Darwin on Trial

Phillip Johnson

1. The Legal Setting

p 4 Great 2 page recap of Scopes trial from the standpoint of a career legal specialist.

p 6 Discusses the opportunism of the creation scientists but comes back to criticize the one-sidedness of mainstream science. Then makes the valid point that scientific consensus does not make it law. "But the consensus view of t he scientific establishment is not enshrined in the Constitution. Lawmakers are entitled to act on different assumptions, at least to the extent that the courts will let them."

p 6 The Brennan majority opinion and Scalias dissenting opinion. An interesting discussion.

p 7 Talks about implications of science and religion, with "science" being credited as "the truth" leaving religion to be considered as fantasy. "By the use of labels, objections to naturalistic evolution can be dismissed without a fair hearing."

p 8 "The Academy thus defined "science" in such a way that advocates of supernatural creation may neither argue for their own position nor dispute the claims of the scientific establishment."

p 9 Wonderful skewering of Dawkins

p 9 "Richard Dawkins, an Oxford Zoologist who is one of the most influential figures in evolutionary science, is unabashedly explicit about the religious side of Darwinism. His 1986 book "The Blind Watchmaker" is at one level about biology, but at a more fundamental level it is a sustained argument for atheism. According to Dawkins, 'Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.' ".
"When he contemplates the perfidy of those who refuse to believe, Dawkins can scarcely restrain his fury.'It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that.).' Dawkins went on to explain, by the way, that what he dislikes particularly about creationists is that they are intolerant."

p " 'Evolution' can mean anything from the uncontroversial statement that bacteria 'evolve' resistance to antibiotics to the grand metaphysical claim that the universe and mankind 'evolved' entirely by purposeless, mechanical forces. A word that elastic is likely to mislead, by implying that we know as much about the grand claim as we do about the small one."

p 11 Irving Kristol, "social theorist with a talent for recognizing ideological confuscation", wrote in The New York Times
"It is reasonable to suppose that if evolution were taught more cautiously, as a conglomerate idea consisting of conflicting hypotheses rather than as an unchallengeable certainty, it would be far less controversial. As things now stand, the religious fundamentalists are not far off the mark when they adssert that evolution, as generally taught, has an unwarranted anti-religious edge to it."

p 12 "Charles Darwin made evolution a scientific concept by showing, or claiming to have shown, that major transformations could occur in very small steps by natural means, so that time, chance, and differential survival could take the place of a miracle."

p 14 "bias must be acknowledged and examined. I am a philosophical theist and a Christian. I believe that a God exists who could create out of nothing if He wanted to do so, but who might have chosen to work through a natural evolutionary process instead. I am not a defender of creation-science, and in fact I am not concerned in this book with addressing any conflicts between the Biblical accounts and the scientific evidence."

p 14 "I assume that the creation-scientists are biased by their precommitment to Biblical fundamentalism, and I will have very little to say about their position. The question I want to investigate is whether Darwinism is based on a fair assessment of the scientific evidence, or whether it is another kind of fundamentalism."

4. The Fossil Problem

p 45 "most people are not aware that Darwin's most formidable opponents were not clergymen but fossil experts."

p 46 Darwin "innumerable transitional forms"

p 47 Darwin The state of the fossil record was "the most obvious and gravest objection which can be charged against my theory."

p 50 Gould and Eldridge, "punk eek"

p 54 Cambrian Explosion, Darwin on Cambrian explosion "The case at present must remain inexplicable, and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained."

p 55 Gould "Wonderful Life"

p 57 Extinctions at 245 million, 65 million --- record of global catastrophes -- "is as disappointing to Darwinist expectations as a record of sudden appearance followed by stasis."

Comment from Davidson's "When Faith and Science Collide", p90: "Johnson's attacks on naturalism/materialism hit dead center. His attacks on evolutionary science miss the target, in large part because he is still aiming at materialism."

R Nave