Ed Brayton writes:
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.
I agree absolutely with Ed Brayton that the analogy between
"intelligent design theory" and "big bang theory" is incomplete, and
based on a misunderstanding of one or the other. (To paraphrase
Lloyd Bentsen, "Intelligent Design, I knew Big Bank, Big Bang was a
friend of mine. Intelligent Design, you are no Big Bang.")
I do wonder, though, about the following:
What if, in the early days of big bang theory, a high school
science textbook were still devoting exclusive attention to steady
state theory, and a local school board had required that students be
presented with a disclaimer pointing them to the big bang
alternative? And what if that school board's motives had been
essentially and unambiguously religious -- i.e., that big bang theory
came closer to supporting at least a loose reading of chapter one of
Genesis? Or what if, today, a school board,
_for_undoubtedly_religious_reasons_, required science classes to have
presented to them disclaimers about scientific findings re animal
self-awareness (a continuing legitimate controversy within the
scientific community) or archeological findings about the early
history of Ancient Israel (again, a subject of continuing and
perfectly legitimate debate among equally mainstream experts in the
field), or etc.
Put another way, does the disjunctive character of the Lemon
test suggest that the religious character of intelligent design
theory is a sufficient but not a necessary basis for striking down
the actions of the Dover school board?
This, of course all goes back to some of the issues that
Michael Perry and others have raised over the years.
Perry
*******************************************************
Perry Dane
Professor of Law
Rutgers University
School of Law -- Camden
217 North Fifth Street
Camden, NJ 08102
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.camlaw.rutgers.edu/bio/925/
Work: (856) 225-6004
Fax: (856) 969-7924
Home: (610) 896-5702
*******************************************************
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