by David R. Larson,

Timothy G. Standish and  John B. Wong

David R. Larson:

Professor Philip Johnson of the School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, an accomplished legal scholar who has distinguished himself in recent years as a critic of atheistic evolutionary theory, spoke to large audiences in the Loma Linda University Church on Friday evening, February 2, and Saturday afternoon, February 3, 2001.  On Saturday morning he also met with the Schuman Pavilion Sabbath School Class for its entire session and was interviewed by Pastor Graham Stacey in both worship services of the Loma Linda congregation.  On Sunday morning, he met with a smaller group of professors and students at a brunch hosted by the Geoscience Research Institute, an organization of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists adjacent to the LLU campus.

Ervin Taylor, an anthropologist from the University of California at Riverside, Roland Hegsted, retired editor of Liberty magazine and Paul Giem, a physician and researcher at LLU, responded to Professor Johnson's presentation on Friday evening.  Bernard Brandstater, a physician who organized these events as the President of the Loma Linda Adventist Forum, responded to Professor Johnson on Saturday afternoon.

Johnson indicated that he became interested in these matters while on a Sabbatical in England in the late 1980s.  He became especially intrigued by the assumptions with which many atheistic evolutionists begin, the evidence they cite and the forms of reasoning they use when presenting their cases.  Prepared by training and decades of experience as a legal scholar to analyze such things with care, he focused his energies both on the evidence presented by atheistic evolutionists and the logic of their arguments, and found them wanting in a number of telling instances.

Johnson's presentation on Friday evening highlighted three issues:  (1) the false stereotypes of conflict between science and religion that flow from reports of the Scopes Trial in Tennessee a number of years ago; (2) a critique of what he calls "methodological naturalism," the assumption that by definition the work of true science must proceed on atheistic assumptions, and (3) the importance at this time of challenging this basic assumption before entering into serious considerations of other issues, such as the age of the earth and life on it.

He also commented on how little can be inferred with validity from evidence that is often cited, such as the changing of the color of moths in England and changes in the size of the beaks of birds on remote islands.

Johnson expressed disfavor with the doctrine of theistic evolution, holding that it is neither "evolution" as typically understood by the scientific community today, nor "theistic," as understood by the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam for thousands of years.

On Saturday afternoon, Johnson reviewed recent controversies in Kansas regarding the teaching of evolution in public schools and at Baylor University in Texas about a major conference and an institute on that campus which was established to explore issues related to the "Intelligent Design Movement."  He contended that in neither case were the true controversies accurately reported by many members of the media.  He also held that in both instances those who favor methodological naturalism won a political battle but experienced a setback in the overall war between their position and others.  He also saw these events as attempts on the part of those who favor methodological naturalism to restrict, not extend, academic freedom.    

Using the metaphor of a "wedge," Johnson repeatedly asserted that at this point in time methodological naturalism is the most important conviction to challenge. This view, which asserts that by its very nature science must proceed on atheistic assumptions, is neither convincing nor liberating, he argued.  He also held that it is premature at this juncture to challenge widely held views regarding the age of the earth and life on it.  If methodological naturalism is true, he seemed to be saying, these other issues don't matter.  If it turns out that this atheistic assumption, and the typical modes of reasoning from it, are not persuasive, there will be opportunities aplenty to explore the other questions.

Even though he never used the term, I was struck by how sensitive Johnson is to what people in my community of faith call "present truth." This idea is that many, many convictions are true but that only a select number of them are especially pertinent at any specific time and place. From this point of view, it is a mistake willingly to hold as true something that is actually false. But it is also a mistake to emphasize something that may well be true but is not pertinent to the most important issues and options facing us here and now.

The challenge, of course, is that for years a number of Christians, including quite a few who are Seventh-day Adventists, have invested many resources in investigating issues that are not now ripe for consideration, in Johnson's view.  The good news is that when the discussion finally turns to these other questions, if it ever does, there may be those who have been prepared by decades of study to make decisive contributions.  The bad news is that, unless the dominance of what Johnson calls methodological naturalism is challenged, at least enough to make it debatable in thoughtful circles, that day may never come.

I think that Johnson's analysis of the current situation, and what our present priorities therefore should be, is essentially correct and that what he says gives my church and others an opportunity, a long needed one, to reassess where best to invest their resources now.  "Truth" is important.  "Present truth" is even more so.

I was also impressed by the parallels that occurred to me between Johnson's critique of what he calls "methodological naturalism" and what in the early part of the twentieth century Alfred North Whitehead challenged as "scientific materialism."  Whitehead held, and Johnson apparently agrees in large measure, that when Descartes separated thinking substance ("mind") from extended substance ("matter"), one of the unfortunate results was a depiction of matter as vacuous: empty of purpose, value and essential relationships. Whitehead traced in considerable detail what he thought the cultural consequences of this view of things eventually would be and in his time already were, to a considerable extent.

Whitehead went on, of course, to propose his own view of the relationships between mind and matter which I find helpful.  But even those who may not find Whitehead's constructive proposals as helpful as I do can be and should be, it seems to me, "process philosophers" or "process theologians" at least in the limited sense that they agree with the main lines of Whitehead's critique of scientific naturalism, or what Johnson and others now call methodological naturalism. Let's all reread Whitehead's Science and the Modern World!  

One of the questions that occurred several times in the formal and informal discussions surrounding Johnson's presentations was this:  What practical difference might abandoning methodological naturalism have for those who are now engaged in concrete scientific research?  One answer was that it might redirect some current research priorities.  Another was that more inclusive assumptions might allow added possibilities for exploring alternatives that are now routinely ignored or even dismissed.  A third was that making this change might foster greater humility, such that we might hear fewer claims to the effect that "the natural world is all there is, all there ever was and all there ever will be"  From my point of view, this last claim may well be correct, providing we understand "the natural world" theologically, as necessarily related to and dependent on the One in whom "we live and move and find our being." But this is not what is usually in mind when this assertion is made!  In any case, it does seem a little audacious to make such a sweeping claim, even if only for rhetorical effect.

My own view is that these issues probably won't make much immediate difference to the work that is done in scientific laboratories most days of the week.  We are discussing metaphysics, not physics, and by extension meta-chemistry, meta-biology, meta-psychology, meta-sociology and so on throughout all the academic disciplines.  In each instance, the discussion is not primarily aimed at making immediate and concrete differences in the ways scientists go about their daily routines so much as it is an attempt to probe whether what they do is worth their effort and why.

It is doubtful, for instance, that contemporary science and technology could have emerged in a culture that had been drenched for centuries in what Johnson calls "methodological naturalism" and what Whitehead and others have called "scientific materialism."  For good or for ill, and probably for both in large measure, the scientific and technological revolutions first took place, and probably only could have first taken place, where there was widespread confidence in the orderliness of the natural world.

In Europe this confidence, which gradually replaced the earlier view that life was governed by a host of unpredictable and sometimes capricious superhuman personages, emerged from the conviction of many Greeks that the universe is a structured whole and from the belief of many Hebrews that it was created by a single good God upon whom all things can and do depend.  These beliefs, held by many in numerous regions over long periods of time cultivated the confidence it is not a waste of resources to study the natural world because it ultimately makes sense.

The more methodological naturalism erodes the beliefs that engendered this confidence, the fewer will be the generations it will be able to sustain intellectually the science and technology it now considers its own.  As so many have observed, methodological naturalism appears to be devouring its own intellectual inheritance more swiftly than it is replenishing it.  In matters theoretical, as in matters practical, this cannot continue forever.

As these remarks suggest, my first encounter with the "Intelligent Design Movement" was a favorable one, particularly because Phillip Johnson was the person who guided me and so many others at Loma Linda through its claims and priorities.  I found myself experiencing some discomfort, however, whenever I heard references to events as either (1) random, (2) lawful or (3) designed.

From a philosophical point of view, this threefold division strikes me as contrived, as though in principle, if not now in fact, it is truly possible for an event to be one or the other of these instead of some combination of all three.  From a theological point of view, I am uncomfortable with the idea that God "intervenes" in some events but not others.

When in one of the discussion groups I mentioned this to Professor Johnson and others, his response was appropriate given his understanding of the import of what I had said.  "The important consideration," he observed, "is not what makes us comfortable but what is true!"  Fair enough!!  So let me now reword my concern in more explicit terms:  I think it not true that God ordinarily "intervenes" in some events, but not others, that this is God's typical way of acting.

I have at least three things in mind when saying this.  First, I believe the primary sources of Christian wisdom (Scripture, tradition, reason and experience) on the whole suggest, although there are many exceptions, that God "participates" in our lives instead of "intervening" in them because the second term implies to me that sometimes God is active in these events and sometimes not.  The first issue, then, is that "participation" rather than "intervention" strikes me as a more true way describing God's relationships with us and all others.

Second, I think it false to state or imply that God is not present in those patterns of regularity and predictably that we call "natural laws."  To sort occurrences according to whether they are "chance," "lawful" or "designed," and then to find evidence for God's presence and activity especially in the last, may inadvertently leave the impression that God is not involved in other two as well.

Much depends, of course, by what we mean when using these three terms.  By "chance," for instance, we may mean sheer randomness or we may have in mind the exercise of some degree of self-determination, no matter how limited, on the part of all actualities.  Either way, God seems involved, either as the One who makes room for randomness, or as the One who elicits self-determination by providing possibilities to the actuality that free it to some extent, if appropriated, from the otherwise wholly determining influence of prior occurrences, or both.

In his letter to the first Christians in Rome, Paul wrote that "in everything God works for good." Although I am not certain about all Paul had in mind when he wrote these words, his comment does not mean to me that everything that happens is precisely what God wanted, but that in all occurrences God is one of the influencing factors, The Influence that fosters health and healing.

Third, as long as we continue to use metaphors that suggest that God is distant and occasionally bridges the gap between the universe and God's own being, we will experience at least some theological turbulence along the way.  God does transcend the universe, but God does so without ceasing to be its immanent source of being and value, as Jews, Christians and Muslims usually believe.

Timothy G. Standish:

I read with interest David Larson's review of the weekend that we were both privileged to experience with Phil Johnson.  In general I found my self murmuring many "Amens" as I read along, but staggered when he critiqued “references to events as either (1) random, (2) lawful or (3) designed.”

My guess is that there is a misunderstanding going on here that has to do with Bill Dembski’s explanatory filter. This filter is described succinctly in a chapter he wrote in Mere Creation. The filter is designed to be independent of divine revelation and naturalistic assumptions and merely provides minimal criteria for identification of designed phenomena, providing sufficient conditions for design.  In effect it acts like a high pass filter in which much of what may be designed may also be filtered out and only those phenomena which to a high degree of probability are designed pass through.  The filter itself is not adequate to make a metaphysical statement about the scope or origin of design, it merely provides a rigorous framework for recognition of design.

Alternative explanations for phenomena include, in the absence of assumptions about God and His role in nature, randomness (chance) and law (natural selection).  These are the very criteria used to explain what is observed within the framework of naturalism.  Thus, by opening up the possibility of design, while maintaining all other possible explanations, Dembski’s filter frees students of nature to look for phenomena for which design is the most logical explanation and does not exclude a priori the design explanation.

Unfortunately, Phil did not have time to go into discussion of Dembski’s filter and his use of the terms “random, lawful and designed” as a shorthand reference to the filter left his presentations open to the critique you provided.

It was certainly a blessing being at Loma Linda this past weekend.

David R. Larson

Recent conversations have revealed to me that not everyone responded as favorably as I did to Professor Phillip Johnson's recent presentations at Loma Linda, California under the auspices of Doctor Bernard Brandstater and his team at the Loma Linda Adventist Forum.   Why?

For one thing, some felt that his treatments of concrete cases, like those of the color of moths in England and the size of the beaks of birds on remote islands, were not as helpful as they might have been.  I leave matters such as these to the appropriate specialists because both my training and my interests lie elsewhere.

A second concern, one which strikes me as more terminological than substantive, attends to Johnson's refusal to use or even to acknowledge the legitimacy of the term "theistic evolution."  Some seem less than enthusiastic about his suggestion that we abandon this expression so as not to be misunderstood, particularly by those for whom its connotations, if not always its denotations, are agnostic or atheistic.  If I remember correctly, Johnson suggested that we use terms like "slow creationism" instead.  The expression "theistic evolution" does not offend me, but neither does any other term that communicates the same basic idea:  that God has been, is now and always will be involved in the ongoing history of the universe as the One in whom "we live, and move, and find our being." (Acts 17)

As always, although it might seem pedantic to some, when asked if we believe this or that a wise response might begin with inquiries as to what the questioner means by the terms he or she uses.  Such matters cannot be taken for granted.  Those who teach religious studies on Christian campuses, for instance, are sometimes asked if they believe in "the historical-critical method" of studying Scripture.  My answer to that question is "yes" according to some definitions but "no" according to others.  Once we are all clear about how we are using terms such as "the historical-critical method" or "theistic evolution," we can move on to more important issues.  If we understand what is being said, why get stuck on how it is being communicated?

A third issue concerns Johnson's criticisms of "methodological naturalism" which reminded me of Alfred North Whitehead's earlier critique of what he called "scientific materialism."  Some have responded by saying that everyday scientists working in their laboratories should seek "natural" as opposed to "theological" explanations for the immediate objects of their study.  I agree.  I also think Johnson said as much.  I recall him saying that those who build bridges and airplanes should not consult Scripture but the relevant engineering texts when doing their work.  Despite this, some understood him to mean that theological explanations should be sought by those who do concrete scientific research.  "When trying to understand why water boils," one friend declared, "we should not say that angels cause it to happen."  How true!  And I think Johnson would agree.

Perhaps I misunderstood him, but I thought Johnson's remarks regarding "methodological naturalism" functioned at a higher or more abstract level of generality, the level at which philosophical and theological alternatives are worth considering.  In one of our conversations the weekend Phillip Johnson was in Loma Linda, James Gibson, the Director of the Geo-Science Research Institute, asked how we should answer the question, "Why did that rock fall?"  Answers might begin by pointing out that someone pushed it over ledge and that gravity took over from there.  In most cases those answers will be sufficient.  But if the conversation continues to the point that questions like "Why is there gravity?" are asked, more complex and abstract answers will be required.  If not before, when we finally get around to asking, "Why is there anything at all?" we are in the realm of philosophy and theology.  This is the level at which doctrines such as "methodological naturalism" or "scientific materialism" function, I believe.

As I understand it, Johnson's point is that, when someone who gives "nature" an atheistic interpretation declares that "nature is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be," he or she is making a philosophical or theological claim which ought to be subject to public debate.  And this is so even if the one who makes this philosophical or theological assertion happens to be a scientist.

The difference is not between "natural" explanations and "theological" ones but between answers that properly function at different levels of generality or abstractness.  As I indicated earlier, I do not have first hand knowledge about what happens to the color of moths in England or to the beaks of birds on remote islands.  I am convinced, however, that both "natural" and "theological" explanations can be provided for what ever happens in the lives of these little colleagues of ours and that both kinds of explanations are appropriate and even necessary, if they are both provided at the level of generality for which they are suited.

Again, as I understand them at this point, "natural" and "theological" explanations do not function in different realms on the same horizontal plane, as though one kind of explanation need not take the other in to account.  Rather, these two kinds of explanations are related to each other vertically, not like two bedrooms on the same floor but like two that are on different floors.  The best image may be that of an up-side-down pyramid with its bottom point representing the most specific "natural" explanations and the wide line at the top indicating the most abstract "philosophical or theological" ones.  

Would it really be disastrous if those who teach in schools financed by the dollars of tax payers refrained from presenting their philosophical or theological convictions in the garb of scientific ones?  It is hard for me to see that it would.  I think it would be better if science teachers in public schools either did not discuss such issues in their classes or did what anyone who responsibly teaches philosophy or theology strives to do:  (1) survey as many options as objectively as possible, (2) make a gentle case for the position that makes most sense to him or her and, most importantly, (3) encourage and enable each student to come to his or her own conclusions, even if they differ from the teacher's.

We have all heard the story of the youngster who asked, "Where did I come from?" and received a seminar on human procreation when he or she just wanted to know if the family had ever lived in Ohio like the neighbors once did.  The story applies to this case, I think, but only in reverse.  The youngster wanted a "small" answer but got a "big" one.  At Loma Linda, I thought Professor Johnson was speaking to a "big" question, but some heard him addressing a "small" one.

John B. Wong:

First off, I concur with Dr. Larson’s observation that Professor Johnson was speaking about a bigger picture, at a higher and more abstract level.  I don’t agree with all of Johnson’s approaches, such as keeping a lid on discussions of old earth, young earth, ancient life and more recent human chronology until his work is done.  On this, please see my "Reflections and Proposals" on this site at "Observations" for February 7, 2001.  Nevertheless, his overall thrust in presenting a Christian worldview is urgently needed in "pagan" America.

My own observation is that the science community, the education circle in general, and popular culture are largely indifferent or even hostile to Christian assumptions. Among science’s elite, the masked insouciance betrays their existential anxiety and their unwillingness to admit the possibility of a hypernatural dimension other than the time-space-energy-matter reality.  Their scientific imperialism may well be every bit as abhorrent as the theological dogmatism behind which some theologians couch in fear or wishful thinking.

I recall that someone asked Johnson during our Sunday session how it was that scientists couldn’t just include God in their thinking.  His answer was (I am coarsely paraphrasing him), "It is a matter of power—the power to speak in the role of priesthood and authority on subjects of their interest"  A keen observation!  But I might also add, if a little reference to Christian theology would not offend our audience, that there is another possible reason why a number of scientists don’t want to take in a Christian worldview.  It is the state of being humans with sinful nature who are in rebellion.  It is not simply a matter of including God in the science equation, as if He were a mere neutral entity.  It is to admit God into one’s thinking—the God who comes with moral and ethical demands,  the God to whom one must sooner or later be held accountable.

Another aspect of the discussion has to do with naturalistic versus theological explanations for what we encounter in life.  As Dr. Larson so aptly uses the analogy of rooms on the same floor versus rooms related vertically on different floors, every honest, thoughtful question may entail a quick, surface answer and many more deeper ones.  What answers come out from this latter compartment, in my view, are largely shaped by one’s worldview and presuppositions.  Because the ultimate questions in science are perforce philosophical and theological, a Christian worldview as propounded by Johnson takes on its significance.

On those whose minds have been fossilized, Johnson’s crusade probably will not make much inroad.  A 180 degree paradigm shift may require a religious conversion or something as genuine and all-encompassing.  It is the impressionable minds of the younger generations that are at stake, and how to contest for them is the big question.  This may well be Johnson’s unexpressed cultural agenda and Christian burden.

Against the imposing scientific edifice, its contributions to human welfare notwithstanding, perhaps a healthy contempt toward any epistemological bias should be proffered. In the midst of the rational scientific enterprise, a sense of mystery and wonderment of the created order and its Author needs cultivating.

Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University, arguably the most brilliant scientific mind of this millennium, has been confined for more than 30 years to a wheelchair existence because of Lou Gehrig’s disease.  Not a confessing Christian by any standards, he concludes his A Brief History of Time in these words, "why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we would know the mind of God."  

Even for Hawking, the God-dimension in science is not a dead option.  Should it be less so for puny minds?