Comments on: Philosophy of Religion 13: Big Bang vs Steady State

By: Karim Zahidi

Karim Zahidi — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:19:00 +0000

Anon. makes a strange remark.
Consider the following analogy:
A (classical hands) clock which has stopped working shows the correct time twice a day. Except for these two instants, it is always wrong. Say the broken clock is showing 2 o'clock. Consider now a working clock which correctly shows 1 pm (and is clearly in conflict with the broken clock) and an hour later correctly shows 2 pm (like the broken clock), would you then say that at 2pm the working clock has finally seen that it was wrong and retreated to leave the floor to the broken clock. Ofcourse not.

Why then would you say that by abandoning the steady state theory , science has retreated to leave the floor to a theory more in line with religion?

By: Peter Smith

Peter Smith — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 07:01:00 +0000

Well, that degree of misleading imprecision is pretty bizarre for what is supposed to be a philosophy book! :)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:43:00 +0000

Before it was “utterly absurd” and “bizarre”; now it’s only poorly expressed and lacking precision.

I call that progress. :)

By: Peter Smith

Peter Smith — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:49:00 +0000

We don’t accept “It’s clear enough what’s meant” as a student’s defence of an ill-expressed essay. Same here. This is a philosophy book, for heaven’s sake. Precision of expression is a prerequisite.

As to “maybe it was funny”, I wish, I wish.

By: " "said..." said..."

" "said..." said..." — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:40:00 +0000

Well, I think it outrageous, and funny. The scientific issue had absolutely nothing to do with religion. There were scientific issues that did, at the time, and this was clearly not one of them. On the other hand, one hears a lot of talk, and in quite decent books, about religion retreating before evolutionary theory, and not much of that is actually justified. So maybe the turn of phrase is derivative from such. Maybe it was funny, and witty.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 09:45:00 +0000

I don’t think that what you’ve quoted from the book is so absurd or bizarre.

The word ‘retreated’ is questionable, but it’s clear enough what’s meant, and so it’s not true that ‘”science” in no way “retreated”‘.

There are reasons to think the conflict (if there was one) hasn’t been completely resolved, but it’s not unreasonable to see the big bang as ‘a position more congenial to a religious persective’; and, again, it’s clear enough what’s meant: religion needn’t always give way to science when there’s a conflict, because science might change instead.