May I take the opportunity to wish all Reflectorites a safe, healthy
and happy Christmas-New Year.
On Mon, 22 Dec 1997 16:33:49 -0800 (PST), Greg Billock wrote:
GB>Hi. Did anyone see the 'Firing Line' TV show a couple of days
>ago? I guess Behe, Johnson, and Berlinski were on it, debating
>with several folks from the opposing side. Any reflections?
>Impressions?
I doubt if this will ever be shown in Australia. But my immediate
impression was that it is highly significant that the debate was shown
at all. In his tapes Phil Johnson always says that it doesn't matter
about winning, but his main goal is getting the issues out of the
bottom drawer and onto the table.
On Mon, 22 Dec 1997 17:03:39 -0800, Cliff Lundberg wrote:
[...]
CL>Same old stuff. Behe and Berlinski were not as impressive or as
>much fun as I'd expected. The British philosopher at least had some
>perspective and good will. Mainly I was reflecting on how important
>are style, strength, and preparation, in these things. If Johnson
>had something original going for himself in biology, he's be quite
>a figure.
It might be the "same old stuff" to those of us who are familiar with
the creation/evolution issues. But my experience is that the average
person (including the average Christian), is not very well aware of the
issues. I regarded myself as fairly well informed on theology and
science, but as a Christian layman, for 20 years I thought that
evolution was probably true and was the means God used to create. I
was amazed when I ventured into a Fidonet Creation vs Evolution
echo and saw quotes from leading evolutionists that there were major
problems with evolution. If this debate helps to wake up the public
that there are immense scientific problems with evolution (especially
the popular `blind watchmaker' paradigm which purports to dispense
with the Creator), then it will have been successful.
CL>There's a problem of levels--materialistic thinking is a subset of
>religious thinking. Should evolutionary biologists recognize
>creationism? Why should they? It has no connection to their science.
I doubt if very many materialists think that "materialistic thinking
is a subset of religious thinking"! As Johnson points out, they
think (and have the cultural power to enforce it) that it's the other
way around:
"Likewise, the academic world regards Christian theism as an object
for study rather than as a participant in academic discourse...The
standards of academia discourage a professor who is teaching, say,
the history of Christianity from taking the position that Christianity
may be true. Such restrictions do not apply to advocates of other
viewpoints. Socialists teach socialism, and feminists teach women's
studies. As Marsden wrote in the Wall Street Journal (Dec. 22,
1993), "Many contemporary academics insist that the only
respectable place for religion in the academy is on the syllabus as an
object of study-where it may be subordinated to Western scientific
methods of analysis." (Phillip E. Johnson, "Shouting `Heresy' in the
Temple of Darwin", Christianity Today, October 24, 1994, p22)
On Mon, 22 Dec 1997 19:21:20 -0800, Hofmann, James wrote:
JH>Some comments on the debate:
>
>In general, I thought the "creationist" side was very poorly
>represented. Johnson and Behe apparently aren't accustomed to
>being challenged by well informed opponents. Eugenie Scott started
>off by refusing to let Johnson get away with his usual evolution =
>materialism line and he never recovered. Behe was equally lame and
>seldom even made an effort to respond to the challenges put to him.
>Berlinski was probably the most arrogant of the lot and as a
>mathematician apparently doesn't understand that doing scientific
>research is not the same thing as proving the Pythagorean theorem.
If Eugenie Scott conceded that evolution does not equal materialism,
then it sound to me that Johnson has succeded in his main point! But
it is a sham. The popular presentations of evolution continue to
depict it as a fully materialistic, purposeless natural process,
which does not need a Designer. Consider this statement by Dawkins'
protege Helena Cronin in a recent issue of TIME:
"All this apparent design has come about without a designer. No
purpose, no goals, no blueprints. Natural selection is simply about
genes replicating themselves down the generations. Genes that build
bodies that do what's needed-seeing, running, digesting, mating-get
replicated; and those that don't, don't. All the more wondrous, then,
to discover what natural selection has achieved with human nature."
(Cronin H., "The Evolution of Evolution", TIME, Summer 1997/98,
p80)
Will Eugenie Scott or the National Academy of Science write to the
Editor of TIME and correct this unsubstantiated assertion that "All
this apparent design has come about without a designer"? I doubt it.
JH>What I found intriguing about the whole affair was that every one
>of the "evolution" side distanced themselves from Dawkins' extreme
>position. Each of them seemed quite willing to concede that scientific
>research does not and cannot address the question of whether or not
>descent with modification is directed and controlled by a diety. In
>light of this, Miller (I believe) even asked Buckley why he was sitting
>on the "creationist" side of the table. It was sad to watch Buckley
>fumble about for an answer, particularly when he had no response to
>Miller's well chosen quotation from Pope John Paul II's Oct 1996 address
>on evolution.
If Johnson has helped marginalise Dawkins' position as "extreme" then
again he has succeeded in his main point. But Dawkins is not all
that extreme-he represents classical Neo-Darwinism which is taught in
all the biology textbooks, and has the support of such eminent
Neo-Darwinists as Maynard Smith, George C. Williams and William
Hamilton. But Gould has successfully portrayed Dawkins as an
ultra-Darwinist, to make his own extreme Darwinist position appear
orthodox. In any event, as Cronin's quote above shows, Dawkins'
`blind watchmaker' Neo-Darwinism is the dominant view presented to
the public as fact, which implictly or explicitly purports to get rid
of the Creator. If Dawkin's `blind watchmaker' evolution is
abandoned, then materialistic science would have no workable theory
for the build-up of life's complex design:
"Cumulative selection, by slow and gradual degrees, is the
explanation, the only workable explanation that has ever been
proposed, for the existence of life's complex design...However
improbable a large-scale change may be, smaller changes are less
improbable. And provided we postulate a sufficiently large series of
sufficiently finely graded intermediates, we shall be able to derive
anything from anything else, without invoking astronomical
improbabilities." (Dawkins R., "The Blind Watchmaker", 1991, p318).
Gould's Punctuated Equilibria's Species Selection does not even
address this design problem, let alone solve it, as Dawkins points
out:
"As I said at the beginning of this chapter, what I mainly want a
theory of evolution to do is explain complex, well-designed
mechanisms like hearts, hands, eyes and echolocation. Nobody, not
even the most ardent species selectionist, thinks that species
selection can do this." (Dawkins R., "The Blind Watchmaker", 1991,
p265)
For this reason, materialists will not, indeed cannot, abandon the
blind watchmaker - he is essential to their explaining away design.
He allegedly did this in 1859 by providing an alternative to Paley's
Divine Watchmaker. Even this Swinburne has shown to be without
real force, by a simple reformulation:
"We can reconstruct the argument from spatial order [Paley's
Watchmaker] as follows. We see around us animals and plants,
intricate examples of spatial order in the ways which Paley set out,
similar to machines of the kind which men make. We know that these
animals and plants have evolved by natural processes from inorganic
matter. But clearly this evolution can only have taken place, given
certain special natural laws. These are first, the chemical laws
stating how under certain circumstances inorganic molecules combine
to make organic ones and organic ones combine to make organisms. And
secondly, there are the biological laws of evolution stating how
organisms have very many offspring, some of which vary in one or more
characteristics from their parents, and how some of these
characteristics are passed on to most offspring, from which it
follows that, given shortage of food and other environmental needs,
there will be competition for survival, in which the fittest will
survive. Among organisms very well fitted for survival will be
organisms of such complex and subtle construction as to allow easy
adaptation to a changing environment. These organisms will evince
great spatial order. So the laws of nature are such as, under
certain circumstances, to give rise to striking examples of spatial
order similar to the machines which men make. Nature, that is, is a
machine-making machine. In the twentieth century men make not only
machines, but machine making machines. They may therefore naturally
infer from nature which produces animals and plants, to a creator of
nature similar to men who make machine-making machines." (Swinburne
R., "The Existence of God", 1991, pp135-136)
Therefore without the blind watchmaker, evolution as an ultimate
explanation of design, would be back to pre-Darwinian days, and
having to face up to (an updated) Paley with a vengeance!
JH>The general impression I came away with was that each member of the
>"creationist" side has carved out a receptive niche within various
>Christian communities and they are unwilling to sincerely engage the
>counter evidence to their positions.
This may be true of YEC, but it is not true of Johnson. He is reaching
across a wide range of creationists. Check out the article in
http://www.worldmag.com/world/issue/11-22-97/cover_1.as which
reveals that he is becoming very popular among Southern Baptists.
JH>These comments are of course very schematic and much more can be
>said. I found the debate extremely entertaining and it was carried out
>on a much higher level than usually takes place.
I am glad at least one reflectorite had a positive impression of the
show! I suspect how one judges creationist's performance depends on
one's prior point of view and expectations.
On Tue, 23 Dec 1997 00:00:05 -0600, Glenn Morton wrote:
GM>The thing that saddened me was that the Christians offered NO explanation
>for why the facts are as they are. They simply said that evolution couldn't
>be true. If we are going to beat the materialist side, we simply HAVE to
>offer a framework into which the facts of science can be placed. To offer
>no reason why the whale sequence is as it is, other than to say, as Johnson
>did, that I can quote a Science Magazine article against your evidence is a
>very weak position. Every issue in science has at least one critic
>including the inverse square law of gravitation. Why should the whale
>series be different?
>
>Christians need to develop a positive apologetic which explains what we
>find, not simply disagree with the other explanation.
I both agree and disagree with Glenn on this. I agree that
creationists will have to come up with a positive alternative
framework eventually. But I disagree that it has to be at this early
stage. Naturalistic evolution is self-destructing - witness Dawkins'
classical Neo- Darwinism being publicly disowned. Johnson has
repeatedly said on his tapes that it would be "premature" for him to
declare his personal position. Firstly, that would make his personal
position the issue rather than that of naturalistic evolution - which
is, after all, the public position taught as science in schools and
universities. Secondly, Johnson's emphasises on his tapes that his
aim is to unite the 90% of people who say on opinion polls that they
in some sense believe that God created living things, over against
the 10% who say that He didn't.
On Tue, 23 Dec 1997 00:26:29 -0500 (EST), Gordon Simons wrote:
[...]
GS>Suppose I were able to get a tape of the debate and were to show it to a
>well educated audience consisting of Christians who are largely uninformed
>about the issues, and the players in the debate. Would they benefit from
>the experience? If so, how? I should add that I am not particularly
>concerned with the issue of winning and losing, but would be concerned
>with whether it would be educational and edifying to Christians who might
>not be opposed to evolution.
It depends on what "benefit" to Christians is *truth*. If
naturalistic evolution is false (at least in its prime claim of being
able to account for design without a Designer), and God did in fact
intervene supernaturally at strategic points in biological history to
bring about new designs, don't you think that truth should be of some
"benefit" to Christians? If naturalistic evolution loses its
hegemony to: a) suppress knowledge of the major difficulties of
Neo-Darwinian theory; b) make unsupported claims of naturalistic
evolution's efficacy; and c) prevent some broad form of theism/
intelligent design being presented as an alternative worldview in
schools and universities, don't you think this will be of some
"benefit" to Christians in apologetics and evangelism?
On Tue, 23 Dec 1997 00:03:33 -0800, Hofmann, James wrote:
[...]
JH>In general, I think your intended audience would come away with an
>unfortunate misperception that the "Christian" perspective on the
>"creationist" side of the debate is peculiarly defensive and dogmatic.
>This would be unfortunate since there are so many Christians who are
>more even handed in their efforts to reconcile faith and reason.
Hmmm. I didn't see the show and I guess it is always possible for
Johnson to have a bad day. But I have numerous audio tapes and one
video of Johnson in action before a hostile university audience at UC
Irvine. He is charming and persuasive and some members of the
audience who asked hostile questions clearly were disarmed by his
open and friendly manner in reply.
JH>On the other hand, your audience would be exposed to a fairly
>representative statement of how "evolutionists" see the issue. The
>debaters for the "evolution" side emphasized that evolutionary theory,
>contrary to what Dawkins thinks, does not refute theism. Rather, it can
>be interpreted as yet another insight into a divinely guided process of
>creation.
These are important concessions, and represent milestones in
Johnson's long, hard campaign that he speaks about in his tapes. But
I am sure he rightly sees this as a type of scorched-earth policy by
the evolution side to deflect the rising tide of creationist
sentiment. The fact is that institutional science does not believe
that "evolutionary theory... can be interpreted" as a "divinely
guided process of creation", but rather as "an unsupervised,
impersonal...natural process" (National Association of Biology
Teachers, 1995 Statement on Teaching Evolution, in Johnson P.E.,
"Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds"p, 1997, p15)
It will only be when institutional science represented by National
Academies of Science, and science journals adopt a genuinely
even-handed policy and start publicly repudiating the atheistic
propaganda of evolutionary spokesmen like Dawkins, Gould, et. al.,
and lend their support to purging all science textbooks of
unsupported anti-theistic statements (positive and negative, explicit
and implicit), that Johnson will have reached his goal.
On Tue, 23 Dec 1997 10:10:43 -0600, Steve Clark wrote:
[...]
SC>The comments made by reflectorites who watched the debate were
>what I expected from the debate. Someone said that Johnson, Behe, et
>al., have carved a niche for themselves by finding a receptive
>audience. That has been my point all along. They (especially
>Johnson) do a good job against the extremist views of Dawkins, Sagan,
>et al. But, there are a number of us who see evolution as a good
>MECHANISTIC explanation (so far, at least) for the origins of diverse
>life forms, but who do not see this mechanistic explanation as either
>proving or refuting intelligent design. As Howard Van Till might
>say, having a mechanistic explanation for the fabrication of life on
>earth does not deny the existence of a designer. Design and assembly
>are different things and by knowing the process of assembly, we can,
>perhaps, understand a little better the nature of the designer.
Johnson would no doubt agree with much if not all of this. But his
consistent point is that this is not what "evolution" means in modern
science, as expressed by its most prominent spokesmen (eg. Dawkins,
Gould, et. al.). The whole thrust of mainstream evolutionary
apologetics since Darwin's day has to claim that "design has come
about without a designer. No purpose, no goals, no blueprints..."
(Cronin H., TIME, Summer 1997/98, p80).
On Tue, 23 Dec 1997 11:18:57 -0800 (PST), Greg Billock wrote:
GB>Thanks everyone for the reviews/comments.
>
>Do you think that this marks the beginning (or at least signals the
>beginning) of a new era in the creationist/evolutionist discussion?
>Those present on the 'creationist' side seem (to me at least) from
>the 'new generation'--that is, people more concerned with mechanism
>or 'intelligent input' into evolutionary processes than with whether
>the earth is 6000 years old or not. All seem to be at least "old-earth
>creationists", all seem to accept a long history for life on the
>planet, Behe, at least, seems to accept common ancestry. (Does
>Berlinski?)
I would suggest that in Winston Churchill's words, it is more like
"the end of the beginning"! Behe definitely does accept
common ancestry:
"For the record, I have no reason to doubt that the universe is the
billions of years old that physicists say it is. Further, I find the
idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor)
fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it..."
(Behe M.J., "Darwin's Black Box", 1996, pp5-6)
As for Berlinski, nowhere does he deny common ancestry but he
questions that it developed by a Darwinian mechanism.
GB>To those of you who have been to creation conferences recently,
>does this sound right? Is there a sea change away from the
>ICR-defined creationism of the seventies and eighties to a new
>'intelligent design' quasi-theistic-evolution-but-with-more-teeth
>standpoint? What is the reaction from ICR-style young-earth
>creationists to this development?
I am not an expert on the ICR, nor am I a YEC, but I do subscribe to
their Australian counterpart's journal Creation Ex-Nihilo and receive
their Newsletters. My impression is that having originally promoted
Johnson (with reservations), on the principle that "the enemy of
my enemy is my friend", they are now hardening their line and
regarding anyone who is not young-Earth as an evolutionist:
"When people accept the idea of life's arising in some primeval soup
over millions of years and changing from one form to another until
man appeared, then they are rejecting the Word of God and determining
'truth' for themselves. Ultimately, THIS IS WHAT EVOLUTION IS ALL
ABOUT: man's setting himself up as the authority and being the judge
of God's Word. Thus, any view that ultimately starts independently
of the revealed Word of God is really 'evolutionary thinking' ". (Ham
K., "What is Evolution?", Prayer News, Creation Science Foundation:
Brisbane, November 1996, pp1-2. Emphasis Ham's.)
This indicates to me that they have finally woken up that Johnson is
more dangerous to them than Dawkins. The ICR has a symbiotic
relationship with naturalistic evolutionists (each side regard the
other as its official opposition). When that mantle passes to
Johnson (if it has not already), then the ICR will have to play
second fiddle. Time will tell if they can adjust to it gracefully
and positively.
It should be pointed out that the young-earth dominance is a
comparativelpy recent phenomenon, as Hayward points out:
"It is only within the past couple of decades that the age of the
earth has become a subject for debate in English religious circles.
When was a young Bible-believing Christian around nineteen-fifty, the
matter was regarded as settled. There was only one creationist
society in Britain in those days, the Evolution Protest Movement, and
its leading members all accepted without question that the earth is
very old. I must have rubbed shoulders with hundreds of
ancient-creationists, but I only remember ever meeting one
recent-creationist before 1960. Young-earthists were as rare as
flat-earthists in Britain in those days." (Hayward A., "Creation and
Evolution", 1995, p69).
The same claim is made by Numbers in his authoritative study of
creationism (http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9304/noll.html)
What we are seeing then is the end of an aberrant period and a return
to the apologetically much stronger, traditional Christian old-earth
creationist position. With the problems that Darwinism is having, it
is not unreasonable to expect the 21st century to be a very
interesting time creation-evolution wise!
Happy Christmas.
Steve
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