If, on the issue of
evolution,
anyone deserves the title of a modern-day William Jennings Bryan, it is
probably law professor Phillip E. Johnson.
From the unlikely post of the
Johnson grew up in a
largely
secular home in
Johnson’s early
thirties became a
period of disillusionment. His wife left
him to raise the kids while she moved on to pursue a career in
“artistic
politics.” He found his academic career boring and shallow, and his
“nominal
agnosticism” left him feeling unfulfilled.
Johnson knew he
needed centering,
at he found it in his conversion to Christianity at the age of 38. He married his present wife, Kathie, and
their experiences at the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley became
an
increasingly important part of their lives.
Johnson’s “evolution”
made him
increasingly skeptical of academic culture.
Everywhere he looked, he found what academics were calling
“reasoning”
he saw as “rationalization.” “The
problem with rationalism,” as Johnson put it, “is that it isn’t
rational.” The premises that academics
operate from are
a matter of choice—and to Johnson’s mind, in many cases the choice is
highly
suspect.
Eventually, Johnson’s
interest in
exposing suspect premises led him to evolution.
Johnson, by his own account, recognized that “if Darwinism is
true,
Christian metaphysics is fantasy.” He
felt compelled to test his Christian beliefs by taking a sabbatical in
What Johnson found as
he read Richard
Dawkins, Isaac Asimov, Stephen Jay Gould, and the other authors of
well-known
Darwinist books was, in his words, a “stunning” indifference to facts
and
reasoning that appeared to him “unscientific, illogical, and dishonest.”
In response, Johnson
shaped the
strategy that guides the current campaign against Darwinism. He is optimistic his forces will win back
control of the culture. He writes,
Darwinists “say they won that control in 1925 after the Scopes trial,
as
dramatized in Inherit the Wind, and that some people just
haven’t heard
the news. Their celebration may be
premature.” He sees pro-evolutionists as
“very worried” and “gaining practice in explaining away defeats rather
than
just in crowing over victories.”
Johnson calls his
recipe for victory
“the wedge strategy.” Part of the
strategy is a result of avoiding the sorts of “traps” Clarence Darrow
and other
defense attorneys set out in the Scopes trial.
He tells his supporters to focus on whether a Creator has to do
the
creating and avoid being drawn into other issues—as
In 1991, Johnson
published the
first of his three books attacking evolution,
The Scopes trial was,
for
Johnson, not a triumph of clear thinking over ignorance—but it was, he
acknowledges, “a public relations triumph” for evolution. He blames the
But Johnson reserves
his real
indignation for scientists. He clearly
is incensed with the way the scientific community has dismissed any and
all
suggestions that evolution is less than demonstrated fact.
According to him, facts are piling up on the
other side. He argues, for example, that
evidence suggests “DNA mutations do not create evolution in any
significant
sense.” He contends that the fossil
record shows a distinct lack of intermediate species and is
skeptical—as
Johnson’s most
controversial and
most interesting contention is that fully naturalistic evolution cannot
be
made—as most modernists think it can—compatible with theistic religion. In that sense, especially, Johnson has taken
up
In
Johnson’s view, both scientists and modernist theologians have
conspired to
paper over the basic incompatibility of scientific naturalism and
religion. He is disdainful of the
assertion of the National Academy of Science that there is no
“irreconcilable
conflict between religion and science”—at least science as most
scientists
imagine it. He sees more politics than
truth in paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould’s statement that evolutionary
biologists fall along “an entire spectrum of religious attitudes—from
devout
daily prayer and worship to resolute atheism.”
Johnson finds a
strange bedfellow
in Cornell professor William Provine who provocatively asserts that
persons who
cling to their religious beliefs while accepting evolutionary biology
“have to
check brains at the church-house door.” After participating together in
“a
friendly debate,” Johnson and Provine struck up an unusual friendship. Provine assigned Johnson’s Darwin on Trial
as reading for the 400 students in his course on evolutionary biology
at
Cornell, and asked them to write term papers responding to the
arguments
presented in the book. At Provine’s
invitation, Johnson flew from Berkeley to Ithaca to guest-lecture the
biology
class and meet with graduate students.
The event was so successful that Provine extended a similar
invitation
the next fall.
Johnson and Provine
share a
conviction that Darwinism removes the need for a creator God. Other prominent supporters of evolution admit
as much. Even Stephen Jay Gould, who
professes
that religion and science constitute “non-overlapping magisteria,”
concedes
that, after Darwin, it is clear that “no intervening spirit watches
lovingly
over the affairs of nature.” Richard
Dawkins described natural selection as “the blind watchmaker” that
constructs
without purpose, plan, or thought of the future. Stephen
Weinberg argues that science in
general must rule out supernatural forces to progress: “The only way
any sort
of science can proceed is to assume that there is no divine
intervention and to
see how far one can get with this assumption.”
As Johnson ruefully notes, with the help of Darwinism, science
can get
very far indeed.
Johnson thinks the
vast majority
of evolutionary biologists are atheists—as well they should be if they
take
their scientific beliefs seriously. The
lack of purposive principles in nature means that morality or ethics
are human
creations. As such, they might be useful
guideposts for maintaining an orderly and accommodating society, but
are no
more than that. Moreover, scientific
naturalism implies that our behavior is shaped by heredity and
environmental
factors and that free will—and the judgment that comes with it—is an
illusion. He also argues that the notion
of an afterlife, central to many religions, becomes nonsensical, once
the philosophy
of scientific naturalism is accepted. Concede all those things, Johnson
asserts, and the game is over.
“I do not think the
mind can
serve two masters,” Johnson declares. A
clear-thinking person must choose between naturalism and religion. Johnson admits that he does not know which is
true, only that only one can be true: “If the blind watchmaker thesis
is true,
then naturalism deserves to rule.”
Johnson makes it clear which master he has—either by a leap of
faith or
a deduction from the evidence— chosen.
Johnson carried his
fight for
open debate about evolution to Ohio in 2003.
He campaigned there for a state rule that allows public school
biology
teachers to make the case against, as well as for, evolution. Johnson toured the state, speaking to “large,
enthusiastic church crowds,” and offering seminars for interested
ministers. In the end, his efforts were
successful, and the Ohio State School Board adopted the controversial
rule in
October 2003.
The transcript of the
Scopes
trial, surprisingly, finds the defense making arguments that would seem
to
support, rather than undermine, the actions of the Ohio School Board.
Ohio’s decision to
authorize
teachers to present critiques of evolutionary theory left the National
Academy
of Sciences distressed. According to the
scientific organization, “Negative argumentation…is antithetical to the
scientific method.” Johnson called the
decision “a victory for the fact of divine creation and for
intellectual
integrity.” It is one more sign that, as
he sees it, “the tide of battle is at last turning.”
The “scientific triumphalists” now remind
Johnson of Napoleon’s army in Moscow: “They have no safe line of
retreat.”
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