Oddly enough, I was just thinking something along these lines today. For some odd reason, the phrase about if you have as much faith as would fill a mustard seed kept going through my head. That's a pretty darn small amount. Just based on probability and statistics, SOMEBODY should have suddenly moved a mountain somewhere, and then been going 'uh....oops, sorry folks'. Like the old saw about an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters creating the works of Shakespeare. I mean, what with the Crusades, and martyrs who allowed themselves to be killed for their beliefs...obviously there HAVE BEEN people who had faith. Yet you constantly hear religious leaders berating people for their lack of faith. To me, its just further evidence of the guilt/punishment cycle thinking of religion. There is faith out there, so where is god?
Come to think of it, I DO know why I was thinking about this, I was watching Law & Order SVU on tv, and the episode was about a couple who killed their young adopted son while trying to have him healed by a faith healer. The boy had epilepsy and the faith healer held him down while he was having a seizure to 'cast out the demons', resulting in the boy's death.
Tetrapod, your posts always interest me. I read the Wikipedia link you gave on the god-of-the-gaps concept, and liked it. It got me thinking, hypothetically, what if god really DOES exist, but god's power is shrinking because us mere mortals are getting smarter, and closing up the gaps? This would at least explain why god used to perform miracles and such back in the old testament, then only through christ in the new (he had to be physically present in an avatar because his power faded), and now does nothing at all. This would kinda coincide with Deism too, I think, as they believe that a higher power created the universe, but is either no longer in control of it, or just doesn't interfere in it any longer. Not that I believe any of this, just food for idle thought.