True, although “God of the Gaps” is an odd term. Maybe “Primer Mover” is better, since we’re not talking about gaps, really, just an ultimate cause.
But again, it’s not the role or goal of science to elimiate God. Science can only tell us what God is not necessary for (ie, evolution by natural selection). Science tells us nothing about the nature of God and religion tells us nothing about the nature of the natural world. Never the twain shall meet, so to speak.
I don’t think most conventionally religious people would be willing to compartmentalize their faith to this extent, and yield the point that it (their belief) is more or less irrelevant to explaining their physical world. To them their faith and it’s origin myths deeply informs their spiritual and material lives, and trying to stand on the thesis that everything rationally contradicting these beliefs is some big practical joke or a test of faith by God is fundamentally unsatisfying. At some point you’ve got to go one way or another.
astro: I tend to agree with you. I’ve often said that science and religion are not compatible-- the full pursuit of one will lead, at some point, to the abandonment of the other. I’m just saying that any one sceinctific “discovery” needn’t cause a person to lose faith in God. And since science will never explain everything, there will always be room for religion, if one so chooses.
As far was us being able to understand everyhing about the natural world (including the origin of the universe), this could be a pipe dream. After all, our brains evolved in order specifically to comprehend this tiny piece of space-time that we occupy. There is no reason to believe that the same brain will allow us to understand all regions of space-time. In fact, it would be very odd if it does.
Just wanted to point out that the process of evolution is not restricted to biological processes. Igneous to sedimentary to metamorphic rocks; atmosphere rich in CO2 to one rich in oxygen; stars made up mostly of hydrogen to mostly of heavier elements, an entire universe of disassociated fundamental particles to what we have today. Hell, what people tend to believe constitutes Christianity itself has evolved considerably over time.
Re: the OP, maybe I’m kidding myself, but going from a weak (Christian) believer to non-believer seemed to have more to do with the fact that few of the religious texts I’ve ever read seemed internally consistent, accurate historically or made much logical sense. If Darwinian evolution had never been proposed, I would still have been highly dissatisfied with Biblical explanations for natural features an processes. I probably would have just gone along with the herd, but hey.
the Slate article is one of the more silly diatribes I have read in a while. Among the very (and I mean very) basic mistakes the author makes is in equating “religion” with a specific range of fundamentalist Christian beliefs. If he had simply kept his argument focused to the specific theological ideas behind “Inteligent Design” his arguments could be valid (though the conclusion would be trivial). As it stands, he owes me 4 minutes of life that I can never have back.
Evolution is incompatible with religious schools that demand that human life originated as a finished form or in a time-span incompatible with the pace of evolutionary adaptation. Furthermoe, astronomy is incompatible wth religious schools that demand the Earth be the center of the Universe.
Next.
Actually, he talked to me once, so I’m not convinced he hasn’t talked to anyone else in a long while. He didn’t say much, but then, he didn’t need to.
And he’s a great listerner.
No, I’m not joking.
Lastly, I could care less what happened before humans. It’s irrelevant to my interests in the universe and has little to do with mankind. Indeed, from a certain point of view the universe didn’t exist before humankind.
And some of those teachings are only teachings of sub-branches, anyway.
Not far off my religious position.
For those who care, in most of my creation myths, when there was no universe was “before there were two things”; once you have two things, you’ve got distinction and differentiation and thus you have existence. Humans presumably came about as part of this process of distinguishing this from that by its important variations; most of the myths don’t particularly deal with us.
Even if I were misguided enough to take my myths as something other than cosmogenic allegory, the incorporation of evolutionary theory into this particular structure is fairly straightforward. Since I do consider my myths to be allegorical in nature and setting the context for an appropriate worldview, the problem does not exist.
IMHO, people who think evolution is a threat to religion have confused the “How?” with the “Why?” Science seeks to answer the “How?” How did humans evolve from primates? How does a virus cause disease? How do birds fly? It does not address the question of “Why are we here?” That is the realm of religion. Science is about the mechanism, not the motivation.
I agree there is no room for Religion in a science class. One could ask, Who created the place for a creator to be? Was the creator nowhere? In my beliefs there is no conflict in Science and my belief in God for I believe in God(What exists) not “A” God, God being another word for what exists, and science explains the workings of existence and we learn more every day. Our health concerns are addressed by science, Crimes are solved by the help of science etc.
Monavis
That sums it up nicely. Science and religion only come into conflict when religious or philosophical explanations (i.e. YEC, Platonic and Aristotlian “perfection of the heavens”) is contradicted by validated scientific discovery, or more rarely when science seeks to resolve some supernatural issue for which there is no observational measurement or experiemental plenum (search for the “soul”, mind/brain parallelism).
Of course, science often ends up invalidating conventional religious explanations for natural phenomena–the most notable being resistance to Copernician heliocentricity and the debate over evolution–but the result has always been the acceptance, albeit not without resistance and often bloodshed, and eventually full and sometimes enthusiastic embracement of the theory by religions. The Intelligent Design movement–which parades the intricacies of evolutionary natural selection as “proof” of God–shows that no scientific theory is so contradictory to religion that it can’t be turned into support…provided that one has the intellectual flexibilty of the Jesuits rather than the stern obduracy of the Lutheran Protestants (who denied heliocentricy for decades after the Catholic Church accepted it.)
Why not go whole hog and get the Platinum Membership to the Solipsist Society. I understand they have a good discount rate for group membership, so get your friends to go in with you. I think they they even give you a free irony plaque if you call now. 
Stranger
Beat me to it, and almost precisely the way I would have phrased it, except I would have replaced “motivation” with “meaning.”
Science tells us — or, to be strictly accurate, the scientific method has revealed that — there are four rocky planets, four gaseous bodies, and some number of icy/rocky objects of unknown composition orbiting our star, some of which are themselves orbited by additional bodies. But science tells us nothing at all about what this actually “means,” in an abstract sense. What is the meaning of the solar system?
The trouble starts when religion tries to get into the what-and-how that is best approached by the scientific method. Every time religion tries to come up with a rational explanation of the mechanism, it fails. Every time. But the thing is, on the other side, science makes no corresponding claim to provide meaning, and so when religion squeals, “You’re taking our meaning away!” the scientific response is vaguely befuddled unfocused defensiveness. And thus does the merry-go-round continue in its pointless revolutions.
I think this does say something interesting about human nature, that the average person finds it so difficult to separate the what-and-how from the why, that they should be so inextricably linked in our consciousness. Unfortunately for all of us, it means that the stupidly disconnected debate will continue to rage, even though the two sides are talking about completely different things.
It has been nailed here, and discussed before here.
Once upon a time religion was group membership, folk science, and the value basis for the rules of society all rolled into one. Science has proven itself a better predictor of what is going to happen in matters of the material world than religious folk science. But OTOH science has nothing to say about the non-material world; science does not provide us with our values, our morals, our ethics. For that we need value systems which operate outside of the evidenciary method. Sure, they can be secular value systems, but even they were at least historically inspired by religious systems. Religion is still well built for providing us with a basis for values.
Science does not attack God and it does not undermine religion. It is has nothing of value to say about it. It is not a tool equipped for those questions. Individual scientists may have thoughts but they do not speak for science.
Likewise religion in general does not attack science as a means to understand the material world. Sure, there are individuals whose view of religion is that it must be literally true in all respects and any evidence against that literality is viewed as a threat, but they are simply mistaken to look for material evidence in support of beliefs that are outside of the evidenciary system. They do not speak for religion as a whole.
I wouldn’t go to Leviticus for public health management advice and I won’t go to Nature for guidance on moral issues.
The portrayal of this as an either or battle in an era where many people desperately need the security and comfort of faith, is guaranteed to polarize needlessly. And American science education may suffer for years to come as a result.
See here for more on “the God of the Gaps” argument.
Of note, some of us do not use it in a negative sense. I, for one, see that there will always be that which is not only unknown but by its very nature unknowable. I have no problem with God living there, beyond my comprehension.
When I start hearing about God in terms that imply that some person comprehends His nature, I start laughing. Not a charitable response, but hard to stifle.
Creationism is not about science, nor is it about faith. It’s about secular authority over some branch of the church. It’s politics, and has all the usual honesty one associates with politics. It certainly is not about God. Personally I think it is the direct work of Satan, his minions, and their dupes. But, that’s just my opinion.
Understanding the nature of the universe (or at least the little bits of it I can perceive) does not reduce my faith in the Love of the Lord. History and theology and the sad history of the documents variously called the Bible don’t reduce it either. Faith is about love, and trust in the nature of God. Not understanding it, just being aware that it’s all personal, not political. God loves me. I love Him. He loves you. He wants me to love you too.
It’s pretty simple. Evolution is complex. Most people who argue about it really don’t understand it. Biologists don’t argue about it much, since they finished that argument last century, and have moved on to more pressing things. Politicians argue about it.
“People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.” ~ Lao Tzu ~
Not being sure of smiling bandit’s intended meaning, I can’t speak for him. But “from a certain point of view”, his statement is not inaccurate. After all, can you provide a concept of the universe, or even any knowledge thereof, which does not necessitate a human mind?
“DSeid, Triskadecamus, Other-wise… I will remember the names.” King of Thessaly
Me too! Me too! 
BTW, what’s the list for?
Well, historically religion HAS tried to answer “how”, and the “why” (or “how to live”) part largely followed from the how. You worshipped God because he CREATED you, not because it felt good to believe in a big abstract something.
I’ve long thought that the God-engineered-evolution notion is desperate and belies a lack of understanding of the random nature of evolution, which the Slate article echoes. It seems more far-fetched to suppose that a supernatural being planned out the process of evolution to get where we are now than it is to simply say God created us in 7 days. Take, for example, the various peanuts and oil-stains that look like Jesus and attract pilgrims. If I take the position that God willed it, I’m a bit silly. But if I attempt to seem more reasonable by saying I know that it was a completely random thing but God planned it from the beginning of the universe for random events to coalesce in the Jesus-shaped peanut then I am a LOT sillier than the first guy. That’s my take on it, anyway.
I know it is politically correct, especially on this board, to suggest that there is an incompatibility of faith and science, so much that it is nearly considered a factual mistake to do so, but really, if you believe in the tenets of evolution then you don’t believe God created man in anything like the Christian tradition, and you’ve aleady gone off to some “God as metaphor and spiritual salve” thing, the kind of vague belief system the personal ads call “spiritual but not religious.” It seems it’s the sort of people who don’t go to church except on Christmas and don’t actually do anything but like the idea of going to heaven. I think if there was a God he’d want you to get off the fence.
Really? I guess if you have to set up some sort of artificial dichotomy it seems silly. OTOH, I think that such artificial dichotomies are silly.
The only thing that a belief that God Created Man in His Image requires is that in the act of Creation God knew that one (or many more than one) species would arise on at least one (or many more than one) planets in the universe who were capable of love. Every thing else is anthropomorphism and certainly no rational person would engage in that.
That’s a fairly high level of abstraction for a diety that a Christian is supposed to have (at some level) a personal relationship with. You might as well start worshipping gravity and the Strong Force in that context.