God of the Gaps

From my old Myspace blog From November 25th, 2008

About eight years ago I was very interested in how science and religion interact, and I was looking at science critically. I'm not at all critical of science, though obviously some people do use science wrongly to get desired results, or make conclusions from what they can see of science without proper evidence.

I was watching NOVA and they were talking about dark energy. The theory was that the big bang created this rapid expansion, and the laws of nature that we know would dictate that this expansion would slowly decrease in velocity, eventually stopping and falling back inward towards the beginning point. What goes up must come down, after all. The evidence shows that actually there is no sign of a decreasing velocity of expansion, and there is a little bit of evidence of an increase of velocity instead. This is explained by dark energy, which is the unknown force that is causing this. I thought to myself that, call it what you will, this is something that God is doing.

As I learn more, though, I understand that the idea that God's power is manifested in this dark energy is really a misunderstanding about what God does. Things become better understood through science every day. Science is simply a system of learning through evidence what is observed and how it works. Eventually, dark energy will be understood. Just like gravity, light, relativity, DNA, atoms, etc. Would this mean that it was not God after all?

We often think of God as doing everything that we do not understand, and nothing that we do understand. This is the God of the gaps. We know that two dogs mate, and the female is inseminated, and then the puppies are born. We think that, because we understand the process, it is not God's doing. But I think that these things are God's doing. If God created all things, didn't he create the puppies? Below are some verses that have informed my understanding.

D & C 59:21 And in nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things, and obey not his commandments.

Mosiah 4:9 Believe in God; believe that he is, and that he created all things, both in heaven and earth; believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth; believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend.

John 1:3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Moses 6:63 And behold, all things have their likeness, and all things are created and made to bear record of me, both things which are temporal, and things which are spiritual; things which are in the heavens above, and things which are on the earth, and things which are in the earth, and things which are under the earth, both above and beneath: all things bear record of me.

The GRE

From October 17th 2008

I just took the GRE. It's probably the most common test for people that have finished a Bachelor's degree and are soon to be applying for grad school. It's a glorified ACT or SAT really.

Anyway, I got a 600 on the quantitative section, and a 650 on the verbal section. The Essay results have not come in yet. I was a little bit upset at myself, because I made some pacing errors as I went through the test. On the practice test I was just shy of 1400, so to have 1250 is kind of depressing. It's still above the average, but I'm sure I could have done better. Oh well.

Edit: 12/27/2010 Islena took the GRE and it didn't go very well for her. It seems obvious to me that anyone that learns English as an adult already past their school years is going to have difficulties with English over the long term. Through her result we can see that the GRE is measuring things that don't have bearing on how an individual will do in grad school. Her GPA is around 3.5 or so. She can do grad school just fine. The GRE is made to measure English through checking understanding of extremely difficult vocabulary even for native English speakers. It uses shades of meaning in archaic words that don't get used by anyone except people that want to impress others with their vocabulary. Even the math section is set up, for the most part, in story questions, where a high level of English proficiency is required, and one missed word results in an incorrect answer. It's frustrating to me that a test that doesn't measure what it wants to measure, and has been proven by ETS' own research that it isn't a good indicator of future graduate school success, gets used in about half of US universities as a measure for accepting or rejecting applicants.

This is one way in which those that conform to majority culture in terms of studying in English, growing up in families and communities where intelligence and school are top priorities, and attending schools that are more effective in teaching. There are many famous inventors and scientists from other countries that didn't speak English natively, like Albert Einstein. All of these people that didn't learn English until they were adults would bomb the GRE. All the native English speakers that ace it, would score extremely low if they had to take it in another language. Language has a huge bearing on the GRE results, but has no bearing on a person's intelligence or ability to perform at a job.