From: Phillip E Johnson, INTERNET:philjohn@uclink.berkeley.edu
TO: John W. Burgeson, 73531,1501
DATE: 12/5/95 11:54 AM
RE: Week 8
Phillip E. Johnson November 12, 1995
Eighth Week: Georgia, South Carolina, Florida
Monday/Tuesday, Nov. 6-7, at the University of Georgia.
Kathie and I drove from Atlanta to our downtown Holiday Inn in
Athens in time for a 1:15 PM honors general science class. This
class of 20 or so undergraduates has 4 science professors
representing various disciplines; my particular host was Chemistry
Professor Darwin Smith. The class went almost two hours with a lot
of good questions from the students. I could hear the biology
professor telling the students during the break how wrong I was
about everything, but he was polite enough at the end and said how
useful it was to hear a different point of view. etc. This was the
only activity until my evening public lecture, in a very large
classroom which was packed with over 400. Despite considerable
trying our host Bill Hager of CLM was unable to arrange faculty
colloquia, but the turnout at both evening lectures was quite good
and it included a lot of faculty. After the lecture Kathie and I
had dinner at the home of History/Law School Professor Ed Larson
and his family, a long time friend who alternates semesters between
Seattle and Georgia. The next morning I spoke and took questions
at Ed's course on the history of science and religion, with several
faculty guests present. Then there was a lunch with Christian
faculty and guests and an extended question period, followed by my
usual nap and then the second evening lecture, "Can Science Know
the Mind of God?" Attendance was just a little lower than the
previous evening, still very respectable considering that there was
a competing lecture on campus by Greg Louganis.
Tuesday/Wednesday, Nov. 8-9, at the University of South
Carolina. Following a 1-hour radio talk show in the morning in
Athens, Kathie and I drove to Columbia in time for my afternoon
appointment with the University President, John Palms. Once we
started talking I remembered that we had known each other slightly
when Palms was Provost at Emory University when I was a visiting
professor there in 1982-83. I could still remember the difficulty
John had at Emory; the President at the time was a visionary who
tended to make commitments without working out the financial
consequences, leaving those to his Provost. John hasn't had an
easy situation at USC either. (Out here, USC does not mean what it
means in California.) The last President spent money recklessly
and is just about to go to prison for various scandals. John is a
Roman Catholic with a great interest in the science and philosophy
questions, and it was a pleasure to meet with a President who has
a genuine intellectual interest in the fundamental questions I am
raising. We had a fine talk and then I headed back to the downtown
hotel where Kathie and I were most comfortably housed, thanks to
our very considerate CLM host Phil Luther.
The schedule at USC involved the usual 2 evening lectures in
a large classroom. Attendance was not especially large, no more
than 300, but a substantial number of faculty came and the question
periods were good. Oddly, the questions at the first lecture on
Darwinism were mainly adversarial, whereas the questioners at the
U of Georgia that heard substantially the same lecture 2 nights
before had been mainly supportive. The 2d night audience was more
on my side, although the second lecture contains a more explicit
Christian message that might be expected to raise hackles. I was
introduced by faculty the second night by Education Professor Jim
Carper (see Chapter 9 of RITB), and the first night by a Professor
who is much involved in Rose Hill College, an experiment in Great
Books education rather like Thomas Aquinas College in California
but in the Greek Orthodox tradition. Jim Carper wasn't around much
during my visit because he is on leave as Education Advisor to the
Governor. Besides the public lectures I did a breakfast meeting
with local citizens, a law school faculty lunch colloquium on
Thursday, and an all-faculty colloquium Thursday afternoon. USC is
a very pleasant place to visit or probably to live near, with good
programs and friendly people.
Friday/Sunday, Nov. 10-12. Kathie and I got up long before
dawn to make a very early flight back to Atlanta and then down to
Southwestern Florida for the annual Founders Conference for Ravi
Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). For those who don't
know, Ravi Zacharias is an India-born Christian evangelist who is
having a tremendous impact with his campus speaking and related
books and tapes. He has a distinguished, white-haired appearance
and his speaking voice is a charming blend of India, England, and
North America. Ravi's is very strong on the intellectual issues,
and he is very much in agreement with the theistic realism position
I have been articulating. Ravi has a particular calling to speak
and preach to the secular universities. His present ministry got
its start when a businessman offered to pay for a conference to
attract potential supporters; this is the eleventh such conference,
still hosted by the same benefactor. The conference is held in a
different location every year. This year it was at the coastal
Registry Resort in Naples, with about 300 invited guests.
I was the opening speaker Friday afternoon, followed by Moody
Bible Institute President Joe Stowell Friday evening. Then the
superb English Baptist preacher Roy Clements spoke on Saturday
morning, Ravi himself spoke Saturday evening, and Chuck Colson came
on with a stirring windup Sunday morning. Roy Clements is even
busier than I am; he was en route from Denver and stayed only a few
hours with us because he had to preach at his own church in
Cambridge England Sunday morning. Chuck Colson, who lives in
Naples, was also on his way home from a tour. Chuck has continued
to be an enthusiastic and enormously valuable advocate for RITB.
The Conference was a wonderful experience, as I expected it to
be. The speakers complemented each other perfectly, and there were
always more interesting people to meet. I won't try to go into
more detail, since I am trying to complete this report on the
flight from Phlorida to Filadephia. For those who want the public
part of the experience in detail, the tapes will be available
through RZIM, and some of my comments will be on a video that will
be released in the fullness of time.
Two future undertakings of importance may come out of this
weekend. First, Ravi has been invited to go to a conference at
Wuhan University in China in May, and the invitation is extremely
interesting. It seems that a consortium of Chinese universities
wants to explore the relations between religion, science, and
culture, with a view to discovering a more satisfactory basis for
a social order than atheistic materialism. Does that sound like
something that might interest me? Ravi has invited me to join him.
If the Chinese authorities approve, we may bring the excellent
Chinese translation of DOT to the world's most populous nation, a
nation full of talented people with a profound experience of what
happens when you build a society on a materialist pseudoscience.
Second, a British guest, whose archaeologist daughter has an
office at Oxford near Richard Dawkins's, went away with a mission
to arrange a debate at the Oxford Union between Dawkins and myself.
This one is much more tentative than the first, but such a
confrontation is bound to occur in time, and perhaps the time may
be drawing near.
The aircraft has begun it's descent into Philadelphia; I speak
at the University of Delaware Monday.