Phillip Johnson interview

From: Keith B Miller (kbmill@ksu.edu)
Date: Thu Apr 26 2001 - 15:19:52 EDT

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    This is a rather clear statement by Johnson that evolution must be
    disproved in order to be able to accept a creator God.

    Keith

    >Here's a quote from an interview at:
    >http://www.arn.org/docs/johnson/commsp99.htm
    >
    >CJ: Let's shift the discussion just a bit. At the bare bones level, what
    >essentials do you believe the Christian must maintain in the question of human
    >origins in order to remain essentially Christian?
    >
    >Phil: Well, the first thing, I guess, is the role of God as our Creator. The
    >evolutionary naturalists have been telling us that you don't need God in the
    >system, you don't need a creator in the system because these purposeless forces
    >can do it all. If they are right on that, then I would tend to think that
    >probably Christianity should be given up as a bad show, considering most of the
    >people that come to believe that that's what they conclude too. If God is an
    >illusion and the Bible's just been wrong about everything, and religious belief
    >is just believing what you want to believe and the facts show you that it
    >didn't happen that way, well then the logical conclusion it seems to me would
    >be not to try to save Christianity but to give it up as a mistake. Now, that's
    >one reason I was so interested in this field. Because, now, on the other hand,
    >if it turns out that the evolutionary theory is what's mistaken, and natural
    >selection has no creative power, and you have this whole scientific culture
    >that has been believing something dead against the evidence because that's
    >something they want to believe, then even without knowing any more about it, I
    >would say that the theistic and Biblical worldview has been tremendously
    >validated. That is to say it's been validated in the sense that you do need a
    >creator after all, but even more, what's been validated is the biblical view
    >that it's a major part of the human project to get rid of the creator; because
    >their deeds were evil, they did not want to honor god as God, and so instead
    >they imagined various forms of idolatry and nature worship of which Darwinian
    >evolution is just the most prevalent modern form. So, at this point, you say
    >that not only has it been revealed that science points to the reality of a
    >creator after all, but the enormously bad and self-deceptive thinking of the
    >Darwinian evolutionist is something straight out of Romans 1. Without going any
    >further than that, I'd say that the biblical worldview has been enormously
    >affirmed. When it comes to questions like "Is it really important that the
    >Genesis chronology be upheld?" or whatever, I'm more inclined to "hang loose"
    >on that. For one thing, I'm very much opposed to restrictions on considering
    >the evidence, and so it might be very convenient for us theologically if the
    >Genesis chronology is true, and so, for that reason we might want to believe
    >it, but that doesn't mean that the evidence necessarily supports it. If the
    >evidence overwhelmingly says that that chronology is not true, then we can't
    >make it true by wishful thinking. So, my basic inclination is to follow the
    >evidence wherever it leads, and then live with the consequences of that. What
    >has happened so far when we've done that is that the materialistic and
    >naturalistic view that dominates our culture has been shown to be
    >self-deceptive in every way. So I'm inclined to think we can afford to follow
    >that program forward courageously without being afraid of what the facts will
    >show.

    Keith B. Miller
    Department of Geology
    Kansas State University
    Manhattan, KS 66506
    kbmill@ksu.edu
    http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/



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