die from horrible diseases and cancer. Why would God allow that to happen?

[00:14:56]an all powerful, all good God, a less than powerful or not so good God, or no God at all.

[00:15:07]The problem with explaining evil for religious people, for theists, is what I call the irrefutable God problem. When good things happen, who gets the credit?

[00:15:15]God did it. He works in wonderful ways.

[00:15:18]He's answered my prayers. He made a miracle. When bad things happen, who gets the blame? not God or he works in mysterious ways. Don't you know what does that even mean?

[00:15:33]So no matter what happens, the God hypothesis is confirmed.

[00:15:37]What would disisconfirm the God hypothesis?

[00:15:42]Good things happen, so God is. Bad things happen, so God is. What would have to happen to refute this causal explanation of evil in the Christian worldview? Nothing can refute it. It's irrefutable. It's a simple assertion. It's true by asserting. I hereby say it's true. And that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

[00:16:10]As the great late Christopher Hitchens once said.

[00:16:15]One of my favorite examples comes from my friend, the late great Carl Sean.

[00:16:20]>> And here's where Michael Shurmer shifts from dismantling arguments to asking a question that I think genuinely has no clean answer from the theist side. He presents what philosophers call the problem of evil. And before anyone says this is just an emotional argument, it is not. It is a logical one. The structure is simple. If God is all powerful and all good and evil exists in the world, you cannot hold all three of those at the same time. One of them has to give. You can pick two. You cannot have all three. And Michael does not just make this abstract. He brings in verified data from UNICEF. 29,000 children under 5 years old dying every day, mostly from preventable causes.

[00:17:13]Diarrhea, malaria, lack of oxygen at birth, 10.6 million a year. Michael pointed out that is the equivalent of an enormous humanitarian catastrophe every single year, year after year. Now, here is what makes this so sharp. He is not talking about the consequences of human choices. He specifically separates this from wars and conflicts and says I am talking about innocent children.

[00:17:43]Children who made no choices. Children with no free will in this situation. And an all powerful all good God watched it happen every day for all of recorded history. The religious response is always that it is part of a plan. But Michael exposes exactly why that response is actually a logical problem, not a solution. Because of good things happening confirms God and bad things happening also confirms God because of mysterious ways. Then what would ever disisconfirm God? Nothing. There is no possible observation, no possible event, no possible outcome that would count as evidence against the God hypothesis. And any claim that cannot be falsified is not a claim about reality. It is just an assertion. This is something the philosopher and science communicator Carl Sean spent a great deal of time writing about. The idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that a hypothesis which explains everything actually explains nothing.

[00:18:58]Michael brings that same intellectual tradition directly into this debate and it lands exactly as hard as it should.

[00:19:07]The line that closes this segment, that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, is not just a rhetorical flourish. It is a foundational principle of honest inquiry. And the fact that David never produced a framework that could be falsified is exactly why that line hits so hard.

[00:19:33]So, what do you guys think of this?

[00:19:36]Leave your thoughts down in the comments. Please like and subscribe and I will see you in the next video.