God of the Gaps?

The Egyptian magicians are able to duplicate the first two of God's plagues, water into blood and frogs. When they are unable to produce gnats, they proclaimed that "This is the finger of God". This prefigures a nineteenth century intellectual hubris that only the things that science could not explain need be attributed to God. God responded to the Egyptians with satire - so also with the nineteenth century. (Idea from Rabbi Sacks.)