So Much for Pluto

I'm not a scientist and am not comprehensively familiar with the apparently long-running debate about whether Pluto should be (or ever should have been) considered a planet. I'm not up on planetology and the criteria that is used to decide whether an astral body is a planet or something else. But it now appears that after its initial discovery and planet designation in 1930, scientific wisdom has now decided to strip Pluto of its planetary status. Folks who publish science textbooks for grade school use must be thrilled, because they're probably gonna get a huge rush of book orders for the next school year which will reflect this change.

Why am I writing about this? Well, I've always been a little interested in astronomy and space. My interest was never enough to overcome my severe deficiencies in science aptitude, and this is why any thoughts I had of pursuing a job in a scientific field were short-lived. But I've always been interested in the subject matter, at least recreationally.

But the "Puzzling over Pluto" (pretty good huh?!) is instructive as it relates to Christianity generally, and apologetics particularly. Scientific wisdom is constantly in flux, and previous theories and postulates that once seemed beyond challenge are always up for revision. This is not a recent phenomenon, but goes back a number of centuries. The lesson to be learned by Christians is that it is a mistake, I think, to tie our faith and the reasons why we believe too closely to the scientific wisdom of the moment. It's not that science is an unwise discipline, or that scientists are too indecisive for their own good; not at all. It just means that our study of the cosmos is never complete, and our knowledge of it will never be exhaustive. As Christians, we understand the limitations of human reason and ontology, and realize that the mysteries of the cosmos will never be entirely solved by fallible humans who are limited in their capacities. Therefore, we should expect that scientific theories and accepted thinking will periodically change as more is discovered, as thought patterns and philosophies change, and as our values change.

Given this, Christians should learn from the Galilean controversy. Non-christians love to point to the resistance and even persecution that Galileo had to endure at the hands of the Church as proof that the Church is not interested in intellectual discovery if it contradicts dogmatic teaching. Well, to frame the controversy this way is, by itself, heavily dogmatic and highly distortive. Rome's principal problem was not Galileo's support of Copernican heliocentrism, though Rome did indeed take issue with it. Rome's mistake was that it was too tied to Aristotelian thought regarding science. They had a problem with Galileo primarily because Galileo properly rejected Aristotle by insisting on quantitative observation and experimentation, just as various monks in Europe also did. But because this isn't nearly as sexy as saying that the Church is anti-science and anti-intellectual, the truth about the controversy rarely penetrates the mythology that atheists have swallowed whole. Nonetheless, Rome's strict and too often uncritical adherence to Aristotelian philosophy resulted in Rome being too tied to a particular method of science that yielded certain conclusions that evidential observation ultimately refuted.

We would do well to learn from this, and the apparent change in Pluto's status is helpful in this regard. I don't know anyone who has tried to argue for the truth of Christian doctrine based on the premise that our solar system has 9 planets instead of 8 or 10. But there are a number of prominent Christian apologists who do tend to put almost all their chips for the veracity of God's existence on the Big Bang Theory. We need to ask the question, "What happens if a day comes when, like Pluto's planetary status, scientific wisdom determines that the Big Bang is no longer the best way to explain the origins of the universe?" If this sounds silly or even anti-intellectual, don't get too confident. A growing number of scientists, particularly of the atheist variety, have advanced an eternal oscillation theory as being better than the Big Bang when it comes the universe's origins. Christian apologists are right in saying that the Big Bang, by definition, requires a First Cause. Scientists and the general public together, of course, disagree on what this First Cause was. But the point is that the Big Bang is very consistent with a Christian view of origins. The Big Bang does not disprove the existence of God, and if anything, lends credence to God's existence. Atheists know this, which is why Sagan and others have always preferred an eternal oscillation theory of expansion and contraction because they think this allows them to get around the First Cause problem (even though it doesn't).

So what happens if one day, oscillation theory supersedes and replaces Big Bang theory as the dominant paradigm of how we should understand the universe? I would submit that if this ever happens, folks like Bill Craig who have so much of their apologetic method invested in the Big Bang will seriously have to go back to the drawing board, because their apologetic method will have been shattered. Pluto's demotion is a healthy warning to Christians - don't tie too much of your doctrine or your reasons for believing God in supposed scientific facts, because those facts are constantly being revised for both good and bad reasons.

Christianity transcends science, and makes science possible. Job 40 and on clearly demonstrate that God is in control of every last object of scientific observation. Col. 1:16ff tell us that through Christ all things were created and they are sustained by him. No God, no science. No divine order over the cosmos, no predictable and natural interactions for science to study and postulate. Christianity and science have much to learn from each other, contra Barth. But as Christians, we have to be especially careful to recognize that God transcends science, and as such, it is a mistake to tie our faith so closely to the wisdom of fallible scientists that it becomes unraveled when that fallible wisdom shifts. As Christians, we should fully expect such shifts, and fully expect that our faith can accommodate fresh discoveries, or persuasively cite flaws in the latest accepted wisdom of our day.