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Phillip E. Johnson

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Phillip E. Johnson

Phillip E. Johnson (born 1940) is a retired UC Berkeley American law professor and author. A born-again Christian, he is considered the father of the intelligent design movement, which criticizes the theory of evolution, and promotes intelligent design, a form of creationism, as an alternative. Johnson has also participated in a movement challenging the scientific orthodoxy that HIV is the cause of AIDS. In both of these areas his critics accuse him of promoting pseudoscience.

Biography

Johnson was born in Aurora, Illinois in 1940. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature, from Harvard University in 1961. He studied law at the University of Chicago. He served as a law clerk for the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Earl Warren. He is an emeritus professor of law at Boalt School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, where he served on the active faculty from 1967-2000.

Despite having no formal background in the biological sciences, Johnson has become a prominent critic of evolutionary theory. Johnson popularized the term "intelligent design" in its current sense in his 1991 book, Darwin on Trial. He remains one of the best known advocates for intelligent design, and is considered the founder of the intelligent design movement.

He is a critic of methodological naturalism, the basic principle of science that restricts it to the investigation of natural causes for observable phenomena, and espouses a philosophy he has coined theistic realism. He is the author of several books on intelligent design and related topics, as well as textbooks on criminal law.

Johnson is a Christian and elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Since 2001, Johnson has sufferred a series of minor right brain strokes. His rehabillitations have limited his public activities and participation in the debate over Intelligent Design, both because of their physical effects as well as Johnson's belief that they were signs from God urging him to spend more time with his faith and family and less in prideful debate.]

Ideas

The cover of the book shows Charles Darwin

Intelligent Design

Johnson is best known as one of the founders of the intelligent design movement, principal architect of the Wedge Strategy, author of the Santorum Amendment, and one of the ID movement's most prolific authors. Johnson is co-founder and program advisor of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC).

Johnson has advocated strongly in the public and political spheres for the teaching of Intelligent Design in favor of evolution; which Johnson characterizes as "atheistic," "falsified by all of the evidence" and whose "logic is terrible." In portraying the philosophy of science, and by extension its theories like evolution as atheistic, Johnson argues that a more valid alternative is "theistic realism". Theistic realism asserts that science, by relying upon methodological naturalism, demands an priori adoption of a naturalistic philosophy that wrongly dismisses out of hand any explanation that contains a supernatural cause. These concepts are a common theme in his many books, including "Darwin on Trial," "Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law and Education," "Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds," and "The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism."

Working through the Center for Science and Culture Johnson wrote the early draft language of the Santorum Amendment, which encouraged a "Teach the Controversy" approach to evolution in public school education, a theme now common to the intelligent design movement.

Nancy Pearcey, a Center for Science and Culture fellow and Johnson associate, acknowledges Johnson's leadership of the intelligent design movement in two of her most recent publications. In an interview with Johnson for World magazine, Pearcey says, "It is not only in politics that leaders forge movements. Phillip Johnson has developed what is called the 'Intelligent Design' movement..." In Christianity Today, she reveals Johnson's religious beliefs and his animosity toward evolution and affirms Johnson as "The unofficial spokesman for ID"

In his 1997 book Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds Johnson summed up the underlying philosophy of his advocacy for intelligent design and against methodological and philosophical naturalism:

"If we understand our own times, we will know that we should affirm the reality of God by challenging the domination of materialism and naturalism in the world of the mind. With the assistance of many friends I have developed a strategy for doing this,...We call our strategy the "wedge." pg. 91-92, "Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds" Phillip Johnson, 1997

Johnson acknowledges that the goal of the intelligent design movement is to promote a theistic agenda cast as a scientific concept

Unlike other members of the intelligent design movement such as Michael Behe, Johnson rejects common descent and does not take a position on the age of the Earth.

Johnson is the author of the Discovery Institute's Teach the Controversy campaign which attempts to cast doubt on the validity of the theory of evolution, its acceptance within the scientific community, and reduce its role in public school science curricula. The Teach the Controversy campaign portrays evolution as "a theory in crisis."

Johnson has been explicit about the Christian principles underlying his philosophy and agenda and that of the intelligent design movement. In speaking at the "Reclaiming America for Christ Conferences" Johnson has described the movement thus:

  • "I have built an intellectual movement in the universities and churches that we call The Wedge, which is devoted to scholarship and writing that furthers this program of questioning the materialistic basis of science." ..."Now the way that I see the logic of our movement going is like this. The first thing you understand is that the Darwinian theory isn't true. It's falsified by all of the evidence and the logic is terrible. When you realize that, the next question that occurs to you is, well, where might you get the truth?" ..."I start with John 1:1. In the beginning was the word. In the beginning was intelligence, purpose, and wisdom. The Bible had that right. And the materialist scientists are deluding themselves."
  • "In summary, we have to educate our young people; we have to give them the armor they need. We have to think about how we're going on the offensive rather than staying on the defensive. And above all, we have to come out to the culture with the view that we are the ones who really stand for freedom of thought. You see, we don't have to fear freedom of thought because good thinking done in the right way will eventually lead back to the Church, to the truth-the truth that sets people free, even if it goes through a couple of detours on the way. And so we're the ones that stand for good science, objective reasoning, assumptions on the table, a high level of education, and freedom of conscience to think as we are capable of thinking. That's what America stands for, and that's something we stand for, and that's something the Christian Church and the Christian Gospel stand for-the truth that makes you free. Let's recapture that, while we're recapturing America."
  • "What I am not doing is bringing the Bible into the university and saying, "We should believe this." Bringing the Bible into question works very well when you are talking to a Bible-believing audience. But it is a disastrous thing to do when you are talking, as I am constantly, to a world of people for whom the fact that something is in the Bible is a reason for not believing it." ... "You see, if they thought they had good evidence for something, and then they saw it in the Bible, they would begin to doubt. That is what has to be kept out of the argument if you are going to do what I to do, which is to focus on the defects in their case—the bad logic, the bad science, the bad reasoning, and the bad evidence."

HIV and AIDS

Johnson is involved in a movement challenging the scientific orthodoxy that HIV is the cause of AIDS. This group asserts, broadly, that there is no scientific evidence that HIV actually causes AIDS, and that while HIV and AIDS are correlated, they are not universally correlated, as (it is argued) there are people who have AIDS symptoms without HIV and people with HIV who have no AIDS symptoms. They argue that correlative statistics are misleading, because AIDS is defined by the presence of the HIV virus, so that a person with tuberculosis and HIV has AIDS, but a person with Tuberculosis but without HIV does not have AIDS. One researcher for the organization reported finding over 4,000 cases in which AIDS symptoms were suffered without HIV, but these cases were not counted as AIDS because the HIV virus was absent. Since, they argue, there is no known mechanism of causation nor is there a perfect correlation, they conclude that the cause of AIDS is as yet unknown. Johnson's view that HIV is not the cause of AIDS is rejected by the scientific and medical communities at large.

Criticisms

The most serious specific allegation leveled by a number of critics is that Johnson is often intellectually dishonest in his arguments advancing intelligent design and attacking the scientific community. For example, he has been accused of numerous equivocations, particularly involving the term naturalism which can refer either to methodological naturalism or to philosophical naturalism.

In fact-checking Johnson's books Darwin on Trial and Defeating Darwinism, one reviewer discovered that almost every scientific source Johnson cited had been misused or distorted, from simple misinterpretations and innuendos to outright fabrications. The reviewer, Brian Spitzer, a professor of Biology, described Darwin on Trial the most deceptive book he had ever read.

Since Johnson is considered by those both inside and outside the movement to be the father and architect of the intelligent design movement and its strategies, Johnson's statements are often used to validate the criticisms leveled by those who allege that the Discovery Institute and its allied organizations are merely stripping the obvious religious content from their anti-evolution assertions as a means of avoiding the legal restrictions of the Establishment Clause. They argue that ID is simply an attempt to put a patina of secularity on top of what is a fundamentally religious belief and thus that the "Teach the Controversy" exhortation is disingenuous; particularly when contrasted to his statements in the Wall Street Journal and other secular media. Critics point out that contrary to the Discovery Institute's and Johnson's claims, the theory of evolution is well supported and widely accepted within the scientific community; there is little controversy on a scientific level. Popular disagreement with evolutionary theory should not be considered as a reason for challenging it as a scientifically valid subject to be taught, they contend.

In making their case, critics of Johnson commonly point to his central role in the Discovery Institute's carefully orchestrated campaign known as the Wedge Strategy are also major points of criticism. The Wedge Strategy, as envisioned by the Discovery Institute, is designed to leave the science establishment looking close-minded in the short term with a long term goal being a redefinition of science that centers on the removal of methodological naturalism from the philosophy of science and the scientific method, thereby allowing for supernatural explanations to be introduced as science. This would have the net effect of bringing a religious orientation into the public schools via science classrooms. Critics note that Johnson, as a principal officer of the Discovery Institute, often cites an overall plan to put the United States on a course toward the theocracy envisioned in the Wedge Strategy, and that the Discovery Institute as a matter of policy intentionally obfuscates its agenda. According to Johnson, "The movement we now call the wedge made its public debut at a conference of scientists and philosophers held at Southern Methodist University in March 1992."

Johnson describes the wedge strategy thusly:

  • "We are taking an intuition most people have (the belief in God) and making it a scientific and academic enterprise. We are removing the most important cultural roadblock to accepting the role of God as creator." Johnson, Enlisting Science to Find the Fingerprints of a Creator. The Los Angeles Times. March, 2001.
  • "Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools."
  • "This isn't really, and never has been a debate about science. It's about religion and philosophy."
  • "So the question is: "How to win?" That’s when I began to develop what you now see full-fledged in the "wedge" strategy: "Stick with the most important thing" —the mechanism and the building up of information. Get the Bible and the Book of Genesis out of the debate because you do not want to raise the so-called Bible-science dichotomy. Phrase the argument in such a way that you can get it heard in the secular academy and in a way that tends to unify the religious dissenters. That means concentrating on, "Do you need a Creator to do the creating, or can nature do it on its own?" and refusing to get sidetracked onto other issues, which people are always trying to do."

While the following quote is often attributed to Johnson, such attribution is erroneous:

  • "The objective is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism vs. evolution to the existence of God vs. the non-existence of God. From there people are introduced to 'the truth' of the Bible and then 'the question of sin' and finally 'introduced to Jesus.'"

Bibliography

  • Darwin on Trial ISBN 0-83-081324-1
  • Reason in the Balance ISBN 0-83-081929-0
  • Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds ISBN 0-83-081360-8
  • The Wedge of Truth ISBN 0-83-082267-4
  • Objections Sustained ISBN 0-83-082288-7
  • The Right Questions ISBN 0-83-082294-1
  • Darwinism: Science or Philosophy? ISBN 0-96-421040-1


External links

Audio and Video

There are several interrelated articles on Misplaced Pages about this subject, see:
Teach the Controversy; Wedge strategy; Discovery Institute; Howard Ahmanson, Jr
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