Phillip E. Johnson

“Some theists in evolutionary science acquiesce to these tacit rules and retain a personal faith while accepting a thoroughly naturalistic picture of physical reality.”

“The monopoly of science in the realm of knowledge explains why evolutionary biologists do not find it meaningful to address the question whether the Darwinian theory is true.”

“In short, the proposition that God was in any way involved in our creation is effectively outlawed, and implicitly negated.”

“Although I insist that God has always had the power to intervene directly in nature to create new forms, I am willing to be per-suaded that He chose not to do so and instead employed secondary natural causes like random mutation and natural selection.”

“Most importantly, I agree that the truth of these matters should be determined by interpretation of scientific evidence - experiments, fossil studies and the like.”

“First, Darwinian theory tells us how a certain amount of diversity in life forms can develop once we have various types of complex living organisms already in existence.”

“Materialism sets us free from sin-by proving that there is no such thing as sin. There's just antisocial behavior, which we can control with measures like laws and educational programs.”

“Evolutionary biologists are not content merely to explain how variation occurs within limits, however. They aspire to answer a much broader question-which is how complex organisms like birds, and flowers, and human beings came into existence in the first place.”

“I approach the creation-evolution dispute not as a scientist but as a problem of law, which means among other things that I know something about the ways that words are used in arguments. What first drew my attention to the question was the way the rules of argument seemed to be structured to make it impossible to question whether what we are being told about evolution is really true. For example, the Academy's rule against negative argument automatically eliminates the possibility that science has not discovered how complex organisms could have developed. However wrong the current answer may be, it stands until a better answer arrives. It is as if a criminal defendant were not allowed to present an alibi unless he could also show who did commit the crime.”

“Truth as such is not a particularly important concept in naturalistic philosophy.”

“As students grow more and more accustomed to assuming materialism and naturalism in their academic work, the concept of creation by God gradually tends to become less real to them. It is not so much that any single finding undermines their faith; rather, the day-to-day practice of thinking in naturalistic terms about academic subjects makes it awkward to think differently when it comes to religion.”

“The second advantage claimed for naturalism is that it is equivalent to rationality, because it assumes a model of reality in which all events are in principle accessible to scientific investigation.”

“So one reason the science educators panic at the first sign of public rebellion is that they fear exposure of the implicit religious content in what they are teaching.”

“In the most important sense a creationist is a person who believes in creation, and that includes people who believe that Genesis is a myth and that creation involved a process called evolution and consumed billions of years.”

“No doubt it is true that science cannot study God, but it hardly follows that God had to keep a safe distance from everything that scientists want to study.”

“One of the truly bizarre things about our current cultural situation is that the leading figures of the scientific establishment seem genuinely amazed that the citizens do not accept finch-beak variation as proof of the claim that humans, like all animals and plants, are accidental products of a purposeless universe in which only material processes have operated from the beginning.”

“As a theist I believe that God exists and that God creates.”

“A second point that caught my attention was that the very persons who insist upon keeping religion and science separate are eager to use their science as a basis for pronouncements about religion. The literature of Darwinism is full of anti-theistic conclusions, such as that the universe was not designed and has no purpose, and that we humans are the product of blind natural processes that care nothing about us. What is more, these statements are not presented as personal opinions but as the logical implications of evolutionary sc”

“The assumption that nature is all there is, and that nature has been governed by the same rules at all times and places, makes it possible for natural science to be confident that it can explain such things as how life began.”

“Darwinism is not merely a support for naturalistic philosophy: it is a product of naturalistic philosophy.”