God of the Gaps

Isaac Newton and others who think of explanations of natural processes that refer to God and those that refer to natural causes as being on the same plane and interchangeable actually cause needless conflicts between science and religion, for it means that God and some natural causes are rivals for the same place in an account of a natural process. As science progresses and finds a natural account where before it had none, God, who had been used to fill the gap, is pushed out. It then looks as though science has discredited belief in God and suggests that belief in a deity developed in more primitive times, but as our knowledge grew, we saw our mistake and corrected it by giving up belief in God. Newton thus did a great disservice when he put God in to his accounts wherever there was a gap in the science of the day. As science progressed, God was pushed out of place after place into which Newton and others had put him.
               
                               -Allen and Springsted, Philosophy for Understanding Theology

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