Allen:
I showed Chris Cogan's comments on Johnson's book to a friend and she
replied (see notes following the ****************'s)
Allen's Anonymous friend:
> A couple of notes aimed at CC and others of his/her ilk:
> > Original book review:
> > > The deficiencies in science and naturalism call for a
cognitive
> > > revolution, a fundamental change in our worldview and thinking
> > > habits. And it all begins with a wedge of truth.
> > CC says
> > Ah, yes, cognition is now to be replaced with "truth" that is achieved
by
> > some non-cognitive means.
>
> *********** If absolute truth depends on cognition, then it is nothing
more
> than an opinion and not truth per se at all. Which leaves us with a
> cognitive dilemma: where did we get the concept of an absolute truth?
Not
> what is it, but where did the concept itself come from?
Chris did not mention anything at all about *absolute* truth, but was
speaking a kind word about gathering information through the senses (which
is what science is all about) rather than through whatever sense one detects
gods, angels, devils and other such things.
> > > Johnson wants to put back on the table for
> > > public debate issues that have often been ruled out of court.
In
> > > splitting the foundations of naturalism, Johnson analyzes the
latest
> > > debates about science and evolution. He incisively pinpoints
> > > philosophical assumptions and counters the objections to
> > > intelligent design raised by its most recent critics."
> > CC says
> > Again, if this last sentence is true, it's a radical departure from his
> > other books. Is he *finally* going to pickup the burden of proof for
> > non-naturalism and for design theory?
>
> ************** Design needs no proof other than CC himself. He recognized
> the design of the letters he was reading in the review, picked up the
> meaning behind the design and then designed his own response which he
> assumed someone else would recognized as design behind the scrambled
letters
> and read. Please note I did not add the "intelligent" part to the
"design"
> argument here. That was not an accident.
why do it? Do you think nobody recognizes human design? You can distinguish
a house from a hill. Nobody--but religionists clutching at straws in the
evolution/creation debate--thinks that a cloud shaped like a horse is
actually a horse. Or was shaped like a horse on purpose by some unseen
intelligence.
> > Or is he going to rehash his previous
> > arguments and reformulate his previous misrepresentations of
evolutionary
> > theory and naturalism, in order to give himself theories that can be
> > easily refuted (while *claiming* to have refuted the real thing, of
course)?
>
> ************** Some of the men associated with Dr. Johnson are world class
> scientists. He has not only learned from them but has read voluminously
> himself from the evolutionary material. What CC is really saying is that
he
> does not like what Dr. Johnson has learned, and disagrees with his
> conclusions. In CC's mind this then makes Dr. Johnson (take your pick or
> choose all...) stupid, ignorant, deceitful, deceived.
I usually go with ignorant. It's less of an ad hominem than deceitful.
Though I agree he has access to quite a bit of information and deceitful is
probably a lot more likely. Since he constantly misrepresents what biology
and science actually say, then it seems to be one or the other. On p. 59 of
"Darwin on Trial" for example, he is discussing "problems" with the fossil
record. Naturally he turns to to Gould and Eldredge and punctuated
equilibrium because their discussions of it are rich with passages that are
easily misinterpreted when read out of context. Johnson quotes Eldredge as
saying "We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports [the
story of gradual adaptive change], all the while really knowing that it does
not." Then Johnson says "But how could a deception of this magnitude
possibly have been perpetrated by the whole body of a respected science,
dedicated almost by definition to the pursuit of truth?" *Deception*? I
think we have a definite pot/kettle problem here. Where did we get deception
out of that? Eldredge and Gould do not doubt evolution. They state clearly
that evolution does not require gradual change. Nowhere does Johnson make
clear that that is what they are saying. Buried in the back of the book in a
section called "research notes" (the book is extremely poorly footnoted,
loaded with unattributed quotes that it is therefore impossible to find the
context for) Johnson quotes Mayer "Nothing incensed some evolutionists more
than the claims made by Gould and associates that they had been the first to
have discovered, or at least to have for the first time properly emphasized,
various evolutionary phenomena already widely accepted in the evolutionary
literature." Widely accepted? Obviously the deception hasn't worked!
Johnson is fond of verbal card tricks like this. It's a lawyer thing.
Conceal this bit of evidence, ignore that, shine a strong light on this
triviality and "viola" the serial killer is innocent. From p. 58 "Just about
everyone who took a college biology course during the last sixty years or so
has been led to believe that the fossil record was a bulwark of support for
the classic Darwinian thesis, not a liability to be explained away."
*Liability*? who said it was a liability? Nobody but Johnson. But if it's a
liability the scientists are trying to conceal, the audience is free to
ignore the fossil evidence--evidence against your client must be discredited
at all costs.
> > CC says
> > I've read "Darwin on Trial." Perhaps you should read it too. Reviewers
> > hardly needed to do a hatchet job on it, since Johnson pretty much did
> > that himself, right in the book. It does not take a genius to see how
> > bad the arguments in that book are.
>
> ************** And it takes even less of a genius to be too afraid or
> vague
> to even mention one of those terrible arguments. Why is my baloney
> detecter working overtime here?
If your baloney detector worked Johnson's book would have broken it.
>
> ************* If naturalism is all there is, then Dr. Johnson evolved
quite
> naturally and CC has absolutely no philosophical or cognitive reason to
bash
> the man or his work. It is all quite natural and the most CC could say
> about it, if he were busy being true to what he claims is truth (which is,
> after all, only his opinion, so it only holds true for him anyway) is that
> Johnson is an interesting variation or mutation from the better variety,
> which is, of course, CC himself.
:-) now you're getting it! Johnson's main purpose and that of his devotees
is to impose his and their religious dogma on the public. He hopes to do
this by persuasion, since reality doesn't back him up. (The evidence points
to his client being guilty!) He and they have a false idea that science says
something about religion. It doesn't. Dawkins is wrong on that point.
Science does not comment on religion. Science is about what is "out there"
and how to understand what is out there. What Johnson does is rhetoric, not
science. Like a lot of creation "science" it's more a line of argumentation
than any new actual information. His books are full of misrepresentations
and misinformation and, yes, deception.
Susan
--------
Peace is not the absence of conflict--it is the presence of justice.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
Please visit my website:
http://www.telepath.com/susanb
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