Re: More snippets from Johnson's new book

From: Stephen E. Jones (sejones@iinet.net.au)
Date: Tue Jul 25 2000 - 09:28:39 EDT

  • Next message: Susan Brassfield: "Re: More snippets from Johnson's new book"

    Reflectorites

    Here are two more Breakpoint articles about Johnson's new book.
    "The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism".

    Steve

    PS: I don't yet have the book-it will probably take 3 months to
    get down here at the Antipodes! So the quote from it in my tagline
    (which I heartily agree with!), I copied from a post on another List.

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    [...]

    BreakPoint with Charles Colson
    Commentary #000721 - 07/21/2000
    DNA Junk or God's Design?: Unraveling the Human Genome

    It wasn't the sort of talk that makes biologists comfortable. "We are
    learning the language in which God created life," said President Clinton
    two weeks ago as he announced completion of the map of the human
    genome -- the 3.1 billion units of genetic information stored in our
    chromosomes.

    The President's words were right on, but to scientists they had a surprising
    ring. As polls of scientists indicate, the majority of biologists these days
    think natural selection -- not God -- created the information in the human
    genome, over billions of years of evolution.

    But as Phillip Johnson argues in his new book, THE WEDGE OF TRUTH,
    biologists need to approach the origin of genetic information with new
    eyes. Because, behind the news about completion of the genome map are
    many other mysteries. For example, are the undirected forces of natural
    selection (acting on random variation) really able to explain how strange
    and irregular genetic information arises? And how could a blind
    evolutionary process write the vast encyclopedia of biological data that we
    carry around in our cells?

    What gives Johnson's questions such urgency is the genome map itself.
    Although biologists have finished sequencing the genes, determining the
    order of the individual letters in the genetic text, they don't understand
    most of it. "It's written in a foreign language," says geneticist Gerald Rubin,
    adding, "It's a very complicated problem."

    Why? Think of it this way. Suppose you found a stone slab covered with
    strange marks. Some seem to be words in an unknown language, while
    others are simply random scratchings or gibberish. Well, this is how
    modern evolutionary biologists view the information in our genome.

    In their view, the "gibberish" is simply "junk DNA" -- functionless,
    meaningless scraps and left-overs, which we have inherited from our animal
    ancestors.

    And as they see it, only two forces could explain the origin of our genome:
    natural laws and blind chance, which come together in the process of
    natural selection. So if there's gibberish, you just dismiss it. After all, the
    author was a blind natural process whose only goal was survival.

    But this is a cop-out. What if natural law and chance are incapable of
    creating such complex information? Even the most ardent Darwinian
    biologists agree that our genome, despite its vast poorly understood
    regions, contains tens of thousands of fantastically intricate meaningful
    sequences. As Johnson argues, "meaningful information-bearing sequences
    require some THIRD FORCE that works against both repetitive order on
    the one hand and chaotic chance on the other." And that, he says, would be
    a designing mind: The mind of God.

    And if God, not a blind natural process, designed the human DNA, then
    don't we have good reasons to think that the so-called "junk DNA," so
    puzzling to biologists, may have important functions as well -like leading to
    medical breakthroughs?

    In fact, the view that our genome is not just junk, but an intricate language
    we have yet to understand, holds vast promise -- something Darwinian
    evolution can never offer.

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    [...]

    BreakPoint with Charles Colson
    Commentary #000724 - 07/24/2000
    Fences for Tearing Down: The War of Science and Religion

    Suppose you woke up tomorrow morning to find that your neighbor had
    moved his chain-link fence all the way across your yard -- right up against
    your door. So you call him on the phone. "What's up with the fence?" you
    ask.

    "Not to worry," he says. "Just ignore the fence. You see, I'm only claiming
    physical reality for my domain. And since you're such a spiritual person,
    you don't care about that, right? Look, you still have your personal,
    subjective, religious yard. Isn't that great? Now we won't come into
    conflict with each other! Like the poet Robert Frost said, 'Good fences
    make good neighbors.' "

    It sounds crazy. Yet this sort of arrangement is exactly what prominent
    scientists like Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould have proposed as
    the proper relationship between science and religion. In his new book, THE
    WEDGE OF TRUTH, Christian thinker Phillip Johnson challenges
    scientists like Gould to admit that their fence-building proposal is a bad
    idea, both for religion and science. There can only be a proper balance
    between science and religion if there's an open, honest relationship between
    them.

    To see why, start with the quote from Frost: "Good fences make good
    neighbors." We often hear this line quoted as if Frost thought it were true.
    But he actually used it as a shallow clich­. In his poem, "Mending Wall," he
    wrote:

            Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
            What I was walling in or walling out,
            And to whom I was like to give offence.

    When a scientist like Stephen Jay Gould proposes to keep peace between
    science and religion by putting a fence between them, we need to look at
    where he wants to put the boundary.

    As Johnson points out, Gould's boundary line claims the whole realm of
    knowledge for science, effectively "walling out" religion, putting it into a
    private, subjective ghetto.

    The old adage, "Science tells us how the heavens go, while religion tells us
    how to go to heaven," might be reasonable only if there really is a place
    like heaven. And it makes sense only if there really are souls that might go
    to heaven, and a God who created them. In short, "religion tells us how to
    go to heaven" makes sense only if we genuinely know about God, souls,
    salvation, and heaven.

    But, as Johnson explains, that's exactly what Gould doesn't want to hear.
    His definition of knowledge itself turns the whole of physical reality over to
    science, just like the neighbor's fence that, one morning, swallows up your
    entire yard.

    Religion, claims Gould, cannot include anything about real history,
    including the life of Jesus, because history belongs to science. Gould calls
    this his "first commandment" of the relationship of science and theology.
    It's a view widely shared by scientists today.

    In his excellent new book, Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson exposes
    Gould and others for "dressing up naturalistic philosophy as if it were
    science." And he equips believers to challenge this specious argument
    wherever we encounter it -whether it's in schools or in casual conversation
    with our neighbors. Which is precisely what we must do. Whether fences
    make good neighbors or not, they certainly do not encourage academic
    freedom in the pursuit of truth.

    =====================
    You can order your own copy of Phillip Johnson's
    The Wedge of Truth from BreakPoint Online
    at <http://www.breakpoint.org>.
    =====================

    [...]

    Copyright (c) 2000 Prison Fellowship Ministries

    [...]
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    --------------------------------------------------------------------------
    "In the final analysis, it is not any specific scientific evidence that convinces
    me that Darwinism is a pseudoscience that will collapse once it becomes
    possible for critics to get a fair hearing. It is the way the Darwinists argue
    their case that makes it apparent that they are afraid to encounter the best
    arguments against their theory. A real science does not employ propaganda
    and legal barriers to prevent relevant questions from being asked, nor does
    it rely upon enforcing rules of reasoning that allow no alternative to the
    official story. If the Darwinists had a good case to make, they would
    welcome the critics to an academic forum for open debate, and they would
    want to confront the best critical arguments rather than to caricature them
    as straw men. Instead they have chosen to rely upon the dishonorable
    methods of power politics." (Johnson P.E., "The Wedge of Truth: Splitting
    the Foundations of Naturalism," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL.,
    2000, p.141)
    Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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