Re: Dover Case Questions

[Ed Brayton]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2.  If, as the Dover court says, “the Constitution forbids teaching creationism as science”, then wouldn’t the principal version of the now-regnant “big bang” theory be constitutionally prohibited as well?  It’s now generally accepted that the age of the observable cosmos is 12-20 billion years and thus that the universe was “created” (in an act of exnihilation) in a big bang.  This theory’s predecessor, the steady state theory, held that the cosmos had always existed and that the “steady state” of the universe was maintained by the continuous “creation” (coming into existence out of nothing) of hydrogen nuclei.  Both of these theories employ the idea of “creation” in precisely the same sense ! as in the Dover case: the coming into existence of something (life, hydrogen nuclei, the cosmos, whatever) ab initio, ex nihilo.  It’s true that many modern physicists have claimed that things can come into existence from nothing by natural processes, but they do so after leaving science and inadvertently turning philosopher, thus failing to understand the difference between creation and natural generation.  Surely, we can’t legally distinguish the creationism of the ID proponents from the creationism of the big bang proponents solely on the basis that the former acknowledge that creation implies a creator and the latter doesn’t.  That would make the distinction entirely conventional, it seems.  So it can't just be that it's the level of controversy within science either.  Might there be "good" creationis! m and "bad" creationism now? I think you misunderstand big bang cosmology. Big bang cosmology has nothing to do with creation ex nihilo, but only to do with the state of the universe at a given point in the past. Science can only go back so far (to the beginning of Planck time). There is clearly a difference between claiming that the current space-time continuum was the result of a singular expansion event (which is what big bang cosmology says) and claiming that all of existence was "created" by a supernatural being. These are not "creation" in the same sense at all, as one deals solely with natural phenomena that can be observed and tested, while the other deals with supernatural phenomena. Whatever opinions one might have about whether big bang cosmology may support or inform one or another theological or philosophical view, those opinions are not a part of the science itself. The word "created" does not just mean "had a beginning", as you seem to imply here, it means "resulting from a willful act". Big bang cosmology may indicate that the universe, at least in its current form had a beginning but it does not mean that it was the result of a willful act - and that is the clear distinction between the two types of arguments you are conflating.   I’ve also been puzzled why some ID people haven’t picked up the big bang as supporting the notion that scientists themselves view creationism as a proper object of science (wrongly, I think) and as accepting the idea that the cosmos was created. Oh, they have. Michael Behe mentioned the big bang so many times during his testimony that as the second day of his cross examination began, Judge Jones asked the plaintiffs' attorney how long he expected that cross-ex to last. He replied that it would be proportional to the number of times the big bang is mentioned. The judge said, "So we could be here all day." The attorney replied, "It may be a while." The problem with the analogy, in addition to what I stated above, is the differences in how big bang advocates and ID advocates behaved after proposing their ideas. Behe's argument was that the big bang was initially rejected by some because it had religious implications and Id is also rejected because it has religious implications. But big bang advocates like George Gamow didn't start a PR campaign to get his ideas into science classrooms and rant and rave about the "hidebound reactionaries of the Steady State orthodoxy" or the "Stalinist tactics of the Steady State Priesthood". They went to work developing a coherent model, proposing testable hypotheses and devising ways to test them, and when those tests validated their ideas, the big bang was accepted. Contrast that with the ID movement, which has never published a single piece of research that supports ID or developed a coherent model from which one might derive testable hypotheses, but has instead carried on an enormous political and public relations campaign to gain access to public school science classrooms. The analogy is clearly incomplete. One of the most interesting factors in the Dover case was the way the plaintiffs’ expert witness relied on Aquinas.  Aquinas drew a sharp distinction between creation and natural generation (motion and change), and defended the idea that, since we can’t know whether the cosmos had a beginning or end, we should keep a completely open mind on the subject philosophically and scientifically.  I don’t think that Aquinas would have had much difficulty accepting the idea of evolution.  It looks like the plaintiff's "expert" theologian ignor! ed the stronger arguments for the plaintiffs' position in Aquinas and contented himself with disparaging the defendants' position.  Maybe that was just a tactical decision. I think this is a curious use of the phrase "relied on". The plaintiffs' expert (I presume you mean either Rob Pennock or John Haught) did not "rely on" Aquinas but merely pointed out that the argument from design is a traditional argument that was made by Aquinas (and many others). That's all he was asked to do, to trace the history of the argument from design. Ed Brayton

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