Defeating Darwinism
Phillip Johnson has taught law at the University of California at Berkeley for thirty years. In the past decade he has become one of the best-known opponents of evolution, having conducted public lectures and debates on the issue and written in various journals. He has brought his legal skills to the question of evolution, examining and putting questions to the evidence and seeing if the answers live up to the original claims.
Darwin on Trial is only 150 pages long and is written for the layman. It exposes the fraudulence of the theory of evolution in a calm, logical and rational manner, mainly by citing its own proponents. It shows that the "evidence" is just not there. No reasonable person could read this book and still think evolution is scientific fact. Professor Johnson is not a fundamentalist but a mainline Presbyterian, and doesn't bring the book of Genesis into the argument at all. He sticks simply to the scientific argument. He does not rule out evolution as incompatible with the Bible but as incompatible with the scientific evidence.
What makes him such an incisive critic of evolution is that, like a good lawyer, he knows how to distinguish between presupposition and evidence, theory and proof, evasion and honesty, and begging the question and proving the answer. So many scientists are brilliant men in their own fields of empirical analysis but are devoid of sound philosophy and logic. When they step out of their own field of natural science into metaphysics they can, unwittingly, utter absurdities and self contradictions. Darwin on Trial cites and exposes some of these fallacies on the part of defenders of evolution. At the same time, Johnson quotes several world-renowned scientists who say openly that evolution is not proven, and even contrary to the evidence. There is no unanimity among scientists on the subject, despite what we are so often told.
And while the point is not central to his argument, Johnson also shows, by quoting scientific writers, that much of the inspiration for belief in evolution is atheistic materialism. For many, evolution is a dogma of faith that will never be disproved by any evidence. Scientists Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould and Carl Sagan, for example, would rather believe in anything than in God. In fact, some scientists have openly declared it their mission to deliver man from belief in God.
Darwin on Trial is a joy to read. And because Johnson states his case so calmly, it's the type of book you could give to an ardent believer in evolution without offending him. The book is bound to have an impact on anyone who believes in evolution simply because he was raised to believe in it.
Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds uses material and arguments similar to the first book's, but is presented at an easier level, for late teens, young college students and ordinary people. It explains more explicitly how to read pro-evolution books and articles with a critical mind. Johnson enumerates the rules of logic and argument and applies them to the matter at hand. He shows how an ad hominem argument is invalid; he explains how to watch for selective use of evidence. He illustrates the fallacy of assuming the question instead of proving it, and the device of changing definitions; he teaches how to watch out for evading the issue by resorting to attacks on fundamentalists; and so on.
In this second book, he moves from attacking evolution to explaining the concept of intelligent design, making use of Professor Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box. The sheer complexity of the simplest cell would defy the power of mindless matter to construct, he argues, and so the argument for an Intelligent Designer is perfectly reasonable.
Crucial to the whole debate about evolution is a definition of terms. Johnson points out regularly that when scientists point to verified examples of evolution, these are nothing but examples of variations within species—which no one disputes—quite irrelevant to a claim of the transformation of one species into another. "Evolution is a term of many meanings, and the meanings have a way of changing without notice. Dog breeding and finch-beak variations are frequently cited as typical examples of evolution. So is the fact that...Americans today are larger on average than they were a century ago (due to better nutrition). If relatively minor variations like that were all evolution were about, there would be no controversy, and even the strictest biblical fundamentalists would be evolutionists" (p. 57).
The relevance of evolution to the Catholic is that it has a bearing on revealed doctrines. The theory of the evolutionary origin of man's body does not, in itself, involve an absolute impossibility, and, so far, has not been rejected by the Church. Pope Pius XII treated the issue in Humani Generis (1950), insisting that the theory should not be adopted as though it were a certain and proven doctrine, and as though one could totally ignore Revelation with regard to the questions it raises. Apart from the doctrine of God as Creator of Heaven and earth, and the Creator of each soul, there is also involved the doctrine of man's descent from Adam. Pius XII noted: "Christ's faithful cannot embrace a theory which involves the existence, after Adam's time, of some earthly race of men, truly so called, who were not descended from him as the ancestor of all men, or else supposes that Adam was the name given to a multiplicity of original ancestors" (Humani Generis, DS 3897, cited in the Catechism of the Catholic Church #390).
Belief in the descent of all men from one man (Adam) is called "monogenism." It is upheld in the Catechism in items 374, 375, 376, 379, 390, 391 and 404. "Polygenism" (belief in several original ancestors) is contrary to the teaching of the Church. St. Paul says, "Sin came into the world through one man" (Rom. 5:12). Seven times in Romans 5:12-19, St. Paul speaks of Adam as "one man." The Council of Trent's solemn decree on Original Sin opens by speaking of the sin of "the first man Adam" (DS 1511). This teaching is not a dogma defined by the Church but is a necessary presupposition of the dogmas of Original Sin and the redemption. Unless we are all sprung from Adam, it is meaningless to say that we inherited Adam's sin, and therefore had need of redemption. As Cardinal Ratzinger's recent "Commentary on Ad Tuendam Fidem" explains, the Church infallibly teaches not only dogmas, but also the necessary presuppositions to those dogmas.
Phillip Johnson keeps up with evolutionary literature, and he says that evolutionists disagree with each other about every element in the theory of evolution, and that the only thing they do agree on is atheistic materialism. Johnson demonstrates political wisdom, and shows how the philosophy and ideology of atheistic evolution has helped to shape modern culture in such a destructive way, detaching man from his Creator, and detaching science from reason and religion. He is convinced, however, that the great edifice of Darwinism will come crashing down, like the seemingly indestructible Soviet Empire. It cannot face sustained inquiry, and will one day be discredited and seen for what it is: in Michael Denton's words, "the great cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century." •!•
Rev. Peter Joseph, a priest of the Diocese of Wagga Wagga, Australia, is studying at the Gregorian University in Rome.
© Sursum Corda!, 1331 Red Cedar Circle, Ft. Collins, CO 80524.
This item 968 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
