From: Phillip E Johnson, INTERNET:philjohn@uclink.berkeley.edu
TO: John W. Burgeson, 73531,1501
DATE: 12/5/95 11:54 AM
RE: Week 5
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Date: Tue, 5 Dec 1995 09:22:03 -0800
From: Phillip E Johnson <philjohn@uclink.berkeley.edu>
Message-Id: <199512051722.JAA06073@uclink.berkeley.edu>
To: 73531.1501@compuserve.com
Subject: Week 5
Phillip E. Johnson October 23, 1995
Fifth week: Texas
Sunday, Oct. 15. Upon arrival at Austin airport Saturday evening
I was met by CLM staffer David Ness and taken to the guest room at
the Ness family home with wife Karen, sons Ben (14) and Barak (10).
The Ness family has been in Austin only 2 years after some years on
assignment in Kenya, where David grew up. This was a subject of
mutual interest, since I was a high school teacher in Kenya 34
years ago. The main event Sunday was my two 35-minute sermons at
the Hill Country Bible Church, to a combined audience of about
1000, on the theme "How I got Here." This was a very supportive
audience that showed their enthusiasm by buying quantities of both
my books. Late in the afternoon there was a walk scheduled for the
Mount Bonnell area (a towering 775 feet tall!), featuring a geology
talk about the region by the very enthusiastic UTexas geology
professor Leon Long (who had accompanied Steven Weinberg to the
lunch/discussion we had a couple of years ago). After the talk
Ness, Electrical Engineering Professor John Cogdell, and Library &
Information Sciences Professor Donald Davis, accompanied me for a
relaxing hike. Our planned route met with the disapproval of the
geologist, who was baffled that anyone would want to walk in an
area possessing no interesting geological features. Geology can
become a kind of religion in itself, as with other fascinating
fields of inquiry.
Monday, Oct. 16. The day began with a 7:00 AM breakfast at a
downtown Club with the local chapter of the Christian Legal
Society, mostly bright young attorneys and one more my own age who
is running for election to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Although the very enthusiastic organizer of the event (an assistant
in the Governor's Office) had the flu and had to stay home, the
discussion was good. Later in the morning I did a radio talk show
with the syndicated Derry Brownfield show, originating in Missouri.
This was a friendly country-type program, with commercials for
weed-killer and fertilizer. Then I left for lunch with Mark Yudof,
formerly Dean of the UTexas law school and now Executive Vice-
President and Provost of the University. Mark (whom I have known
since he visited at Berkeley about 20 years ago) was a bit late
since his schedule had been disrupted by Bill Clinton's visit to
the campus earlier that morning (this being also the day of the
"million-man march on Washington). Since Mark is a constitutional
law authority specializing in education who also has to deal with
scientific authorities in his role as an administrator, we had a
solid basis for a good conversation. After lunch at his club Mark
dropped me off at the law school, where I chatted with Dean Michael
Sharlot (who also visited at Berkeley many years ago) before my
afternoon program.
The first part of the program was a law school forum at which
my brief talk on "natural law" was followed by responses from
conservative law professor Lino Graglia, a libertarian materialist,
and liberal law professor Sandy Levinson. There was a good
attendance for that sort of thing, a little less than 100, but
there wasn't time to do more than scratch the surface of the issue.
The main event of the day was my late afternoon lecture,
sponsored jointly by the political science and philosophy
departments. Mark Yudof introduced me and Steven Weinberg, the
University's most prestigious faculty member, responded to my
lecture. Now THAT is what I call coming in by the front door!
(David Ness is to be complimented on his hard work, which was aided
by the willingness of the philosophy department to sponsor the
event and invite Weinberg, and by some good chemistry between
Weinberg and myself -- considering how far apart we are
philosophically.) The classroom held only about 270 officially,
but there must have been 400 there squatting and standing all over
the place and many more turned away at the door. The event was
supposed to have been recorded on video but the equipment didn't
work. The majority of attendees seemed to be science professors
and grad students, although there was also a group of home-school
children. Although the atmosphere was electric with tension -- I
was drained afterwards not by any effort of speaking but by the
intensity of the packed room -- I felt very little hostility. My
lecture was devoted to presenting my basic line of thought in as
reasonable and amiable a style as possible. Weinberg responded
vigorously but with courtesy. The entire event was excellent
theater, and made the essential dramatic point: the question of the
validity of naturalism, and the theistic challenge to Darwinian
materialism, is on the mainstream academic agenda.
Tuesday, October 17. Because the events at UT Austin had
worked out so successfully, this day at Southwest Texas State
University was inevitably a kind of "in between" day, although the
evening lecture in the main auditorium was officially sponsored and
very graciously introduced by a perfect "gentlelady" from the
administration. There was also a morning discussion with an oddly
assorted group ranging from fundamentalist students to dogmatically
atheistic philosophy professors. At lunch I had a long discussion
with a very earnest biologist, a new Christian, who was thinking
through the issues with great seriousness and teaching his students
to be less credulous about science -- but who was also
uncomfortable with my radical challenge to Darwinism. This
individual conversation required more energy that my public
lecture.
Wednesday, October 18. After an early morning flight I was
met at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport by Steve Sternberg, a CLM
worker who became a great friend when we worked on the great SMU
"Michael Ruse" conference that was held in Spring, 1992. The only
outright mistake in RITB I know of so far is that I failed to give
proper credit in the reference notes for that SMU conference to
Dallas Christian Leadership, a splendid organization of which Steve
is the Director. Steve took me to the University of Texas at
Arlington, where I held a colloquium at the Campus Lutheran Center
under the watchful eye of Vera Sweet, a very direct and forceful
German lady who could be at least as intimidating as Steven
Weinberg if she were not so charming (and with her adorable baby!).
Meeting her and the baby put me in a good mood for the colloquium
and for the noon lecture, where I was introduced by another old
friend, Engineering Professor Ron Carter. The crowd was
respectable for the circumstances, 150-200, including the usual
aggressive atheists who ended up hanging around for a friendly chat
after I dealt with their questions.
After that it was off to Dallas and SMU, where I was allowed
to unpack at the home of Ed and Donda Drake. Ed is a retired
lawyer, former WWII bomber pilot, long-time lay leader in the
Southern Baptist denomination, and a straight-shooter who is
rightly valued by various organizations, including Dallas Christian
Leadership, for his integrity and common sense. Then I went off to
SMU law school to be the companion of Dean Paul Rogers, law
professors Ellen Pryor and Jeff Gaba, and Anthropology Professor
Ron Wetherington (another old friend from previous visits) at a law
school "Grand Forum." One might call it good conversation among
friends about important matters. The evening event was a buffet
dinner/reception at one of those spectacular Dallas homes honoring
new SMU President Gerald Turner. The featured speakers were Steve
Sternberg, President Turner, and finally, myself. Another piece of
good theater, signifying that Dallas Christian Leadership has moved
in the last 3 years from a marginalized position to a creative
partnership with the university leadership.
Thursday/Friday, Oct. 19. These were, by my standards,
relaxed days. On Thursday the morning was free (to catch up on
email and many business matters), and the afternoon events were
radio talk shows -- by syndicated Marlin Maddoux in the early
afternoon and local Jewish Christian conservative hero David Golde
in the afternoon rush hour. IV Press sent an email message asking
what I had been doing, since the phone rang off the hook with book
orders after the Maddoux show. Friday the early show was a lunch
with the Christian Legal Society group at the SMU Law School, where
a Vietnamese student made a particularly favorable impression on me
with her effort to think through the cross-cultural issues so she
could explain them to faculty members. Rather like the First
Century experience as Paul experienced it, I imagine. Friday
evening was a public lecture at SMU.
This report was mostly written on Saturday afternoon on the flight
from Dallas to Washington/Dulles, where I was to meet Kathie on the
way to Spain. Upon arrival at Dulles I learned that her flight
from San Francisco was delayed, and I had to proceed to Spain
without her. As I send this off late Monday morning she has just
arrived a day late to join me in the Hotel San Marcos in Leon,
where we are staying in the Royal Suite -- a place truly fit for a
king. I had a press conference on arrival yesterday, and the local
papers today are full of stories about the strange professor from
Berkeley who doesn't believe in Darwinism. Our Spanish adventures
will be the subject of my next report.