> I wish it were as simple as that, Russ. If you read Hugh Ross's _The
> Fingerprint of God_ you will find example after example of how cosmologists
> and astrophysicists fought the idea that the universe had a beginning, with
> the implication, acknowledged by Einstein, of "the presence of a superior
> reasoning power". This contentious effort went on for years.
Yes, some of the opposition to big bang models, as from the
steady state theory, was motivated by anti-religious bias. But note
that there were also serious scientific problems with big bang models in
the 30s and 40s. In particular, the fact that the Hubble time was
thought to be less than 2 billion years, less than the age of the earth,
was a major difficulty.
And of more moment, contra Ross et al, the apparent correctness
of big bang models does not "prove creation" in any meaningful
theological sense.
> A scientific revolution, or change of paradigms, is an all-or-none affair.
> Kuhn says, "The decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the
> decision to accept another' (p. 77). Later, in a chapter entitled
> "Revolutions as Changes of World View" he wrote, "Nevertheless, paradigm
> changes do cause scientist to see the world of their research-engagement
> differently" (p. 11). In the same chapter he said, "Scientists then often
> speak of the 'scales falling from their eyes' or of the 'lightning flash'
> that 'inundates' a previously obscure puzzle, enabling its components to be
> seen in a new way that for the first time permits its solution" (p. 122).
> The change of world views in biology will be from strictly naturalistic
> (even meta-naturalistic) to a yet-to-be clearly articulated,
> interactive-creation or realistic-theistic one. So it is unlikely that
> "gradualism" and "intelligent design" will co-exist in the new paradigm,
> except to allow gradualism to put come-lately adaptive finishing touches on
> intelligently designed, irreducibly designed systems.
It is worth keeping in mind that not all scientists or
philosophers of science accept Kuhn's views on the development without
qualification. Inter alia, extreme versions of such views (not to be
attributed to Kuhn himself) have led to the currently popular notion
that science is, at root, entirely a sociological phenomenon.
SHALOM,
George Murphy