Is there any hope that fundamentalist-evangelical Christians will begin
to question the YEC position? Is it not ironic that on the one hand YEC
domination of the Christian side of the debate has resonated with
ordinary non-churched Americans as to make it, as Ken Ham puts it in his
book, _Creation Evangelsim for the New Millennium_, an opportunity for
winning people to Christ. Yet, on the other hand, it is a great
stumbling block to scientists who work in the fields being assailed. Why
have the efforts of ASA to overcome this problem been so unsuccessful?
Ron Schooler
Los Angeles, CA
By JAMES GLANZ
Scientific lessons about the origins of life have long been challenged
in public schools, but some Bible literalists are now adding the
reigning theory about the origin of the universe to their list of
targets.
Nearly overlooked in the furor over the Kansas school board's
vote in
August to remove evolution from its education standards was a
decision
on the teaching of the science of the cosmos. Influenced by a
handful of
scientists whose literal faith in the Bible has helped
convince them that the
universe is only a few thousand years old, the board deleted
from its
standards a description of the Big Bang theory of cosmic
origins, the
central organizing principle of modern astronomy and
cosmology.
The Big Bang theory, based on decades of astronomical
observations
and physics research, suggests that the universe originated in
a colossal
explosion of matter and radiation some 15 billion years ago.
But "young Earth creationists," as they are generally known,
have come
up with their own theories to explain how cosmic history could
be
condensed into mere thousands of years. They are making this
case in
books, pamphlets and lectures, as well as on a number of Web
sites.
Mainstream scientists consider their theories to be wildly out
of line with
reality, even though books describing them are often liberally
sprinkled
with references to authorities like Albert Einstein and
Stephen Hawking.
As a result, physical scientists now find themselves in a
fight in which they
have seldom played a public role. They have responded with a
mixture of
disdain, disbelief and consternation, and the reactions have
not been
limited to physicists and cosmologists in Kansas.
"It's the denial of what understanding we have of the origin
of the universe
in terms of modern science," said Jerome Friedman, a physicist
at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was awarded a Nobel
Prize
in 1990 for collaborating in the discovery of the subatomic
particles
called quarks and is the president of the American Physical
Society.
"That's a terrible loss," Friedman said.
Hume A. Feldman, a cosmologist at the University of Kansas in
Lawrence who has worked at Princeton University and the
Canadian
Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, called the matter
"frightening."
"When I went into cosmology," Feldman said, "I never thought I
would
get involved in anything like that."
Feldman said that developments in his state bore a distant
resemblance to
the difficulties of political scientists under Communist
regimes in Eastern
Europe, and that he feared that such pressures could impair
the
educational system.
But advocates of the creationist view say alarm over their
theories is
overblown. Steve Abrams, a member of the Kansas board and a
veterinarian in Arkansas City who was among the leaders of the
push to
make the changes, said there were legitimate scientific doubts
about
whether the universe was more than several thousand years old.
"There is sufficient data to lend credibility to the idea that
we do not have
all the answers for teaching the origin of our universe," he
said.
That sentiment was echoed by John W. Bacon, a board member
from
Olathe who also voted with a narrow 6-4 majority for the
changes.
"I can't understand what they're squealing about," Bacon said
of scientists
who oppose the board's action. Millions or billions of years
ago, Bacon
said, "I wasn't here, and neither were they. Based on that,
whatever
explanation they may arrive at is a theory and it should be
taught that
way."
Those objections closely mirror criticisms leveled at
evolution by its
opponents. Alabama biology textbooks, for example, must carry
a
warning that reads in part: "No one was present when life
first appeared
on earth. Therefore, any statement about life's origins should
be
considered as theory, not fact."
The Kansas challenge to the teaching of the Big Bang is not
the first
public objection to the theory on religious or political
grounds. Three
years ago, the school superintendent of a conservative county
in western
Kentucky ordered two pages that explained the Big Bang in
grade-school textbooks to be glued together. The
superintendent said
that the Big Bang should not have been explained without
including the
biblical version of creation as well.
The change in the Kansas standards does not preclude the
teaching of
mainstream biology, physics or cosmology, allowing teachers to
present
alternative viewpoints if they choose to do so. But because
the standards
are used as the basis for state tests, the changes will
probably have a
practical effect on what is taught, said Bill Wagnon, a
professor of history
at Washburn University in Topeka and a board member who voted
in the
minority. Students' scores on those tests help determine
whether a school
receives accreditation from the state.
"The curriculum standards describe that process of what needs
to be
covered," Wagnon said.
So radical were the Kansas board's recommendations that it has
been
unable to publish its own standards, or even to display them
on its Web
site. That is because the standards include long extracts from
a book on
education standards that was published by the National
Research
Council. Because of its disapproval of the board's revised
standards, the
Council has refused permission for them to be reprinted.
Beyond the expunging of evolution, the board also took out
references to
the hundreds of millions of years of Earth's geologic ages and
modified
sections on using the slow decay of radioactive elements to
measure the
ages of fossils and other rocks.
Among the most striking changes was the removal of passages in
the
original standards dealing with the Big Bang. Cosmologists see
ample
evidence for that explosion in the present expansion of the
universe, in a
diffuse afterglow in space called the cosmic background
radiation, and in
the precise abundances of light elements like hydrogen and
helium that
were left over from the cataclysm.
Cosmologists have also calculated the way in which stars,
galaxies and
clusters of galaxies coalesced from slight ripples in the
primordial soup
that emerged from the Big Bang. To date, the results of those
calculations
match the precise observations of such structures in the
heavens. Of
course, for all its success in accounting for observations,
the Big Bang is
indeed just a theory, although it is one with few scientific
dissenters.
The biggest problem for the young Earth creationists is
explaining the time
that has apparently passed since the light we see from distant
galaxies
was emitted. Given the constancy of the speed of light and
estimates of
the distance between Earth and faraway galaxies it is
difficult to explain
how Earth and the cosmos could be young.
But D. Russell Humphreys, a nuclear weapons engineer at Sandia
National Laboratory who is also an adjunct professor at the
Institute for
Creation Research near San Diego, thinks he has an answer. In
an
interview, he said that Einstein's equations of relativity,
the basis of the
Big Bang theory, could be used to construct a universe in
which the Earth
is only a few thousand years old.
Abrams said that in thinking about the Kansas standards he had
been
struck by Humphreys's book, "Starlight and Time: Solving the
Puzzle of
Distant Starlight in a Young Universe" (Master Books, fifth
printing in
1998).
Humphreys's ideas "seem to be right there on the cutting edge,
so to
speak," Abrams said.
But most cosmologists say they are simply out of left field.
The theory relies on a peculiar feature of Einstein's
equations, which
predict that powerful gravitational fields can speed the
progress of time
and, in effect, make clocks run at different rates in
different places. So
Humphreys assumes that the Earth is close to the center of a
structure
related to a black hole, in which gravity is especially
intense, so that
billions of years could pass in deep space while only a few
thousand
years went by on Earth.
Such a universe "has clocks clicking at drastically different
rates in
different parts," Humphreys said in an interview.
Edward L. Wright, vice chairman for astronomy at the
University of
California at Los Angeles, said that there is no evidence that
the Earth is
at the center of the universe, or that such tremendous
gravitational fields
exist outside of ordinary black holes.
Moreover, Wright said, the acceleration of time would alter
the vibrations
of waves of light, shortening its wave length and turning it
into deadly
gamma rays. Bombarded by such radiation, he said, "the Earth
would be
sterilized."
Humphreys, whose research in cosmology is unrelated to his
work at the
lab, said other features of his model would prevent the
frequency
increase.
Abrams also cited a theory that the speed of light was almost
infinitely
fast in the past, meaning that the light from extremely
distant galaxies
could have reached Earth quickly and would not be billions of
years old.
He referred to writings on this subject by Danny Faulkner, a
professor of
astronomy at the University of South Carolina's Lancaster
campus and an
adjunct professor at the Institute for Creation Science. In a
telephone
interview, Faulkner cautioned that he had merely been
describing ideas
put forth by other scientists in the creationist movement and
was not
certain that the changing speed of light was correct. Indeed,
high-precision measurements of the speed of light and other
crucial
physical constants have revealed no detectable change in their
values
over recent time.
The debate over the age of the universe has exposed intense
disagreements not just in schools but also among evangelical
Christians.
"Often young-universe and old-universe creationists focus more
energy
on defending their respective positions than on reaching out
to
nonbelievers," wrote Hugh Ross, a former radioastronomer who
is an
evangelical Christian, in "Creation and Time: A Biblical and
Scientific
Perspective on the Creation-Date Controversy" (NavPress,
1994).
Ross thinks that a literal reading of the Bible can be
reconciled with the
Big Bang, but says that his views are distinctly in the
minority among
evangelical Christians. The six days of Genesis could stand
for "six
consecutive long periods of time," Ross said.
The importance of the issue for many Bible literalists means
that
cosmologists could face the pressures that biologists have
dealt with since
John Scopes was convicted of violating a Tennessee law against
the
teaching of evolution in 1925, said Eugenie C. Scott,
executive director
of the National Center for Science Education Inc., in El
Cerrito, Calif.
"I don't think physical scientists are going to be immune to
this," Scott
said. "It would be very unwise for them to brush this off."