Reflectorites
Here is a Breakpoint on Phil Johnson's new book, "The Wedge of Truth".
Sounds like Johnson has found a good, deep crack to insert his wedge
of truth into!
Steve
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BreakPoint with Charles Colson
Commentary #000720 - 07/20/2000
The Dangers of Naturalism: Are Humans Merely Robots?
You've seen the stories: They're nothing short of
horrifying. An 18-year-old girl at her high school
prom delivers her baby in a bathroom stall, then
leaves the dead child in a trash can and returns to
dancing. We shudder at the breathtaking callousness
and disregard for human life; yet for some
scientists, such behavior is only natural.
They believe that humans are robots, programmed by
our genes, to dump newborns into garbage cans if our
gene-controlled brains determine that such cold-
hearted actions are in our Darwinian best interest.
Well, in his new book, THE WEDGE OF TRUTH: Splitting
the Foundations of Naturalism, author Phillip Johnson
challenges the naturalistic view of human nature. Our
true nature, he says, which finds such acts morally
wrong, is profoundly different.
Johnson starts with this provocative question: Why
exactly is it wrong to kill babies? In the case of
the 18-year-old who abandoned her newborn in a
bathroom, the MIT evolutionary psychologist and
science popularizer Steven Pinker wrote in the NEW
YORK TIMES that the young woman was acting on a
"genetic imperative." That means, basically, that
impersonal forces of natural selection had molded her
behavior, through her genes, to jettison any drag on
her future "reproductive success."
Pinker wrote, "If a newborn is sickly, or if its
survival is not promising," a mother may cut her
"losses, and favor the healthiest in the litter or
try again later on."
Yet this explanation, even if true (and there are
many reasons to doubt it) simply doesn't answer
Johnson's first question. Pinker's answer doesn't
explain why we find the actions of the 18-year-old
mother morally reprehensible. If there really is no
difference between human beings and other animals,
then we would no more condemn the young woman's
abandoning her newborn than we would condemn her for
clipping her fingernails or plucking her eyebrows.
But that isn't the case. We do condemn such behavior.
The tragic young woman in question was convicted of
homicide and sent to prison. Why? Because human
beings recognize the reality of a moral realm which
is not derived from nature. As Phillip Johnson
argues, evolutionary psychologists like Pinker can
explain that moral realm only by suspending their
naturalistic rule of reasoning.
Pinker himself admits that infanticide is wrong, yet
he is more or less helpless to explain WHY he thinks
it's wrong. Instead, he flatly proclaims. "Science
and morality are separate spheres of reasoning."
But not so fast, objects Johnson. If we genuinely
know that some actions, such as infanticide, are
wrong, then that knowledge must have an ultimate
source or cause. Our moral knowledge, therefore, must
in some sense be "immaterial" or "supernatural,"
stemming from an ultimate source other than nature.
For Johnson, as for the great ethical philosophers
throughout the centuries, that ultimate source is
God. In THE WEDGE OF TRUTH, Johnson the feisty law
professor makes a compelling case that our moral
nature is not Darwinian but theistic. And it's a case
that you and I can and must make to our neighbors.
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You can order your own copy of Philip Johnson's
The Wedge of Truth from BreakPoint Online
at <http://www.breakpoint.org>.
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Copyright (c) 2000 Prison Fellowship Ministries
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"It is now approximately half a century since the neo-Darwinian synthesis
was formulated A great deal of research has been carried on within the
paradigm it defines. Yet the successes of the theory are limited to the
interpretation of the minutiae of evolution, such as the adaptive change in
coloration of moths; while it has remarkably little to say on the questions
which interest us most, such as how there came to be moths in the first
place." (Ho M.W. & Saunders P.T., "Beyond neo-Darwinism - An Epigenetic
Approach to Evolution," Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol. 78, pp.573-
591, 1979, p.589.
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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