At 11:20 AM 07/28/2000, you wrote:
Wesley
>Phil Johnson was on Nightline last night, and I found his performance
>interesting in several places. Two of those stood out, though.
>
>Questioned by Koppel on whether his "intelligent design theory" was
>actually fifty years older than Darwin's "Origin of Species",
>Johnson stated that the idea of divine creation was much older than
>that. So now we have even Phil Johnson confusing the theological
>concept of divine creation with IDT. If Johnson finds the two
>concepts so similar, why should ID critics be castigated for making
>the same conceptual association?
Chris
Particularly since all the ID-ers on this list are, as far as I know,
theistic ID-ers. In principle, ID of some sort could be supported
consistently by atheists, but in practice, they seem to be *nearly* all
theistic, non-naturalistic, supernaturalistic, and definitely *religious*.
>Given the last word, Johnson cast opponents of ID as being
>uninterested in civil liberties, and in fact being like an Un-American
>Activities Investigating Committee. This contrasts with Dembski's
>analogy reported by Stephen Goode last year in which anti-ID
>biologists were supposedly like the former Soviet regime. Perhaps any
>analogy will do, so long as biologists become the villains.
Chris
Did he make this as a claim about *all* of the opponents of ID, or just the
ones that are trying to keep ID from being taught as science, or just the
ones who are trying to keep ID from being taught at all?
Certainly, *I* oppose ID, but I cannot imagine how he would paint me as
being uninterested in civil liberties (but, of course, he doesn't know I
exist). My point is that there is opposition to Johnson at various levels:
Scientific, social, political, and philosophical. A person who opposes his
views on the scientific issue might nevertheless agree with him on some of
the others. For example, I oppose public schooling for *exactly* the same
reasons many people oppose state religions, or laws respecting religions,
etc. Government is *the* worst possible institution to be providing and
running schools, because it does so by force. Even private religious
schools cannot *compel* children to attend their schools.
So, would Johnson say that I am "uninterested" in civil rights? I certainly
oppose ID (especially theistic ID, because of the radical claims it makes
that cannot be supported by empirical evidence of *any* kind).
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