This is a rough draft of an article which appeared in Research News and Opportunities in Science and Theology in 2003.  The article reported upon the proceedings of the annual meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation. This draft is not for citation.

Revisionist History for the Magi, Copernicus, and the Initial Singularity:

The American Scientific Affiliation Challenges the Conventional Wisdom

According to the book of Psalms, the heavens declare the glory of God and according to the American Scientific Affiliation, Christians are called to explore that glory with all the tools contemporary science affords them.  The affiliation, a self-described “fellowship” of Christian scientists, recently met amid the natural beauty of the Colorado Rockies to explore the theme of cosmology.

Although some of the 82 presentations addressed topics particularly dear to the heart of the largely Evangelical membership (the intelligent design debate and methods for promoting science education in the local church were often discussed), three of the meeting’s presenters offered significant revisions to commonly accepted notions within the science-and-religion dialogue.

Sherman P. Kanagy II, professor of physics at Charleston Southern University, challenged the planetarium community (both secular and religious) to reject the widely accepted theory of planetary conjunction as an explanation for the appearance of the Christmas star in Matthew’s nativity narrative (Matthew 2). 

For nearly a generation, many prominent planetariums have presented the conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn in 6/7 BC as the astrological phenomenon depicted in Matthew’s account.  In addition to the obvious problems of date and positioning in the Bethlehem sky, this suggestion is irreconcilable with many of the details in the Matthean narrative.  (For example, how would a planetary conjunction stop in the sky as the Christmas star is reported to have done?) 

More recently, some planetariums have linked the Christmas star to the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus in 2 BC.  Because this event took place closer to Jesus’ presumed birth in 1 AD, it has quickly gained popularity in planetarium community as well.  In spite of its growing popularity, however, this theory remains open to many of the same criticisms as the earlier Jupiter/Saturn theory and it has the added disadvantage of occurring after the death of Herod the Great, a figure who plays prominently in Matthew’s narrative.  According to Kanagy, whatever Matthew records, it was not a planetary conjunction. 

While Kanagy’s research called for a revision of widely accepted views in the planetarium community, Dennis Danielson’s research called for an profound revision of a widely accepted view in the broader scientific community.  Danielson, professor of English at the University of British Columbia, challenged “the great Copernican cliché,” as taught by popular writers like Carl Sagan. 

Danielson himself was taught this cliché even as a non-scientist.  He explains,

“I was taught that the Copernican Revolution entailed a humiliation or demotion or dethroning of Earth, and by implication of humankind, from its previous place of cosmic centrality and importance. In other words, I was taught that the scientific smashing of geocentrism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries entailed a rejection of anthropocentrism.”  According to Danielson, however, this popular notion that Copernicus removed Earth and humanity from their privileged position in the center of the universe is patently false. 

Danielson isn’t arguing for a pre-modern view of the planetary motion.  He fully accepts the reality of a heliocentric solar system, but he is calling for a reconsideration of the significance of centrality in Copernican cosmology.  According to Danielson, before Copernicus the center of the solar system was regarded as a place of dishonor, not honor.  Danielson noted that in Aristotelian physics, “the center was where heavy, gross things collected. Earth was in the center because it was heavy.”  Thus in the late fifteenth century Pico could refer to the Earth as “the excrementary and filthy parts of the lower world” and Dante could place hell, the vilest imaginable existence, in the center of the Earth.  Galileo, the greatest advocate of Copernican cosmology, even rejoiced that Copernicus helped the Earth to overcome its “banishment” from the heavens and to cast off its status as “the sump where the universe’s filth and ephemera collect.”

If the Copernican cliché did not originate in the sixteenth century science of Copernicus and Galileo, where did it begin?  According to Danielson, it originated in the mid-seventeenth century satire of Cyrano de Bergerac and Bouvier de Fontenelle.  One of Fontelle’s characters even declared “I am extremely pleased with [Copernicus] ... for having humbled the vanity of mankind, who had usurped the first and best situation in the universe.” 

Clearly, if Danielson is correct, much of the contemporary rhetoric about the Copernican principle is just that, rhetoric—and rhetoric which has helped to fuel a warfare model of the relationship between science and religion.

            If the Copernican cliché can be challenged, what’s next?  According to Gerald B. Cleaver, nothing, or better said, nothingness.  According to Cleaver, head of the Early Universe Cosmology and Strings Group at Baylor University, recent advances in M-theory (the “enhancement of superstring theory”) have challenged the idea of an initial singularity before the big bang.  While such a challenge may elicit little more than a perplexed shrug from non-physicists, for many theistic physicists, the initial singularity represents the nothing (nihilo) of the Augustinian creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo).

Because the initial singularity is defined in traditional big bang cosmology as the space-time point in which the volume of our three dimensional space approaches zero and because the normal laws of physics did not exist within this theoretical singularity, many theistic physicists have identified this singularity with nothingness (or its practical equivalent).  Although a sincere Christian believer, Cleaver does not feign to be professional theologian.  Instead as a professional physicist, Cleaver uses scientific discoveries to deepen theological understandings.  If string theory is correct, however, he argues that “none of the spatial directions could ever have been smaller than string scale (10^(-33) cm).”  No nothingness.  Granted, string scale is plenty small, 200 quintillion times smaller than the diameter of the nucleus of an atom.  Still, it’s not “nothing” and the loss of nothing will really be something among scientists and theologians who have used the initial singularity for apologetic purposes.

            Cleaver, in characteristically modest fashion, readily admits that string theory remains “unproven.”  Even though he recites the complex formulas of M-theory with the zeal of an evangelist and the enchantment of a child at play, he figures that it will take string theorists about 20 years to develop the math needed for a mathematical proof (or refutation) of string theory.  Why then is Cleaver so excited about string theory?  Because according to Cleaver, string theory is essentially a theory of everything.  It fills in the gaps within existing physical and cosmological models by providing a unified explanation of all four forces and matter particles and by developing a deeper understanding of nature of space-time and gravity.  For Cleaver, it also has the aesthetic advantage of presenting our universe with “a simplicity, order and beauty never before imagined,” while simultaneously providing for complexity of universe.

Cleaver says that M-theory shows us both that there is “more to our universe than we ever dreamed of.”  And, who knows, maybe in twenty years or so, we’ll have some definitive word on whether or not a theory of everything really can do away with nothing.

In addition to its annual meeting, the American Scientific Affiliation publishes a peer-reviewed journal, Perspectives on Science and the Christian Faith.  Full membership is limited to those who hold degrees in science (broadly conceived), philosophy or religion, but associate membership is open to anyone.  New members are always welcome.  Further information on this meeting, future meetings and membership are available at www.asa3.org.

Thomas E. Phillips is associate professor of New Testament and Greek at Colorado Christian University in Lakewood, CO.