>Here is the blurb in Booklist, which is the magazine of the American
>Library Ass.
>
>Johnson, Phillip E.
>Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, Aug.
>1997. 132p.
>InterVarsity, $15.99 (0-8308-1362-4); paper, $9.99
>(0-8308-1360-8).
>
>Johnson feels his successful antievolution books, Darwin on Trial
>(1991) and Reason in the Balance (1995), are more complicated
>than parents and teachers need to prepare students to take on the
>evolutionists. Hence, this shorter version of his overall thesis
>that also advises how to debate evolution. Johnson first makes
>clear what he perceives the real adversary to be: a dogma that
>insists life arose solely by chance and that denies contrary
>evidence a hearing.
This certainly will make preparing for a debate easier. Typical
debate goes like this:
C'ist: What evidence do you have that life arose solely by chance?
E'ist: None
C'ist: Then why won't you allow contrary evidence a hearing?
E'ist: Contrary evidence has received a hearing, based on this
evidence the hypothesis was discarded long ago.
C'ist: Good, let's go have a beer and watch baseball.
E'ist: Yes, let's.
>He then counsels believers to avoid such
>common mistakes as retreating from theism to deism (and so
>transforming a continuously creative God into an uninvolved First
>Cause), to learn to spot faulty analogies and other forms of poor
>logic,
Such as knocking down strawmen?
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Applied Mechanics
The Ohio State University
"If cucumbers had anti-gravity,
sunsets would be more interesting"
-- Wesley Elsberry