From: Phillip E Johnson, INTERNET:philjohn@uclink.berkeley.edu
TO: John W. Burgeson, 73531,1501
DATE: 12/5/95 11:27 AM
RE: Week 6
Phillip E. Johnson
Sixth Week: The Brains in Spain
Sunday-Tuesday, Oct. 22-24, Leon. I was met at the Madrid Airport
by Dr. (of Ophthalmology) Antonio Martinez and his American wife
Sara, a most attractive, charming, and ever-considerate couple who
drove me the 4 hours to Leon in the North of Spain. Antonio became
a Christian as a medical student at Santiago University as a result
of missionary work by Jack and Joann Blanch of the Navigators, who
now live in Oakland. The Blanch's son Daniel is now a visiting
professor of political science and a Christian worker at Santiago.
Daniel came to Leon with his wife, baby daughter, and New Zealand
visitor Allen for the duration of my visit. Some months ago Joanna
Blanch had sent tapes of my lectures to Antonio and Daniel, and
hearing them inspired Antonio to send me a fax inviting me to Leon.
Within a 2-week period last spring I received Antonio's fax, the
invitation to the Tecnhociencia Conference in Madrid, and an email
message from Santiago Escuain in Barcelona, notifying me that his
Spanish translation of *Darwin on Trial* was about to be published.
This combination of events convinced me I ought to go to Spain.
After the long drive through the flat and dry country of
central Spain, Antonio and Sarah took me to the Hotel San Marcos in
the City Center, the best hotel in town. There I stayed in a suite
normally used by royalty and ambassadors, with a living room big
enough for a game of basketball, replete with carved doors and
antique furniture. We held a press conference in the early
afternoon, with 3 newspapers and TV represented. Leon is a bit out
of the way to attract international visitors of notoriety, so I got
a lot of attention in the press, including a half hour television
interview later. After the press conference, Antonio and Sara left
me at the hotel to go to bed while they headed back to Madrid to
meet Kathie's flight at 6:15 AM the next morning. Due to a
mechanical breakdown, Kathie's flight from San Francisco had missed
the international connection at Washington/Dulles, and I had had to
go on without her. Antonio and Sara took all this in stride.
Monday morning I was taken for breakfast with the leadership
of the single Evangelical Christian Church in Leon, where I
conversed as much as the language problems allowed with the pastor
and church leaders. Spain is pretty much a religious vacuum now
that the Catholic church has lost its hold; most people assume an
indifferent agnosticism. The small Evangelical movement is
thinking about ways to reach people whose history understandably
leads them to think of Christianity as an oppressive institution
rather than as a liberating Gospel. When I returned to the hotel
in the late morning Kathie was already there, drooping from the
all-night flight but refusing to be left out of anything. So after
a nap she went out with me and our hosts for the late (3:00 PM)
Spanish lunch, then napped again before my "afternoon" (8:00 PM)
lecture. Then there was a banquet hosted by the Collegio Medico of
Leon at a restaurant until well after midnight.
The lecture itself Monday evening was quite a success. It was
sponsored by the medical society, the Darwinist fundamentalists
having blocked any appearance at the University. This was the
inaugural lecture in the new medical auditorium, seating around
200, which was absolutely jammed with people standing in the
aisles, etc. Simultaneous translation was provided by Stuart Park,
an English Intervarsity leader in Spain who teaches literature at
Vallodolid. In addition to doing a superb job as translator,
Stuart showed in the dinner conversation that he is an admirably
clear thinker. The reaction from the Spanish audience was
enthusiastic, except for hostile questions from two of the
university's Darwinists, one an anthropologist who was formerly
Rector of the University but who was too sarcastic to be coherent.
The rest of the audience was highly supportive, and purchased many
autographed copies of the Spanish edition of DOT. Anti-Darwinism
is now a hit with the medical profession in Leon, which can
consider itself culturally one-up on the reactionary biologists.
Tuesday was devoted to a television interview, sight-seeing, and a
late lunch in an underground "cave" -- a former wine cellar of a
former noble family. Leon has a beautiful Cathedral (in need of
repair), but is not in general a tourist attraction.
Wednesday-Thursday, Oct. 25-26, Madrid. Antonio and Sara picked us
up at the hotel at 6:00 AM to drive to Madrid for the morning
session of the Tecnhociencia Conference (TC). This was the 2d day
of the Conference, the first day involving Spanish scientists
talking about Cosmology. To put it in a nutshell, the TC was
really something, in itself very much worth the exhausting trip to
Spain.
The TC is the project of a Spanish group called IUVE (Youth),
a volunteer organization which puts on science conferences for
students with a grant from an electrical corporation called Endesa.
The TC is managed by students; Sr. Abellan, the leader, is a law
student. The name symbolizes tecn (technology) ho (hombre, i.e.,
man) and ciencia (science). The idea is that human concerns should
be at the center of science and technology. Some people in Europe
sympathetic to the creationist cause (esp philosopher Dominique
Tassot of France and Peter Wilders of Monaco) persuaded the student
leaders of IUVE to center their conference around the
creation/evolution problem, and to invite me as well as European
supporters of creation, particularly including French geologist Guy
Berthault and Polish geneticist Marciej Giertych. The publicity
posters for the Conference stated the theme as "The limits of
Science," and continued with this teaser: "The evolution of man,
the origin of life... Was Darwin right? The best specialists
question theories we take for granted." The TC volunteers were
elated that the attendance at the conference (held in a big tent on
the university campus) was overflowing, presumably due to the
controversial topic.
The Wednesday session started with Guy Berthault and his video
of experiments with models showing the laying down of geological
strata by water turbulence and sorting, evidence which if accepted
challenges the whole uniformitarian tradition of interpreting the
geological column. That was a warm-up to the main event (from
11:00 to 2:00, the Spanish morning), which began with an
interminable boring lecture on the entire history of the universe
(titled "From Hydrogen to Man") from Joan (pronounced Juan, a
male) Oro, a Spaniard at the University of Houston who often
appears in the Spanish media as an authority on evolution. This
was supplemented by some pompous pronouncements from the Chairman
of the meeting, the President of the Spanish Royal Academy.
When these two bores finally finished, we had more interesting
brief lectures from Stanley Miller of Miller-Urey experiment fame,
the father of modern chemical evolution theory, and from Nobel
Laureate biochemist Christian de Duve, author of the recent book
*Vital Dust.* Miller gave a brief talk on prebiotic chemistry,
assuming throughout his materialist view that cracking the problem
of the origin of life simply *means* finding how the chemical
ingredients were synthesized in the prebiotic soup. He presented
the Oparin paradigm and the RNA-world scenario without mention of
rival theories, the discrediting of the essential reducing
atmosphere, etc. He is unperturbed by the brief time available for
chemical evolution, saying that the whole job could have been done
inside 10 million years. He ended by acknowledging 3 central
problems: (1) "What was the precursor to the ribose-phosphate
backbone of RNA?" (since attempts to establish synthesis of the
backbone have failed). Instead of being discouraged, Miller
predicts that the other steps will fall into place once this
problem is cracked. (2) What chemical bases were used for the RNA
nucleotides?; and (3) What was the power source?, since the
hypothesized chemical properties are "uphill." Miller ignores
criticism of the essential "reducing atmosphere" assumption, his
logic being that the best evidence for the existence of the
reducing atmosphere is that without it the necessary prebiotic
chemical would not have been synthesized and life would not have
come into existence.
Speaking in flawless English, De Duve said that he disagreed
with Monod's view that life is a freak of chance, and with the view
of Simpson-Mayr-Gould that the evolution of human consciousness is
an accident unlikely to be repeated. Why? The first reason De
Duve gave was that "effective" (adaptive?) mutations are so
unusual. The missing piece in the logic seemed to be that, since
man evolved by Darwinian means, these effective mutations must have
come along with surprising frequency, indicating a deterministic
process. His main point is that chemical reactions are in general
deterministic; they produce the same results every time.
Therefore, life is almost bound to arise given a planet with the
right conditions, and it is in the nature of life to beget
intelligence, and so "meaning is to be found in the structure of
the universe."
The chairman aptly commented that "we are wandering between
science and philosophy." A Spanish philosopher of science named
Jose Petit Sulla added some remarks which, although nearly
incoherent, seemed to say that scientists ought to tell how they
know all these things they are claiming rather than to dogmatize so
much in language ordinary people can't understand. Then there was
a question period, in which some of my friends challenged the
scientific materialists. I skipped out due to hunger and fatigue,
and had a driver take Kathie and me to our tiny hotel room in
downtown Madrid, a big come-down from the palace we had in Leon.
We spent the rest of the day eating, sleeping, and preparing my
detailed outline (for the use of the simultaneous translators).
Thursday was the main event. The two primary speakers were
myself and Professor of Paleontology Estoquoio Molina of Zaragosa
University, substituting for Francisco Ayala who withdrew at the
last minute. The organizers had Molina going first, which would
have been fine except that he ignored the time limits and lectured
at excessive length on his work with foraminifera (sea plankton
microfossils), which had nothing much to do with the main subject.
This led the organizers to ask me to finish my talk early so we
could get to the panel debate! I have to say that this kind of
self-indulgent rudeness is characteristic of academic speakers
generally, not just Darwinists. I was able to make enough of my
usual main points to take the high ground, however.
In the ensuing panel discussion, Giertych led off with an
excellent talk about his own experience as a plant population
geneticist. He had always thought the evidence for evolution came
from paleontology, but learned from his daughter's schooling that
it supposedly comes from population genetics! Giertych explained
with great dignity and clarity in English that population
variations are part of a fundamentally stable process that
preserves things as they are, that breeding works by *reducing* the
total genetic information available in the segregated population,
and that mutations are inherently destructive of genetic
information. Later I was given 10 minutes to explain the concept
of genetic information and why it is not reducible to matter. In
between there were some almost hysterical statements by Molina and
a philosopher of science named Alvar-Gonzalez. Molina used his
time and more to read at top speed and top volume a paper
denouncing the ICR and the Jehovah's Witnesses, ignoring requests
from the moderator to stop this bizarre tirade. Questions from the
audience were all over the place, as might be expected. The entire
experience was chaotic, but ultimately very satisfying. The
Darwinists were reduced to extremely unprofessional behavior, and
were clearly on the defensive and even panicky. Their arguments
were mostly ad hominem and uncomprehending. The creation advocates
spoke with dignity and stuck to evidence and logic. No wonder
Ayala decided to stay home.
Following the program there was an excellent steak lunch
served on the spot for the speakers. I sat next to my translator
Santiago Escuain and his brother, and directly across from Stanley
Miller and Stanley Jaki. I had noticed that Miller had watched me
from the front row while I was speaking, his face showing that he
was listening intently although not of course in agreement. I
tried to keep the conversation to non-controversial subjects, but
after some preliminaries Miller began to ask about my position. He
was not hostile but seemed genuinely puzzled about how a person
like me could possibly dispute the things he takes for granted.
(Miller and I continued the conversation at breakfast the next
morning in our hotel, so I am combining the two conversations in
this brief summary.)
Miller suggested at first that my problem was a lack of
familiarity with the technical details, but it quickly became
apparent that he was unfamiliar with the concept of information.
His unfamiliarity with the difference between matter and
information led him into some howlers. He thought that the PCR
creates DNA (it copies DNA sequences already there), and that gene
duplication doubles the information content by copying a gene! I
pointed out that two copies of Hamlet do not contain twice as much
information as one copy, a concept that he seemed never to have
encountered before. I have never seen a more impressive instance
of an intelligent mind being confined by a narrow environment, in
this case a culture of chemistry where no one questions
materialism. Miller is clearly a decent fellow, and I was working
hard to keep him in the conversation and going in the right
direction, so things got more and more friendly. He agreed to read
*DOT,* and comment on it, and told me about his plan to provide
training for chemistry students in forensic work in the wake of the
O.J. trial disaster. I put on my criminal law professor hat and
promised to help him with this project. We agreed to meet again
when the opportunity arises. If I am not mistaken, a basis for
friendship seemed to have been formed -- although of course his
materialism goes very deep as it is the basis for all he has done.
After lunch,Kathie and I went with a group on a tour of the
state apartments of the royal palace, and then to the hotel for a
brief rest before being taken to the apartment of Don Antonio
Garrigues for dinner. This 92-year old Spanish grandee was
Ambassador to Washington in the Kennedy Presidency, having become
a friend of the Kennedy's because the older brother Joe stayed with
him and his American wife in Madrid not long before Joe's death.
After John Kennedy's death he became Ambassador to the Vatican, and
he is now a senior statesman in opposition to the socialist
government and a friend of Antonio Martinez (who just writes to
people if he admires them and strikes up a friendship somehow).
Don Antonio is an admirer of my work but had to miss the TC session
this morning because he was off with the King dedicating some new
factory. He is most alert and energetic, and gave us a fine dinner
party. We were completely exhausted when the evening ended at the
customary late hour, and went back to our hotel on the subway after
saying goodbyes to Antonio and Sara Martinez, who were on their way
back to Leon to attend to his medical practice the next morning.
Saturday after a long breakfast conversation with Stanley
Miller we were taken in hand by Esteban (Steve) Rodemann, the
American missionary pastor of a Madrid Evangelical Church, who
moved us to a "hostal" which the church uses for visitors. This
had a rather small room but a superb location in the old quarter of
the City, perfect for walking tours. We spent most of Friday and
Saturday seeing the sights, especially the museums and plentiful
night life. Saturday night I spoke to a gathering of the
Evangelicals of Madrid that crammed every inch of Steve's small
church. Santiago Escuain was there to translate, and his brother
Jordi added some comments about what had happened at the
Tecnhociencia Conference.
The Evangelical community of Madrid is very small as a
percentage of the population, but could be quite significant in
Spain's future religious development. There is a religious vacuum
in Spain because of the general rejection of the country's
oppressive religious tradition. There does not seem to be much of
a Catholic renewal movement yet, but when it comes it will probably
have to borrow from the theology and method of the Evangelicals,
who are beginning to make a substantial penetration.
This report was finished early Sunday morning, before we leave
for a two-hour service and subsequent lunch at the church which is
hosting us. Then it is on to Barcelona Monday, with a flight back
to the USA (Atlanta) on Wednesday.