Phillip E. Johnson
Phillip E. Johnson
Phillip E. Johnsonis a retired UC Berkeley law professor and author who is considered the father of the intelligent design movement. He became a Christian while a tenured professor. He is a critic of what he calls "Darwinism". By "Darwinism", he means "fully naturalistic evolution, involving chance mechanisms and natural selection". As a Christian, Johnson believes "that a God exists who could create out of nothing if He wanted to do so, but who also might have chosen to work...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEducator
CountryUnited States of America
We're not trying to prove the character of God through science. That's a bad idea. What I'm trying to do is clear away the misunderstandings, the debris that prevent people from accepting that God who wants to accept them.
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.
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.
As a theist I believe that God exists and that God creates.
Darwinism is not merely a support for naturalistic philosophy: it is a product of naturalistic philosophy.
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.
Truth as such is not a particularly important concept in naturalistic philosophy.
To philosophical materialists God is no more than an idea in the human mind, and not a very important idea.
In short, the proposition that God was in any way involved in our creation is effectively outlawed, and implicitly negated.
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.
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 restriction of religion to private life therefore does not necessarily threaten the vital interests of the majority religion, if there is one, and it protects minority religions from tyranny of the majority.
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 .
Science...has become identified with a philosophy known as materialism or scientific naturalism. This philosophy insists that nature is all there is, or at least the only thing about which we can have any knowledge. It follows that nature had to do its own creating, and that the means of creation must have included any role for God.