What The 'God Of The Gaps' Teaches Us About Science

[NeoGreen]

https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/04/08/398227737/what-the-god-of-the-gaps-teaches-us-about-science

"... then God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance."

What The 'God Of The Gaps' Teaches Us About Science

"God of the Gaps": When God is invoked to fill in the blanks in scientific knowledge. An old-fashioned and doomed theological approach, but one that is nevertheless very much alive in the minds of many.

In the General Scholium, a sort of epilogue to his monumental Mathematical Principles of Mathematical Philosophy (here is a translation of the 3rd edition by Ian Brice available on the Web; there are others), Isaac Newton wrote (I use the I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman translation):

"This most elegant system of the sun, planets, and comets could not have arisen without the design and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.

And if the fixed stars are the centers of similar systems, they will all be constructed according to a similar design and subject to the dominion of the One ... And so that the system of the fixed stars will not fall upon one another as a result of their gravity, he has placed them at immense distances from one another."

(snip)

The interesting part of this story comes when Laplace gives Napoleon a copy of his Celestial Mechanics, describing in great detail the motions of the planets and comets in the solar system. Napoleon invites Laplace to his palace and, after congratulating the sage, expresses his astonishment at not seeing God mentioned in the manuscript. Laplace's famous answer tells it all: "Sir, I have no need for that hypothesis."

Emphasis added.