For all their bluster about how they “*&%#ing love science,” the worldview of the skeptic is, in reality, profoundly unscientific. From Dinesh D’Souza’s, Life After Death:

[While] the skeptic typically fancies himself a champion of science, his whole line of argument is just as unscientific as that of the creationist [who posits the God of the gaps]. For the skeptic, a gap is a kind of nuisance, a small lacuna of scientific ignorance that is conceded to exist as a kind of misfortune, and is expected to soon be cleared up. True scientists, by contrast, love and cherish gaps. They seek out gaps and work assiduously within these crevasses because they hope that, far from being a small missing piece of the puzzle, the gap is actually an indication that the whole underlying framework is wrong, that there is a deeper framework waiting to be uncovered, and that the gap is the opening that might lead to this revolutionary new understanding.

Gaps are the mother lode of scientific discovery. Most of the great scientific advances of the past began with gaps and ended with new presuppositions that put our whole comprehension of the word in a new light.

Next time you find yourself engaged in discussion with an atheist, ask him how he regards gaps in scientific understanding. If it’s anything like this, you know you’re dealing with someone who is intellectually boxed in.