Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Evolution

I put your quote into google and got this.

http://women.indiatimes.com/articleshow/883760.cms

Perhaps you'd like to be more specific.

John 3:12 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

12I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?

3) mans interpretation of nature/physical world is incorrect

I looked at the chapter, and it seems to be an admonishment not to take "rebirth" literally, but to seek the meaning behind the poetry.

Just got back from a conference in Wheaton, Ill.,

Lucky you! Most any conference at Wheaton is bound to be good.

he speaks with equally authority on both earthly birth and the heavenly rebirth (both are equally as litteral), for he knows both (earthly and heavenly), but knows the the pharisies only know birth, so he uses the analogy. to no avail..

John 5:
46 If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. 47 But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?"

you still have the problem of death before sin...what did Jesus die for...sin...why was the world created with sin in it??? it wasn't, Adam introduced sin...was Adam real?

could a "very good" world have the stench of rotting corpses, cancer and dismemberment of man and animals in it?
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Perhaps it is time that a paleontologist chime in on the issue. Paleontology has become a very diverse science that cover numerous evidences with direct bearing on issues that cover the age of the earth. While there are numerous pontifications declaring unequivocally that the earth is 6,000 years old and that everything terrestrial and astrological were created in 6 days (Note: literally the sun moon, stars, and constellations, and all of their dynamic interrelationships were created in twelve hours, not 6 days), Efforts to prove this point paleontologially have centered on two primary issues:

1) Co-habitation of humans and all life forms found in the fossil record
2) Death (i.e. extinction)

These two are obviously interrelated and have to be proved with regard to a specific time frame. For the evolutionists, as much time as he thinks he needs he gets, but the young-earthers are constrained to six 24-hour days and a total age of all material in the universe to 6,000 years.

It needs to be stressed that the young earther time frame is self imposed and is based upon a particular interpretation of the Genesis account, buttressed with secondary sources throughout the Bible. Still, it is an interpretation and can only garner scientifc dogmatism through the discovery and interpretation of objective physical evidence.

On the other hand, evolutionists have issues to deal wiih as well. They too need the variable of time in order to posit their points. They have an advantage over the young earthers in the sense that their time constraints do not need beginning or end points. Five billion years is a relative term in the sense that all time has at the very least beginning points.
The beginning point may be certain only through human measurement, while the end point is continually changing. Five billion years from what? We may say the big bang, but what is your reference point for its beginning. It is only 5 billion years referenced from human time. Thus we become the end point, and that end point is constantly changing. If I believe tomorrow what I believe today, the age of the earth is now one day older. Interestingly, the creationists have solved this problem of time by quoting Genesis "In the beginning God created." So they do have a begin point that the naturalistic evolutionists will never find. In other words while the age of the earth has increased dramically from tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands, to millions, and hundreds of millions, to billions, and so on and so forth, by the naturalistic evolutionist, the creationists time frame is still exactly what it was when Bishop Usshur (sic) "scientifically" through counting all the geneologies in the Bible came up with ----- 6,000 years.

Therefore, it must be that all animals and all plants that ever are and ever were lived together, and though scripturally (through the young earth perspective) they were not created contemporaneously, the first occurrance of life seperated from the creation of man by no less than 72 hours. Such a difference in time can never be measured in any significant way and so it is assumed by all that they were essentially created together.

Several points must be stressed: Firstly, The young-earth creationist perspective was firmly in place before two important discoveries took place in the 19th century: The discovery of dinosaurs, and the fact of extinction. In fact, the discovery of the one lead to the conclusion of the other. It was immediately obvious that the discovery of dinosaur bone, both articulated and scattered, stunned both camps.

The presence of gigantic reptilian beasts that lived on land, in the seas, and flew, represented a challenge to the status quo in a number of significant areas. Where did such monsters come from? Why did they get so big? Why were so many of them ferocious carnivores? Why are there no creatures like them on earth today? These and other questions required answers from both secular and religious academics. These questions are still difficult to answer, even today, for while we have advanced significantly in our ideas as to what dinosaurs looked like, and to a lesser degree, how they behaved, questions surrounding their biological origins and their untimely demise are much harder to answer.

From an evolutionary point of view, dinosaurs represent such a dramatic advance over anything previously thought ot have existed on earth, that explaning their remarkable structural and bio-mechanical characterristics strain logic. It's one thing to find evidence of the existence of a bigger bear, or a longer whale, or a larger shellfish, but to find a whole race of animals, of a size and composition that have no familiar representatives alive today, was a startling discovery, for it implied extinction on a global scale.

Secular and religious academics reacted to the discovery of dinosaurs very differently. Secular scientists, enamored with the freshly brewed ideas of classical evolution, as described and explained by Charles Darwin, sought to incorporate the dinosaurs into newly developing evolutionary beliefs. Religious academics, for the most part, used the hardened skeletal remains of dinosaurs as evidence of the horrrors and all-encompasing nature of the Biblical flood of Noah.

Early on, evolutionists were faced with the problem of explaining, in non-catastrophic terms (thereby distancing themselves from invoking the catastrophe of Noah's flood), their sudden and dramatic demise. For the dinosaurs, as big and as grand as they were, died, without leaving a living trace behind whereby one could have anticipated their prior existence. Sincee this was true, it appeared to be an evolutionary dead end. But more importantly, if evolution was energized by survival of the fittest, then the dinosaurs seemed to prove that the fittest died. For they were bigger, stronger, and more adaptable, even by modern standards, than anything else that emerged on earth, iincluding mammals and man. And even though their carcasses were found on every continent, and in every kind of environmental niche, they still inexplicably died.

But there was no celebration for the creationists,for extinction was not at all in their vocabulary. Before the dinosaur discoveries, extinction for a creationist meant the termination of larger representatives of contemporaneous species -- that is, biggerr birds, bears, camels, wolves, and the like. But now there was a whole race of creatures that had never before been known to exist, and they were all wiped out to a beast.

I have written this long polemic to get to this point: We must consider what impact the presence and composition of the fossils of dinosaurs and other extinct reptiles has had on the Biblical creationists theology -- specifically as they relate to ideas of paradise (Eden), the fall of man, the subsequent curse, and the Noachian deluge. Additionally, what does their discovery mean for the prevailing views about the age of the earth? Finally what did the discovery of the extinction of these animals mean to the idea of the creation and preservation of species?

Listen to Henry Morris and John Whitcomb in their 1961 edition of The Genesis Flood:

"Uniformitarian paleontology, of course, dates the formation of the major fossiliferous strata many scores and hundreds of millions of years before the appearance of human beings on the earth. It assumes that uncounted billions of animals had experienced natural of violent deaths before the fall of Adam; that many important kinds of animals had long since become extinct by the time God created Adam to have dominion over every living creature;and that long ages before the edenic curse giant flesh-eating monsters like Tyrannosaurus Rex roamed the earth,slashing their victims with ferocious dagger-like teeth and claws. But how can such an iinterpretation of the history of the animal kingdom be reconciled with the early chapters of Genesis? Does the book of Genesis, honestly studied in the light of the New Testament, allow for a reign of tooth and claw and death and destruction before the fall of Adam?" (Pg 454-455).

See what I mean?

I will write more later.

No reading of these passages can infer, imply, or somehow suggest that it is not a 24 hour period. You choose to refuse it not by the Word of God as it is written, but by the knowledge of fallible man. You are interpreting the Bible through the lens of man's current understanding that is subject to change.
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Some bible expositors are unwilling to allow for more expansive views that incorporate scientific discovery into creationist dogma, so they promote an unscientific stance that in some cases can appear to be quite intolerant. Check out H. Morris:

"We need...to recognize plainly that the biblical "days" of creation were real days, such as we know them today, and cannot possibly be equated with the"ages" of the so-called historical geology. This should not trouble us scientifically, since we have already seen that science, as such, is utterly incapable of telling us anything about creation. Science deals only with present processes, with reproducible experiments, and present processes are not processes of creation. We prefer, therefore, simply to let God's word speak for itself concerning what happened in the creation period." (The creation of the world. 1977. pg 24).

Morris plays scientific evidence against scriptural truth as if they were forever at odds and opposed to one another. I find this attitude impossible to support. The underpinnings of Morris' consistent unscientific stand hinges, then, not on what is evident from creation, but from what is not.
Let me illustrate. Nowhere is this philosophy more bankrupt than when it comes to ideas about the age of the earth. The apparent old age of the earth is clearly problematic to those who accept the young earth premise. Yet the young earth creationists, like Morris, are the first to admit that the earth does indeed look old. (Please note. They have invented this idea. It was not invented by evolutionists, atheists, or santa clause.) So in order to reconcile the evidence of an old earth with their ideology that the earth is young they have come up with the novel idea of "creation with apparent age." This idea proposes to argue that God made the earth appear to be billions of years old when He actually created it 6,000 years ago. This is a remarkable concession to the overwhelming scientific evidence of an old earth, and it is one that should trouble those who believe they must reject the evidence of age in order to keep alive the unsubstantiated belief in a 6,000 year-old-earth. Remarkably, Morris and others must acknowledge that their belief is the one least supported by science. What is a scientific creationist, then? If Morris is right and science really can't tell us anything about creation per se, why should we expect to find any evidence for a young earth? Let's consider Morris again:

"On the same day, God caused vegetation to cover the dry land, grasses and herbs were already bearing seed and the trees already yielding fruit, as soon as they appeared. This further implies that the "dry land" which had just previously come forth from the waters was already prepared with suitable soils and nutrients for the plants. Everything was created in fully developed, completely funcioning form. The whole world thus had an "appearance of age," even though newly created. Creation of apparent age is inherent in the very concept of creation. No deception is involved, since God has plainly told us these events of creation." (ibid. pg 25.)

Can't anybody go back to the first step to see why they find themselves so very far down the wrong road? If this issue is "plain" why all the uproar? The lack of evidence for a young earth contrasts so sharply with the abundant evidence of the real age of the earth that the two can never be harmonized--at least not scientifically. Morris suggests that God deliberately made the earth look billions of years old when it was born 6,000 years ago. Decades of promoting this belief has undoubtedly engendered the cry from everybody who hears of it that some type of heavenly deception is afoot. Morris has to deal with that problem, hence his comment at the end of his statement.

What is troubling to me as a paleontologist is that when one studies the formations of earth, we indeed do not see evidence of a young earth, because page upon page of God's natural history book is replete with information that go back much farther than 6,000 years. What we are supposed to believe is that God wrote into these geological layers a clear, moment by moment, history of events spanning millions if not billions of years in an instant. This concept is so fantastic that it is impossible to grasp by anyone who has ventured out into God's garden and read His book, layer by layer, like I have. Morris can only resort to a demand to "believe" an idea that overrules the scientific evidence of an old earth. Morris again:

"Recognition of the necessity for creation of "apparent age" and of a "finished creation" will go far toward resolving the apparent scientific conflict between the Bible account of creation and the supposed great age of the earth and the universe." (ibid, pg 29.)

LET ME CATEGORICALLY STATE THAT MORRIS' CLAIM DOES NOT HARMONIZE SCIENCE WITH THE BIBLICAL ACCOUNT OF CREATION, BUT MISSING SCIENCE WITH HIS YOUNG-EARTH THEORY.

Those that, like me, do not accept the necessary tenet of the apparent age of heaven and earth have no problem. For the heavens and the earth look old because they are old. There is no divine mandate whereby any Christian is obligated to believe this. All readers must understand that this premise is an absolute theological disaster that has created so many false teachings that the gospel of Christ has been hindered, regardless of whether the creation account is a big issue or not, among a huge pool of professionals, who would otherwise be open to the Gospel. When they find out what young-earth creationists believe about science, why should I expect them to believe the ridiculous story that a man rose from the dead? If young earth creationists like Morris use the same logic employed in the apparent age dogma with the account of the resurrection of Christ, all Christian apologetics would collapse.

Christ didn't really rise from the dead. It only appeared that he did.

Sin caused death, not spiritual death, but death of any kind, according to Romans 5. With out that sin and death, Christ himself would not be required. Salvation it self is in question if we spiritualize the age of the earth.

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Why haven't creationists celebrated dinosaurs with the same kind of unbridled enthusiasm as the secularists? Look at the creationist literature. The vast body of evidence presented is in the form of children's books, because none of them have any type of experience or theological argument that goes past the reductionist statement"they all died in the flood of Noah." The real reason behind the dearth of Christian scholarship on dinosaurs is because, like you, most creationists dinosaurs were not created as they presently appear, and as such were not part of God's original creation. Herbivorous ancestral species were created, but none were carnivorous. Thus the first problem the discovery of dinosaurs created in these peoples minds was how to further reconcile the abundant fossil evidence scattered all over the world that reveal terrifying carnivorous monsters like Tyrannosaurus (N. Amer.; China), Carnotaurus, Giganotasaurus, Allosaurus, Carcarodontosaurus ad infinitum. Walt Brown explains:
"Before the fall nature was a paradise with no pain, death, decay, aging, carnivores nor omnivores were known. Before the fall there was a relationship between man and animals quite different from that which we know today, which is based largely on fear." (In the Beginning, 1996; pg 197)

Or Smith and Wilder:
"Early animals were herbivores (plant eaters). After either the fall or the flood, some became carnivores." (Man's Origin, Man's Destiny...1974. pg.290. Obviously, if these statements are correct, and the interpretations that they present of certain Scripture passages accurate, then God could not have created carnivores in His creative endeavors listed in the first two chapters of Genesis. Then where did they come from?

Premise one: Carnivores are a result of the fall of Adam and Eve.
Young-earth creationists believe that carnivorism, as represented within the world's elaborate food chain, is a corrupt end product of a fallen living creation. They further believe that dinosaurs, more than any other created beings, bore the full brunt of the corrupting influences of human sin upon the world. Therefore, to dare propose hat these animals, as they now appear with "tooth and claw" (see my other posts), were part of the original good creation is a belief that smacks of heresy. Morris explains:

"In the first place, we are told that "God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." This is the seventh time in the chapter that God pronounced His creative works "good." Thus, any evidences of disorder, of antagonisms, of suffering, of decay, of struggle, and above all, of death, which we now see in the present world or in the records of the past, cannot possibly be attributed to anything occurring during the six days of creation. Something happened after creation to bring these into the world." (The beginning of the world, pg. 28.)

But with this as a tenet of creationism, there is a huge contradiction presented when one considers all the fossil evidence, and especially those pertaining to the dinosaurs, for from their first appearance in the fossil record, we find carnivores. In fact, some fossils of dinosaurs even have their last meal preserved within their belles. So if God did not create the horrific carnivores found within the fossil record in the first six days of Genesis one, where did they all come from. How did they emerge? Morris' next sentence reads:

"By man came death. (1 Corinthians 15:21). Thus fossils of former living creatures, preserved in the rocks of the earth's crust could not have been buried either before or during the creation period." (ibid. pg 29)

So let it be written......so let it be done. Is this the end of the argument?

Sin caused death, not spiritual death, but death of any kind, according to Romans 5. With out that sin and death, Christ himself would not be required. Salvation it self is in question if we spiritualize the age of the earth.

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Why haven't creationists celebrated dinosaurs with the same kind of unbridled enthusiasm as the secularists? Look at the creationist literature. The vast body of evidence presented is in the form of children's books, because none of them have any type of experience or theological argument that goes past the reductionist statement"they all died in the flood of Noah." The real reason behind the dearth of Christian scholarship on dinosaurs is because, like you, most creationists dinosaurs were not created as they presently appear, and as such were not part of God's original creation. Herbivorous ancestral species were created, but none were carnivorous. Thus the first problem the discovery of dinosaurs created in these peoples minds was how to further reconcile the abundant fossil evidence scattered all over the world that reveal terrifying carnivorous monsters like Tyrannosaurus (N. Amer.; China), Carnotaurus, Giganotasaurus, Allosaurus, Carcarodontosaurus ad infinitum, with the apparent Scriptural teachings about the absence of death, pain, suffering, and carnovorism in the originally created earth. Here's Walt Brown's comment:

"Before the fall nature was a paradise with no pain, death, decay, aging, carnivores nor omnivores were known. Before the fall there was a relationship between man and animals quite different from that which we know today, which is based largely on fear." (In the Beginning, 1996; pg 197)

Or Smith and Wilder:
"Early animals were herbivores (plant eaters). After either the fall or the flood, some became carnivores." (Man's Origin; Man's Destiny: A Critical survey of the Principles of Evolution and Christianity. 1974. Pg. 290) Obviously, if these statements are correct, and the interpretations that they present of certain Scripture passages accurate, then God could not have created carnivores in His creative endeavors listed in the first two chapters of Genesis. Then where did they come from?

Premise one: Carnivores are a result of the fall of Adam and Eve. Young-earth creationists believe that carnivorism, as represented within the world's elaborate food chain, is a corrupt end product of a fallen living creation. They further believe that dinosaurs, more than any other created beings, bore the full brunt of the corrupting influences of human sin upon the world. Therefore, to dare propose hat these animals, as they now appear with "tooth and claw" (see my other posts), were part of the original good creation is a belief that smacks of heresy. Morris explains:

"In the first place, we are told that "God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." This is the seventh time in the chapter that God pronounced His creative works "good." Thus, any evidences of disorder, of antagonisms, of suffering, of decay, of struggle, and above all, of death, which we now see in the present world or in the records of the past, cannot possibly be attributed to anything occurring during the six days of creation. Something happened after creation to bring these into the world." (The beginning of the world, pg. 28.

But with this as a tenet of creationism, there is a huge contradiction presented when one considers all the fossil evidence, and especially those pertaining to the dinosaurs, for from their first appearance in the fossil record, we find carnivores. In fact, some fossils of dinosaurs even have their last meal preserved within their bellys. So if God did not create the horrific carnivores found within the fossil record in the first six days of Genesis one, where did they all come from. How did they emerge? Morris' next sentence reads:

"By man came death. (1 Corinthians 15:21). Thus fossils of former living creatures, preserved in the rocks of the earth's crust could not have been buried either before or during the creation period." (ibid. pg 29)

So let it be written......so let it be done. Is this the end of the argument?

We need to devote our time to telling others what a relationship with Christ can do for their lives NOW and in their eternal future, not trying to convince them that the earth is 6,000 or 10,000 or 4.5 billion years old. Forget the debate about the age of the earth because that's just getting in the way. Let's put things in perspective and stick to the important topic of how Jesus can change people's lives when they accept him as Lord and Saviour. People need to personally know Jesus, not listen to debates on how old the earth is.

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Boy. what a wonderful insulated life you all have. Not one of you has probably worked with any secular scientist to understand the extent of the damage caused by your hostile antagonisms against the numerous disciplines that have anything to do with cosmology. Hack, hack, hack away--call them evil evolutionists. Impinge their character. Warn your kids not to take any of the evil sciences, especially anthropology or paleontology. Let a huge segment of scientific society go to hell---leave them no witness. Do you guys even police yourselves? What about the Kent Hovinds, the Carl Baughs, the Don Pattens, of Christian academia? These are the ones most vocal, and these are your representatives of creationism to everybody I work with. And what about me? Are my comments not even worth a reply? An active thread killed by a mystery man? Are my comments too compelling for you to even answer? Is this how you witness to professionals who are interested in joining a debate? To some one who longs for dialog with any Christian scientists? No comments on the fraud that is promoted by your own crationists? Not one word of warning to anyone reading these threads? Not even a word of warning about me? Just silence. So be it. I seem to remember a verse that says that in the last days men will seek teachers in accordance with their own desires, tickling their ears. Let me add another one: "Always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. Hummmmmm. Let's play ring around the issues. Lets dialog until someone comes with real meat. Then lets hope he goes away. We'll give him the silent treatment. Oh--maybe you are upset about my response to the 19 posts you sent after I exposed the Las Cruces human track as a hoax--one I dare say was promoted as fact on another thread in your forum. You guys mentioned my name. How do you think I found the forum in the first place? Oh I get it. No response but sarcasm and snippits. I wrote a careful and scientific comment to the Las Cruces "human track" at the end of that thread and not a word back. In fact, you answer the ones who continue to promote fraud, and hurl sarcastic barbs at the one exposing it.

I remember another verse--a smooth (lit. kind answer) turns away wrath. Even Solomon couldn't imagine someone getting no answer.

Well it worked. There are no ambassadors for Christ to be found on this thread. Apparently I, along with your hoaxters, are not even worthy of a rebuke. "Tell us a lie, you say, "and we will respond to you." Tell us that everything is great within creationist dogma. Tell us that thousands of scientists are okay being unchurched and unreached. Well, I don't share your lack of concern. I'll wotk alone with the Holy Spirit as my teacher. I'll be an ambassador for Christ. And when those evil evolutionists who know of my work and discoveries see the frauds presented, and not one rebuke, I'll just tell them the truth. They know me. They will listen to me.

For the science room, no free speech
By Bill Murchison

Dec 28, 2005

Will the federal courts, and the people who rely on the federal courts to enforce secular ideals, ever get it? The anti-school-prayer decisions of the past 40 years -- not unlike the pro-choice-in-abortion decisions, starting with Roe vs. Wade -- haven't driven pro-school-prayer, anti-choice Americans from the marketplace of ideas and activity.

Neither will U.S. Dist. Judge John Jones' anti-intelligent-design ruling in Dover, Pa., just before Christmas choke off challenges to the public schools' Darwinian monopoly.

Jones' contempt for the "breathtaking inanity" of school-board members who wanted ninth-grade biology students to hear a brief statement regarding Darwinism's "gaps/problems" is unlikely to intimidate the millions who find evolution only partly persuasive -- at best.

Millions? Scores of millions might be more like it. A 2004 Gallup Poll found that just 13 percent of Americans believe in evolution unaided by God. A Kansas newspaper poll last summer found 55 percent support for exposing public-school students to critiques of Darwinism.

This accounts for the widespread desire that children be able to factor in some alternatives to the notion that "natural selection" has brought us, humanly speaking, where we are. Well, maybe it has. But what if it hasn't? The science classroom can't take cognizance of such a possibility? Under the Jones ruling, it can't. Jones discerns a plot to establish a religious view of the question, though the religion he worries about exists only in the possibility that God, per Genesis 1, might intrude celestially into the discussion. (Intelligent-designers, for the record, say the power of a Creator God is just one of various possible counter-explanations.)

Not that Darwinism, as Jones acknowledges, is perfect. Still, "the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent scientific propositions."

Ah. We see now: Federal judges are the final word on good science. Who gave them the power to exclude even whispers of divinity from the classroom? Supposedly, the First Amendment to the Constitution: the odd part here being the assumption that the "free speech" amendment shuts down discussion of alternatives to an establishment-approved concept of Truth.

With energy and undisguised contempt for the critics of Darwinism, Jones thrusts out the back door of his courthouse the very possibility that any sustained critique of Darwinism should be admitted to public classrooms.

However, the writ of almighty federal judges runs only so far, as witness their ongoing failure to convince Americans that the Constitution requires almost unobstructed access to abortion. Pro-life voters and activists, who number in the millions, clearly aren't buying it. We're to suppose efforts to smother intelligent design will bear larger, lusher fruit?

The meeting place of faith and reason is proverbially darkish and unstable -- a place to which the discussants bring sometimes violently different assumptions about truth and where to find it. Yet, the recent remarks of the philosopher-theologian Michael Novak make great sense: "I don't understand why in the public schools we cannot have a day or two of discussion about the relative roles of science and religion." A discussion isn't a sermon or an altar call, is it?

Equally to the point, what does secular intolerance achieve in terms of revitalizing public schools, rendering them intellectually catalytic? As many religious folk see it, witch-hunts for Christian influences are an engrained part of present public-school curricula. Is this where they want the kids? Might private schools -- not necessarily religious ones -- offer a better alternative? Might home schooling?

Alienating bright, energized, intellectually alert customers is normally accounted bad business, but that's the direction in which Darwinian dogmatists point. Thanks to them and other such foes of free speech in the science classroom -- federal judges included -- we seem likely to hear less and less about survival of the fittest and more and more about survival of the least curious, the least motivated, the most gullible.

Find this story at: http://townhall.com/opinion/columns/billmurchison/2005/12/28/180478.html

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Phillip Johnson Archives

Darwinists Squirm Under Spotlight
Interview with Phillip E. Johnson

This article is reprinted from an interview with Citizen Magazine, January 1992.

Phillip Johnson has been a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley for more than 20 years. As an academic lawyer, one of Johnson's specialties is "analyzing the logic of arguments and identifying the assumptions that lie behind those arguments." A few years ago he began to suspect that Darwinism, far from being an objective fact, was little more than a philosophical position dressed up as science--and poor science at that. Wanting to see whether his initial impression was correct, Johnson decided to take a closer look at the arguments, evidence and assumptions underlying contemporary Darwinism. The result of his investigation is Darwin on Trial, a controversial new book that challenges not only Darwinism but the philosophical mindset that sustains it.

When did you first become aware that Darwinism was in trouble as a scientific theory?

I had been vaguely aware that there were problems, but I'd never had any intention of taking up the subject seriously or in detail until the 1987-88 academic year, when I was a visiting professor in London. Every day on the way to my office I happened to go by a large bookstore devoted to science. I picked up one book after another and became increasingly fascinated with the obvious difficulties in the Darwinist case--difficulties that were being evaded by tricky rhetoric and emphatic repetition. I then began delving into the professional literature, especially in scientific journals such as Nature and Science. At every step, what I found was a failure of the evidence to be in accord with the theory.

What was it that initially made you suspect that Darwinism was more philosophy than hard science?

It was the way my scientific colleagues responded when I asked the hard questions. Instead of taking the intellectual questions seriously and responding to them, they would answer with all sorts of evasions and vague language, making it impossible to discuss the real objections to Darwinism. This is the way people talk when they're trying very hard not to understand something.

Another tip-off was the sharp contrast I noticed between the extremely dogmatic tone that Darwinists use when addressing the general public and the occasional frank acknowledgments, in scientific circles, of serious problems with the theory. For example, I would read Stephen Jay Gould telling the scientific world that Darwinism was effectively dead as a theory. And then in the popular literature, I would read Gould and other scientific writers saying that Darwinism was fundamentally healthy, and that scientists had the remaining problems well under control. There was a contradiction here, and it looked as though there was an effort to keep the outside world from becoming aware of the serious intellectual difficulties.

What are some of the intellectual difficulties? Can you give an example?

The most important is the fossil problem, because this is a direct record of the history of life on earth. If Darwinism were true, you would expect the fossil evidence to contain many examples of Darwinian evolution. You would expect to see fossils that really couldn't be understood except as transitions between one kind of organism and another. You would also expect to see some of the common ancestors that gave birth to different groups like fish and reptiles. You wouldn't expect to find them in every case, of course. It's perfectly reasonable to say that a great deal of the fossil evidence has been lost. But you would continually be finding examples of things that fit well with the theory.

In reality, the fossil record is something that Darwinists have had to explain away, because what it shows is the sudden appearance of organisms that exhibit no trace of step-by-step development from earlier forms. And it shows that once these organisms exist, they remain fundamentally unchanged, despite the passage of millions of years-and despite climatic and environmental changes that should have produced enormous Darwinian evolution if the theory were true. In short, if evolution is the gradual, step-by-step transformation of one kind of thing into another, the outstanding feature of the fossil record is the absence of evidence for evolution.

But isn't it possible, as many Darwinists say, that the fossil evidence is just too scanty to show evidence of Darwinian evolution?

The question is whether or not Darwinism is a scientific theory that can be tested with scientific evidence. If you assume that the theory is true, you can deal with conflicting evidence by saying that the evidence has disappeared. But then the question arises, how do you know it's true if it isn't recorded in the fossils? Where is the proof? It's not in genetics. And it's not in the molecular evidence, which shows similarities between organisms but doesn't tell you how those similarities came about. So the proof isn't anywhere, and it's illegitimate to approach the fossil record with the conclusive assumption that the theory is true so that you can read into the fossil record whatever you need to support the theory.

If Darwinism has been so thoroughly disconfirmed, why do so many scientists say it's a fact?

There are several factors that explain this. One is that Darwinism is fundamentally a religious position, not a scientific position. The project of Darwinism is to explain the world and all its life forms in a way that excludes any role for a creator. And that project is sacred to the scientific naturalist-to the person who denies that God can in any way influence natural events.

It's also an unfortunate fact in the history of science that scientists will stick to a theory which is untrue until they get an acceptable alternative theory-which to a Darwinist means a strictly naturalistic theory. So for them, the question is not whether Darwinism is true. The question is whether there is a better theory that's philosophically acceptable. Any suggestion that Darwinism is false, and that we should admit our ignorance about the origin of complex life-forms, is simply unacceptable. In their eyes, Darwinism is the best naturalistic theory, and therefore effectively true. The argument that it's false can't even be heard.

Surely there are some skeptics in the scientific world. What of them?

Well, there are several, and we can see what happened to them. You have paleontologist Colin Patterson, who's quoted in my first chapter. He made a very bold statement, received a lot of vicious criticism, and then pulled back. This is a typical pattern.

Another pattern is that of Stephen Jay Gould, who said that Darwinism is effectively dead as a general theory-and then realized that he had given a powerful weapon to the creationists, whose existence cannot be tolerated. So now Gould says that he's really a good Darwinist, and that all he really meant was that Darwinism could be improved by developing a larger theory that included Darwinism. What we have here is politics, not science. Darwinism is politically correct for the scientific community, because it enables them to fight off any rivals for cultural authority.

Darwinists often accuse creationists of intolerance. But you're suggesting that the Darwinists are intolerant?

If you want to know what Darwinist science is really like, read what the Darwinists say about the creationists, because those things-regardless of whether they're true about the creationists-are true about the Darwinists. I've found that people often say things about their enemies that are true of themselves. And I think Darwinist science has many of the defects that the Darwinists are so indignant about when they describe the creationists.

Across the country, there has been a growing trend toward teaching evolution as a fact-especially in California, your own state. What does this say about science education in America?

This is an attempt to establish a religious position as orthodox throughout the educational establishment, and thus throughout the society. It's gone very far. The position is what I call "scientific naturalism." The scientific organizations, for example, tell us that if we wish to maintain our country's economic status and cope with environmental problems, we must give everyone a scientific outlook. But the "scientific outlook" they have in mind is one which, by definition, excludes God from any role in the world, from the Big Bang to the present. So this is fundamentally a religious position-a fundamentalist position, if you like--and it's being taught in the schools as a fact when it isn't even a good theory.

Why should Christians be concerned about a scientific theory? Why does it matter?

Well, not only Christians should care about it. Everyone should. It is religion in the name of science, and that means that it is misleading people about both religion and science.

Copyright © 1997 Phillip E. Johnson. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
File Date:2.22.97

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