Re: Lamoureaux & Johnson

From: Steven P Crawford (stevenpcrawford@juno.com)
Date: Thu Jul 20 2000 - 23:59:02 EDT

  • Next message: billwald@juno.com: "Re: The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism"

    Stephen, thank you very much for your reply and for taking the time to
    give another perspective on the issue. Your post was quite informative,
    and I found it to be helpful in rounding out my understanding on the
    differences between Johnson and Lamoureaux.

    > Welcome to the Reflector to Steven. Maybe he can tell us more about
    > himself?

    It would be my pleasure. I grew up in a fundamentalist home, being
    exposed to the young-earth creationist position only. I attended Drexel
    University in Philadelphia where I received my undergrad degree in
    mathematics with a minor in physics. The Lord graciously drew me to
    Himself while at Drexel. At the beginning of my 4th year there, I
    finally became a Christian not just in creed but also in heart. It is
    interesting that, even though I was exposed to Protestant Christianity
    all my life, it wasn't until I was 21 that I trusted the Lord Jesus and
    took Him for my own Saviour.

    When I graduated from Drexel, I went to Bob Jones University (no, I'm not
    a racist) where I received a Master of Divinity degree. Looking back, I
    wish I took that time to get graduate degrees in math and physics since I
    am not now a minister, but a high school teacher. I teach the science
    and math courses at Tall Oaks Classical School in Hockessin, DE. This
    school is a ministry of Christ Presbyterian Church (PCA). Since my time
    at BJU I have evolved from being a fundamentalist to being an
    evangelical.

    I thought I knew how to defend young-earth creationism from top to bottom
    -- until I started reading evolutionists' critiques of it. It seems that
    "scientific" creationism may not be so scientific after all. I signed up
    on this list and some others in order to learn more.

    ...
     
    > SC>P.S. I think that Lamoureaux won the debate.
    >
    > How one judges the outcome of such debates depends on one's prior
    > philosophical position (which one may not even be aware of).

    Actually, I had quite negative presuppositions regarding theistic
    evolution when I read the book. I didn't think it was a position worth
    any serious consideration. My judgment of who won was based solely on
    basic rules of debate. Johnson didn't give a serious response. I have
    never seen anyone leave so many points stand against him. This was the
    only measure of my appraisal.

    BTW, allow me to add Niles Eldridge's comments to the quotations that you
    gave. This is taken from The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of
    Creationism (p. 136-7, emphasis his):

    "Here, in a nutshell, is what is wrong with Johnson's argument: his
    dichotomy between philosophical naturalism and theological realism. It
    is the answer I conceived when I accepted the offer to debate Johnson,
    and it is the same answer everyone else has reached. Unlike Johnson, I
    do not see these issues as overly difficult for anyone to grasp.

    "Everyone -- even Phillip Johnson -- agrees that there is a physical,
    material world. Everyone also agrees that there is something called
    human knowledge, and that human knowledge has grown over historical time.
     SCIENCE IS A WAY OF KNOWING ABOUT THE NATURE -- COMPOSITION AND
    BEHAVIOUR -- OF THE NATURAL, MATERIAL WORLD. That's not nothing, but
    that is all science is: a set of rules and an accumulated set of ideas,
    some more powerfully established than others, about the nature of the
    material world. BY ITS OWN RULES, SCIENCE CANNOT SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THE
    SUPERNATURAL. Scientists are allowed to formulate solely ideas that
    pertain to the material universe, and they are constrained to formulate
    those ideas in ways that can be testable with empirical evidence
    detectable by our senses.

    "Johnson says that restricting analysis purely to material, naturalistic
    terms is automatically atheistic -- amounting to a de facto claim that
    God does not exist. But science does not -- because it cannot -- say
    that only the natural, material world exists. Rather, science is
    restricted by the limitations of human senses and was, in any case,
    invented solely to explore the nature of the material universe. It does
    not rule out the existence of the supernatural; it merely claims that it
    cannot, by its very rules of existence, study the supernatural -- if,
    indeed, the supernatural exists."

    I personally found it refreshing for a prominent evolutionist to say as
    much. It is probably true that the present evolutionary establishment
    accepts the theory as being plainly anti-God or anti-religious (though
    Eldridge's comments hopefully signifies a shift). But should we grant
    this foothold for them to stand on, instead of challenging it? Johnson
    seems to accept Dawkins' famous claim that evolution allows people to be
    "intellectually fulfilled atheists." But shouldn't we point out that,
    even if evolution were correct, the theory would still require a
    philosophical pre-commitment in order to deny God?

    Steve C.
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