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Creation and Evolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Philip E. Devine
Philip E. Devine
Affiliation:
Providence College Providence, Rhode Island 02818–0001
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Extract

Despite the bad reputation of the legal profession, law remains king in America. A highly diverse society relies on the laws (and especially the Constitution) to maintain a working sense of the dignity and inviability of each individual. And a persistent element in contemporary debates is the fear that naturalistic theories of the human person will erode our belief that we have a dignity greater than that of other natural objects. Thus the endurance of the creation vs. evolution debate is due less to the arguments of creationists, or to the continued influence of the book of Genesis, than to the reading of the evidence provided by Phillip E. Johnson of the University of California, Berkeley, Law School.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , September 1996 , pp. 325 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 See his Darwin on Trial (Washington, D. C.: Regnery Gateway, 1991).Google Scholar

2 On which see Unger, Roberto Magnabeira, The Critical Legal Studies Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

3 This project is controversial among both feminists and philosophers. See Susan, Haack, advisory ed., ‘Feminist Epistemology: For and Against,’ Monist, 77 (4) (Oct., 1994).Google Scholar

4 Evolution as Dogma (Dallas, Tx.: Haughton Publishing, 1990), p. 13Google Scholar; hereafter ED. (This pamphlet was originally published in First Things, Oct. and Nov. 1990.) But see ED 17, where he speaks the traditional language of truth.

5 For a high-quality collection of Creationist writings, see Moreland, J. P., ed., The Creation Hypothesis (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity, 1994)Google Scholar; hereafter CH. The authors hold Ph.D.s from Cambridge, the University of Chicago, Harvard, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Toronto.

6 See Dennett, Daniel C., Darwin's Dangerous Idea (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), pp. 411–20.Google Scholar

7 See Kitcher, Philip, Abusing Science (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982), ch. 7Google Scholar (with Patricia Kitcher).

8 Darwinism Defended (London: Addison-Wesley, 1982), pp. 58, 280.Google Scholar

9 ‘Darwinism's Rules of Reasoning,’ in Jon, Buell and Virginia, Hearn, eds., Darwinism: Science or Philosophy? (Richardson, Tx.: Foundation for Thought amd Ethics, 1994)Google Scholar; hereafter DSP. (This book represents the proceedings of an academic conference on Johnson's claims, held at Southern Methodist University in March, 1992.)

10 ‘Two Views: Science and the Christian Faith,’ Touchstone, 8 (1) (Winter, 1995), 7.Google Scholar Worse yet: ‘Well-meaning theistic evolutionists end up running interference for the metaphysical naturalists when they try to reassure the Christians that the that the rulers of science don't really mean what they say’ (Ibid.).

11 See Laudan, Larry, ‘The Demise of the Demarcation Problem,’ in Michael, Ruse, ed., But Is it Science? (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1988)Google Scholar (hereafter BIS), ch. 21;. Laudan applies his argument to the case at hand in ‘Science at the Bar – Causes for Concern,’ and ‘More on Creationism,’ BIS, chs. 22, 24. For a discussion of the issue by a creationist, see Meye in CH 72–88.

12 ‘The Academic as Expert Witness,’ BIS 389.

13 Some such complaint underlies many demands for feminist science. Alan Soble shows that one important set of feminist arguments is self-undermining in his ‘Gender, Objectivity, and Reason,’ Monist, 77 (4) (Oct., 1994), 500–530.Google Scholar

14 Chance and Necessity, Austryn Wainhouse, tr. (New York: Knopf, 1971), p. 112.Google Scholar

15 The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986)Google Scholar, esp. ch. 3.

16 Wonderful Life (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989).Google Scholar Hereafter WL.

17 The Blind Watchmaker, p. ix. The rivalry between natural selection and belief in a ‘supernatural deity’ pervades this book, especially chs. 1, 3, 11.

18 As Gould testifies, ‘Big Brother, the tyrant of George Orwell's 1984, directed his daily Two Minutes Hate against Emmanuel Goldstein, enemy of the people. When I studied evolutionary biology in graduate school during the mid-1960's, official rebuke and derision was directed against Richard Goldschmitt, a famous geneticist who, we were told, had gone astray’ (The Panda's Thumb [New York: W. W. Norton, 1989], p. 186Google Scholar; hereafter PT). For some examples of the rhetoric of solidarity within the biological community, see Dawkins, end of ch. 9.

19 For a discussion of the scientific problems evolutionary theory faces, see Denton, Michael, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Bethsheda, Md.: Adler and Adler, 1986).Google Scholar

20 The most famous ‘link’ observed in life, the lungfish, does not quite work; ‘its fish characteristics such as its gills and its intestinal spiral valve are one hundred per cent typical of the same condition found in many ordinary fish, while its heart and the way in which the blood is returned to the heart from the lungs is similar to the situtation found in most terrestrial vertebrates.’ Ibid, p. 109.

21 Quoted in John Horgan, ‘In the Beginning…’ Scientific American, Feb. 1991, p. 125. But scientists remain confident; as one of them puts it, ‘When we find the answer, it will probably be so damn stupid that we'll all say, “Why didn't I think of that before?”’ (Ibid.).

22 On the absence of an alternative theory and its implications, see Denton, ch. 15, and the references to Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend found there.

23 I am indebted to Joel Wilcox, and to two anonymous readers, for their comments on an earlier draft of this essay.