From: Phillip E Johnson, INTERNET:philjohn@uclink.berkeley.edu
TO: John W. Burgeson, 73531,1501
DATE: 12/5/95 11:42 AM
RE: Week 7
Week 7
Phillip E. Johnson November 5, 1995
Seventh Week: Barcelona and Atlanta
Sunday/Monday/Tuesday, Oct. 29-31. In the morning we attended
the store-front evangelical church pastored by Esteban (Steve)
Rodemann, with his wife Nancy a missionary of many years standing
with CAM (Central American Mission). This is the same church where
I lectured the previous evening. It is impressively energetic and
bursting at the seams in the small quarters; more space will soon
be needed. Thereafter we had the mid-afternoon dinner at the
Rodemann apartment with some of the Americans in the area, a
Ghanaian family resident in Spain, and a Spanish geology student.
Just going to church and having lunch takes almost all day in
Spain. Kathie and I then went back for our siesta and did little
more except take an evening walk in the city. Late the next
morning Steve picked us up again to drive us to the airport for the
1-hour flight to Barcelona.
We were met at the Barcelona airport by David Andreu,
Chemistry Professor at Barcelona University. David took us for a
drive up to the hilltop Olympic site with its fine view of the city
before depositing us at our hotel in the old quarter of the city.
David is a leading member of GBU, the Spanish equivalent of
Intervarsity, and was our host for the day. Santiago Escuain, the
translator of *Darwin on Trial* and other writings by me, was to be
our host the next day. The relationship between GBU and the
Biblical creationists represented by Santiago is distant and even
frosty, although both groups wanted to sponsor my appearance.
David Andreu had been favorable impressed by DOT when it first
appeared, and the Barcelona GBU had also received a positive report
on the Leon lecture from Suart Park, my interpreter on that
occasion. One of my goals is to provide a way of approaching the
creation/evolution dispute that is not so divisive within the
Christian world, something that is plainly needed in Spain as well
as other parts of the world. Accordingly, I emphasized in both
Barcelona lectures the need to expose the materialistic and
naturalistic assumptions of Darwinism, and how it is those
philosophical assumptions rather than the empirical evidence that
generates and supports the Darwinian claim that the blind
watchmaker mechanism can account for the apparently designed
features of biology.
My Monday evening lecture was delivered at a large classroom
in the bustling law school building, the biology auditorium being
unavailable. David Andreu provided the translation (into Catalan,
not Spanish). The student audience (science faculty were invited
but did not attend) was enough to fill the room (150-200), and
attentive; there were plenty of good questions but little
controversy, except for a small group that wanted to discuss the
death penalty. Afterwards David and his lawyer wife Sylvia (who is
hoping to be appointed a judge) took us out to a sumptuous dinner
at a waterfront restaurant, proving (if any proof were needed),
that one can eat as well in Barcelona as just about anywhere on
earth. It was well past midnight when we got back to our hotel,
located in the city center directly across from the Cathedral,
which is particularly magnificent when floodlit at night. This
central location much facilitated walking tours, which Kathie had
considerably more time for than I did.
Tuesday morning Santiago took me for a long taxi ride out into
the country to the studios of the Spanish national television
network for a videotape interview. Spanish public TV makes one 15-
minute segment on Sunday morning available for non-Catholic
religious programming, at a time when most urban Spaniards are
probably sound asleep after the late hours they keep on Saturday
night. This slot is rotated among Protestants, Jews, and Moslems.
Santiago and I were interviewed by a pretty young woman and a man
of a certain age (i.e., my age) for the Protestant slot. The
expedition took just about all morning, after which Santiago took
us out for an early (1:00 PM) and very excellent lunch. Then it
was back to the hotel for a nap before the 6:00 PM lecture in the
small but attractive auditorium of the Association of Journalists.
The audience here was small (about 60, including Santiago's
Canadian wife and 6 delightful children), but the question period
was one of the best I've had, indicative of the amount of thought
that the conservative Evangelicals are putting into this question.
Then we walked with the Escuain family back to the hotel to say our
goodbyes before going to bed early in preparation for the early
morning flight Wednesday to Madrid and then back to the USA.
Wednesday/Sunday, Nov. 1-5. Our flight to Atlanta via Dulles was
uneventful, except for bad weather at Atlanta which delayed the
landing an hour. All weekend we stayed at an Atlanta motel and
had a restful time with occasional touring, familiarizing ourselves
with how much Atlanta has changed since we live here 13 years ago.
Much activity is visible in preparation for the upcoming Olympics,
and there is an amazing variety of stores and churches. Sunday we
attended the large suburban 1st Baptist Church of Snellville,
pastored by James Merritt, one of the rising preaching stars of the
Southern Baptist denomination (and a friend of my Dallas host Ed
Drake). After the service James and his wife Teresa took us out
for a buffet lunch while we discussed the future of the evolution
controversy and the ways in which we might inform other Southern
Baptist leaders about the approach I am taking to this issue.
Monday we move to Athens, for our week at the Universities of
Georgia and South Carolina.