Phillip E. Johnson, a Berkeley law professor whose book Darwin On Trial launched the Intelligent Design movement, died last weekend at 79. I remember reading it back in the early 90s when it came out, and being thrilled that someone was so effectively exposing that the emperor Darwin had no clothes. Not only was there no evidence for a Darwinian notion of evolution by random mutation and natural selection, those pushing it assumed what they ostensibly were trying to prove. In logic that is called begging the question (which doesn’t mean raising the question), assuming true what you’re trying to prove as true. What they assumed was and is naturalism, that matter is all that is, and all that matters. There were numerous articles celebrating Johnson’s life at Evolution News, and one by Stephen Meyer explains this point well:
While Johnson accepted “methodological naturalism” as an accurate description of method in much of science, he argued that treating it as a normative rule when seeking to establish that natural processes alone produced life, assumes the very point that Darwinists (and neo-Darwinists) are trying to establish. Johnson reminded readers that Darwinism does not just claim that evolution (in the sense of change) has occurred. Instead, it purports to establish that the major innovations in the history of life arose by purely natural mechanism — that is, without intelligent direction or design. He thus distinguished the various meanings of the term “evolution” from the central claim of Darwinism, which he identifies as “the Blind Watchmaker thesis,” following Richards Dawkins the staunch modern defender of Darwinism.
The supreme irony is that all the founders of modern science, all of them, were Christians of one variety or another, and all did their science because nature revealed its Creator. All of a sudden in the 20th century it became anti-science to dare conclude that there is design and telos (purpose) in nature. Only very smart people educated into idiocy would refuse to see design and telos in nature. A more delicious irony is occurring every day in the halls of science, where it is getting more and more difficult to deny that something as complex and functional as nature is basically the result of a cosmic accident.
If you, or your kids, are ever tempted to doubt the existence of God, and who isn’t in our secular age, just look outside: Accident or Creator? Or learn about the astounding complexity of the cell which makes life possible: Accident or Creator? Or listen to a beautiful piece of music that moves you emotionally: Accident or Creator? Really, it’s not even close.
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