On Thu, 16 Sep 1999 23:04:27 -0500, John E. Rylander wrote:
JR>Just a quick note (sorry if someone else has already posted this; I haven't
>seen it): the currently online issue of Books & Culture has a response by
>Philip Johnson to Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism,
>by Robert Pennock, who then responds to Johnson.
Thanks to John for posting this. Johnson's review is at:
http://www.christianity.net/bc/9B5/9B5030a.html and Pennock's response
is at: http://www.christianity.net/bc/9B5/9B5031.html.
JR>Frankly, I think both Johnson and Pennock each make some good points but
>also come across as polemical and sloppy, in ways characteristic of
>representatives of their respective positions. I expected a bit of rhetoric
>from Johnson, but was hopefully unfamiliar with Pennock, who is a
>philosopher. Oh well. Even so, I think Pennock did a better job.
>
>http://www.christianity.net/bc/current/#contents
As for Pennock doing "a better job", I disagree. The Editor of Books & Culture
even in the same issue took the unprecedented step of accusing Pennock of taking
"cheap shots" in his response to Johnson (see below). There is also, I understand,
in the print editiona letter by Bill Demski pointing out that Pennock had distorted what
Bill had said about TEs:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: Editor of Books & Culture
From: Bill Dembski
Re: Pennock's Convenient Distortion
Rob Pennock's misquote of me in the current Books & Culture (Sep/Oct 99, p.
31) is mischief in the making. He quotes me as writing that design
theorists "are no friends of theistic evolutionists." What I in fact wrote
is: "Design theorists are no friends of theistic evolution." (He got the
quote right in his book Tower of Babel, but not in his article for Books &
Culture).
It makes a huge difference whether one refuses friendship with an idea or
with a group of people. To refuse the former is a matter of personal
conscience and opinion. To refuse the latter signifies bigotry and
ill-will. As a design theorist I disagree with theistic evolution but value
theistic evolutionists not only as persons but also as dialogue partners.
Perhaps as an evolutionist himself, Pennock thinks the evolution of
"evolution" into "evolutionIST" represents a minor adaptive change. I
don't. I think it represents shoddy scholarship. Indeed, most intelligent
agents resist the evolution of their texts and like them to stay as they
were originally created.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I will post Johnson's review and Pennock's response in my next
upload.
Steve
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http://www.christianity.net/bc/9B5/9B5003.html
Books & Culture
Sep/Oct 1999
[...]
Thou Shalt Not Take Cheap Shots
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"Intellectum Vero Valde Ama" Greatly Love the Intellect -Augustine
In a lecture delivered at the University of Notre Dame in October 1998 for
the eighth annual national conference of the Lilly Fellows Program in the
Humanities and the Arts, Nicholas Wolterstorff sketched what might be
called an ethics of reading: "If the Christian is going to engage in that
practice of our common humanity which is called scholarship, then he is
thereby under obligation to honor his fellow participants by understanding
as well as he can how they are thinking and where, to put it colloquially,
they are `coming from.' " Wolterstorff adds that this is a point he makes to
his students "once a week" or so, and then he amplifies it:
Thou must not take cheap shots. Thou must not sit in judgment until thou
hast done thy best to understand. Thou must earn thy right to disagree.
Thou must conduct thyself as if Plato or Augustine, Clement or Tertullian,
were sitting across the table--the point being that it is much more difficult
(I don't say impossible) to dishonor someone to his face. Not only scholars
but all Christians engaged in the life of the mind should post these rough-
and-ready "commandments" in a prominent spot. (Wolterstorff's lecture,
entitled "Tertullian's Enduring Question," appears in The Cresset, Trinity
[June/July] 1999.)
Genuine engagement entails both an effort to internalize the arguments of
opposing viewpoints, understanding them from the inside, and an effort to
examine one's own position from the outside, testing it for weaknesses.
(These two necessary steps are represented, for example, in the Scholastic
method of disputatio, as practiced by Aquinas.) On both counts, most
arguments fail miserably, whether the subject is U.S. policy in Kosovo or
the best place to stack dirty dishes--in the sink, as some contend, or on the
counter? (The latter, of course, is the position endorsed by BOOKS &
CULTURE.)
One way to put it would be to say that many arguments are deeply flawed
by a lack of imagination--imagination that allows a person to step outside
herself, so to speak. Consider, for example, a comment made by the
philosopher Robert Pennock, author of Tower of Babel: The Evidence
Against the New Creationism (MIT Press), in his rejoinder to Phillip
Johnson in this issue (see p. 31). Pennock reports that when he gave an
advance copy of Johnson's article to his students, they noted--among other
flaws--the ways Johnson "substituted rhetoric for argument." This is odd
coming from a philosopher of Pennock's caliber, because it implies that
there is an easily distinguishable line between rhetoric and argument.
Surely, it seems, Pennock must be aware of the extent to which his own
argument in Tower of Babel incorporates a panoply of rhetorical strategies.
And these are not incidental, merely decorative, adding a final twist to an
argument already essentially clinched. On the contrary--and quite
unremarkably--rhetoric plays a crucial role in his project.
For example, Pennock repeatedly characterizes the "new creationists," and
in particular those who argue for intelligent design, in conspiratorial terms.
This tone is picked up in the dust-jacket copy and the endorsements as
well, as in these words from the prominent biologist Douglas Futuyma:
"Adopting new strategies and new disguises, creationists continue to
assault not only evolutionary biology, but the foundations of science as
well." Pennock notes that four younger members of the intelligent-design
camp, whom he refers to as the "four horsemen"--William Dembski, Paul
Nelson, Stephen C. Meyer, and Jonathan Wells--"have dedicated their lives
to their cause and have been collecting multiple graduate degrees (Dembski
in mathematics, philosophy, and theology; Meyer and Nelson in
philosophy; and Wells in religious studies and molecular and cellular
biology) so they will be fully armored and ready to ride forth." Collecting
multiple graduate degrees, are they? Those creationists are a crafty lot!
Another notable example is the way in which Pennock psychologizes his
opponents (a frequent tactic in argument these days). Turns out that at
bottom what's motivating the creationists is fear. They are afraid that an
evolving universe is a universe leached of meaning, a prospect so terrifying
that it has addled their wits. The remedy Pennock proposes is a sort of
philosophical therapy.
It's tempting to go on with more examples. How delicious, for instance, to
see Pennock giving Alvin Plantinga a scolding for "attempts to turn back
the clock"; that settled Plantinga's hash! But the point is made. Pennock
needs to do what we all need to do: step outside himself for a minute and
examine his own rhetoric. (I should add that when I met Rob Pennock
recently at a science-and-religion conference at MIT, we had several good
conversations, and I have profited a good deal from reading his book, as I
hope to make clear in our next issue, in considering his treatment of the
analogy between biological evolution and linguistic evolution.) And then
back to the fray.
--John Wilson, Editor
Copyright (c) 1999 by the author or Christianity Today, Inc./Books &
Culture Magazine. Click here for reprint information on Books & Culture.
September/October 1999, Vol. 5, No. 5, Page 16
[...]
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Stephen E. (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ Email: sejones@iinet.net.au
3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ Web: http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
Warwick 6024 -> *_,--\_/ Phone: +61 8 9448 7439
Perth, Western Australia v "Test everything." (1 Thess. 5:21)
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