At 01:18 PM 8/28/97 -0600, Terry Gray wrote:
>I was at our local Christian bookstore the other night and stumbled on Phil
>Johnson's new book
I can only hope not too many young people stumble on account of
it.
Seriously, I think anyone responsible for teaching or advising
young people owes it to them to put aside their own personal
preferences and give as many options as possible.
Let's see what the options are according to Phil:
========
The culture tells us that we have two alternatives. We can accept
"evolution" as the scientists understand the term, which means that
we accept naturalism and materialism (even if we pretend otherwise).
Alternatively, we can reject evolution--in which case Microphone
Man will stereotype us as premodern fundamentalists who insist on
every detail of Genesis regardless of the evidence. Should we fight,
or should we accommodate on the best terms we can get from the
materialists? <p. 86,87>
========
Apart from the absurdity of having only these two alternatives
we have this really odd notion that we should let our culture
dictate to us what our options are. Is this really the message
we want to give to young people?
[...]
TG:==
>Reading Phil Johnson is maddening. I agree with 95% of what I read. His
>assessment of the big picture is correct and his call to Christians to step
>in the modern debate with the big picture in view is, I think, the right
>strategy. At one point he even calls us theists to common posture against
>the materialist/modernists/post-modernists governing the intellectual life
>of our age. (p. 92-93) "First, I wanted to make it possible to question
>naturalistic assumptions in the secular academic community. Second, I
>wanted to redefine what is at issue in the creation-evolution controversy
>so that Christians, and other believers in God, could find common ground in
>the most fundamental issue--the reality of God as our true Creator....What
>all these should agree on is that God--not some purposeless material
>process--is our true Creator. Given that we inhabit a culture whose
>intellectual leaders deny this fundamental fact, we should unite our
>energies to affirm the reality of God. After we have had that postive
>experience of unity and affirmation, we may be able to talk about the
>remaining points of disagreement with renewed goodwill." I for one am very
>sympathetic with these goals.
>
>However, Phil has excluded some of us from the discussion. I agree with
>95% of what he says, but the 5% is what excludes us. We agree on the big
>picture, but we disagree with some of the detailed criticisms of evolution
>and the inclusion of the intelligent design claim as an essential plank in
>the big picture. We are simply labelled as accommodationists. This
>exclusion occurs several times in the book--perhaps most pointedly in the
>first chapter where Johnson closes with these words:
>
>"I therefore put the following simple proposition on the table for
>discussion: God is our true Creator. I am not speaking of a God who is
>known only by faith and is invisible to reason, or who acted undetectably
>behind some naturalistic evolutionary process that was to all appearances
>mindless and purposeless. That kind of talk is about the human
>imagination, not the reality of God. I speak of a God who acted openly and
>who left his fingerprints all over the evidence."
>
Phil seems to be getting narrower and narrower as time goes by. At
times he seems to be open to all theists and to consider anyone
who believes God is creator as a creationist. Now its clear that
what he means by theism is "meaninglful" theism where he, as high
priest, gets to define what meaningful is.
I'm a theist and also a conservative Christian yet I cannot
accept the theological position Phil paints above.
[...]
TG:==
>
>I also want to call attention to an error that Johnson and Behe commit in
>criticizing Richard Dawkins (and Elliot Sobol). It's a fairly minor
>discussion but, according to my conversations with some of the principals
>involved, is extremely irritating to them and gets in their way of hearing
>the arguments. The discussion in Johnson is on p. 74 and 75. Dawkins
>discusses how long it would a random process to generate the phrase
>"tobeornottobe" or "methinksitisaweasel" or some other intelligent phrase.
>Dawkins argues that if a selection mechanism is present so that the correct
>letter is kept when the random process finds it, that the correct phrase is
>generated very rapidly vs. in the infinite length of time required by the
>total random process. Johnson and Behe rightly point out that the process
>as described it both teleological and intelligently designed. However, the
>example is NOT to describe how mutation and selection occurred in Darwinian
>evolution BUT to show the power of a mutation/selection process compared to
>a random process. Let's aim our baloney detectors in all directions!
>
Yes, this seems to me to be just plain dishonest. Johnson acts like
he's uncovered some tremendous blunder yet the problems with
the model that Johnson reveals are clearly stated by Dawkins himself.
Johnson even states "Richard Dawkins actually uses examples like this
to illustrate the creative power of natural selection ..."
which simply is not true. Dawkins states explicitly that he's
illustrating cumulative selection and he states explicitly that
he is *not* illustrating natural selection.
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Applied Mechanics
The Ohio State University
"All kinds of private metaphysics and theology have
grown like weeds in the garden of thermodynamics"
-- E. H. Hiebert