Re: "Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds" by Phillip E. Johnson
David Campbell (bivalve@mailserv0.isis.unc.edu)
Fri, 29 Aug 1997 14:14:02 -0400>
>Finally, Phil Johnson states something in writing that I do not recall him
>stating so obviously in the past. (p. 94, 95) "Granted that the materialist
>mechanism has to be discarded, what does this imply for what scientists
>call the "fact of evolution," the concept that all organisms share a common
>ancestor? Universal common ancestry is as much a product of materialist
>philosophy as is the mutation/selection mechanism....Put aside the
>materialism, however, and the common ancestry thesis is as dubious as the
>Darwinian mechanism." It's nice to hear him come clean on this one. Some
>of us, while maybe critical of Darwinism as a mechanism for
>macroevolutionary change and certainly critical of materialism and
>naturalism (and thus agree with Johnson on these points), have no doubts
>that the overwhelming indication of the evidence is that common ancestry is
>true and that some kind of macroevolution did occur. For him to deny this
>says a lot about our disagreement and suggests that being right on the big
>story can blind you to the details as much as being wrong on the big story.
>
It's interesting in this regard that Behe accepts common descent and a lot
of "natural" evolution as a possibility. My impression from Moreland (ed.)
Creation Hypothesis [which I have not yet finished] is that many who
identify themselves with "Intelligent Design" are a priori opposed to
evolution; e.g., Moreland identifies himself as a Platonist and evolution
is not Platonic.
David Campbell