I'm a scientist. I saw the evidence for God and I accepted it. Will that convince skeptics? Unlikely.
What Piers says is entirely rational and not a God of the gaps argument. That argument only covers things within the universe that science might conceivably explain. NdGT is wrong here, because ultimately, we don't know how it all started, and we will never know scientifically. I'm as disappointed as anyone that we can't extend science right to the beginning and beyond, but we just can't.
Now, I can't absolutely rule out that we might someday determine how the universe went from non-life to life (though I'm extremely skeptical). But if we want to go all the way back to the beginning of everything, that's where we run into the most unforgiving brick wall.
Our own scientific theories strongly hint at this with what's called the Planck scale – this is the smallest scale in terms of fundamental units that our physical theories can describe without imploding. We can push our physical theories back, back, back, all the way back to a tiny fraction of a second after the beginning of the universe: 10 to the power of -43 seconds. It's a mind-bogglingly minuscule amount of time. But it's not to t=0 and it's not beyond t=0. Scientists exploring quantum gravity explanations are trying to get around this so we can get ever closer to t=0, but so far have not been able to come up with a coherent theory.
If that's a strong hint, then here comes the sledgehammer.
Every successful physical theory only describes what happens after the universe comes into being. Science cannot, by definition, describe what caused it; it cannot go beyond t=0. Why? Because the cause is outside the universe. Observation and experimentation are key parts of the scientific method, but how would science ever be able to study something beyond the universe? What method would you use? What instruments? It's not lack of imagination, it's literally impossible.
The best we can do is make logical inferences about the cause based on what we do know scientifically and philosophically, which is what Piers did. It's what I do. It's what anyone who invokes the multiverse does. It's what a lot of theologians, philosophers, and scientists do.
I don't dislike NdGT. I actually kind of like him, and I appreciate that he distances himself from the atheist label. But, ironically, he's the irrational one in this conversation if he thinks science will close the gap about the origin of the universe. That's not just faith, that's blind faith.
Neil is a scientist, if he saw,evidence of God he would accept it