| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Voice of Truth" |
| Date: |
20 Oct 2004 08:05:46 PM |
| Object: |
Is God Unconstitutional? |
Is God Unconstitutional?
The Established Religious Philosophy of America
By Phillip E. Johnson
Professor of Law
University of California, Berkeley
Phillip Johnson has been a professor of law at the University of
California, Berkeley, for 26 years. He received his B.A. from Harvard
and his J.D. from the University of Chicago. Johnson is the author of
Darwin on Trial, a work which contends theories of evolution are based
on philosophical naturalism. Since the writing of his book, Johnson
has spoken and debated extensively with other experts on the issue.
On February 27, 1994, the Los Angeles Times published an editorial
defending orthodox science against a host of enemies. First on the
enemies' list came the infamous creationists, of course, who engage in
what the Times called "pernicious efforts . . . to infiltrate the
public schools with the arrant nonsense of 'creation science.'"
The L.A. Times warned that science also faces new enemies on the left,
however. These include Afro-centrists who promote theories of black
racial superiority and Native Americans who question the "well-
established anthropological fact" that their ancestors migrated to
America from Asia across the Bering Strait.
The Times also deplored the fact that aid and comfort is given to
these enemies of science by certain "post-modernist" scholars, who
argue that all knowledge is relative and that mainstream Western
scientists therefore have no greater authority to explain reality than
other thinkers.
In short, the Los Angeles Times saw the authority of science as being
under attack from all directions, with some of the attacks coming from
prestigious or fashionable academics of the left. The editorial
response was a straightforward declaration of cultural war against the
critics. The newspaper did not consider the possibility that the
contemporary scientific world view might actually contain any
subjective or debatable elements, although it did acknowledge that
individual scientists sometimes commit fraud or error.
With respect to any challenge to scientific doctrines from religion,
the Times quoted the current President of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, genetics professor Francisco Ayala of the
Irvine Campus of the University of California and a former Catholic
priest, as saying that "science does not contradict religion."
In interpreting what it took Ayala to mean, however, the Times drew a
firm line in the sand. It stated, "Religion has a legitimate role in
the discourse over the ultimate origin of matter, a mystery that
science may never solve." After that ultimate beginning, however, to
ascribe any role to God in the history of the cosmos would be to "seek
refuge from scientific uncertainty in the irrational." The editorial
went on to warn that departure from scientific orthodoxy on the
subject of biological evolution would lead inevitably to "intellectual
and economic suicide," because "scientific and technological prowess
is critical to American competitiveness in a global economy." The
Times even advertised a "hotline" 800 number that "right- thinking"
parents and teachers were encouraged to call for assistance "in
resisting the forces of ignorance."
Intolerance Bordering on Hatred
An on-going academic freedom case at San Francisco State University
provides another illustration of the extreme disapproval with which
the current scientific orthodoxy regards the concept of a God who does
not retire from all further activity after the ultimate origin of
matter. Biology professor Dean Kenyon was the co-author 26 years ago
of a respected book entitled Biochemical Predestination, which
supported the orthodox scientific theory that living organisms evolved
from non-living chemicals through natural chemical processes. As the
years went by, Kenyon's doubts grew, however, and eventually he
concluded that the evidence did not support the assumption that
unintelligent material processes are capable of forming living
organisms by chemical evolution.
As instructor of a large introductory course for non-majors, Kenyon
taught his students the prevailing theories of chemical and biological
evolution, but he also taught the weaknesses of those theories and
suggested that life might in fact be the product of "intelligent
design"-however distasteful that prospect might be to orthodox
scientific materialists. A few students complained, and the professor
was called on the carpet. The department chairman and the dean of
science told him that his teaching of intelligent design amounted to
Biblical creationism, and that to consider this possibility favorably
was to bring the forbidden topic of religion into science. To ensure
that he had no further opportunity to advocate such absurdities,
Kenyon was removed from his regular classroom duties and relegated to
laboratory supervision.
Kenyon challenged this administrative action by bringing a complaint
before SFSU's Academic Freedom Committee. The committee ruled that
professors of biology, like those who teach other subjects, have a
right to dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy in their field. It,
therefore, unanimously urged the administrators to reinstate Kenyon in
his normal teaching assignments. The dean and department chairman
balked at first, but they gave way after the full academic senate
voted to support the committee's recommendation. Kenyon had won a
victory, and students at San Francisco State will at least temporarily
be exposed to a viewpoint which the reigning authorities in the
scientific world regard with a disgust bordering on hatred.
How long this victory will last is questionable, however. In February,
the biology faculty at San Francisco State adopted, by vote of 27 to
5, a resolution declaring, "There is no scientific evidence to support
the concept of intelligent design," and therefore "the intelligent
design view is not scientific." In context, the statement, like many
others on the subject from the scientific community, tries to combine
two discordant propositions. On the one hand, the scientific
authorities want to say that intelligent design is not eligible for
consideration because it is religion, not science, and on the other
hand they want to say they have thoroughly considered the concept and
rejected it as false.
The apparent purpose of this confused declaration is to set the stage
for some effort to prevent Kenyon from telling students that he thinks
there is evidence for intelligent design, but what will happen next is
anybody's guess.
A Creating or Created God?
The bitter debate over whether "creation" or "intelligent design" may
be considered as a possibility in scientific discourse is no minor
matter. Behind it lies one of the most important questions of human
existence: Did God create Man, or did Man create God? Theism-whether
Christian, Jewish, or Islamic-proclaims the former. Scientific
naturalism, the philosophy of contemporary natural science, proclaims
the latter. According to the scientific naturalist version of cosmic
history, nature is a permanently closed system of material effects
that can never be influenced by something from outside-like God, for
example. For governmental and educational purposes today, science is
defined as proceeding from naturalistic premises, and science is given
exclusive authority to portray objective reality. This means
scientific naturalism is effectively the established religious
philosophy of America.
God, in this metaphysical system, is inherently a product of human
imagination, and therefore a relic from prescientific times, when
humans knew no better than to attribute to a supernatural being their
own existence and that of everything else they encountered. Science
has allegedly changed all that and made all educated persons aware
that we are in reality products of mindless, purposeless, material
processes. In the words of one of the most influential of modern
Darwinists, the Harvard paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson, the
"meaning of evolution" is "Man is the result of a purposeless and
natural process that did not have him in mind." Evolutionary
scientists often blur that message for tactical reasons, but they will
never abandon it. Whatever you may think that word "evolution" means,
the people who direct science education mean by it that our existence
is an accident, and we are responsible to no creator.
Some scientific naturalists are aggressive atheists, but most take the
line of the Los Angeles Times editorialist: God may exist, and may
even be allowed to establish the initial conditions at the absolute
beginning of space and time, but thereafter God must mind his own
business and stay out of "our" cosmos. In particular, God must neither
program the evolutionary process in advance nor step in from time to
time to give it a nudge-unless He is prepared to endure the combined
wrath of the Los Angeles Times and the American Association for the
Advancement of Science. We might say the problem with God is not that
He does not exist, but that naturalistic philosophy has relegated Him
to the ranks of the permanently unemployed.
Scientific naturalism provides our established religious philosophy
with its picture of reality. Liberal rationalism provides its ethical
and political starting point. If we are accidental products of a
purposeless cosmos, as science currently tells us, then there are no
objective values which we are obligated to respect. Value is
inherently a human creation in a naturalistic universe. As individuals
or as societies, we create values out of our imagination, just as we
created God, and we can recreate those values as we choose. That is
why marriage, for example, can be culturally redefined at any time.
Marriage is not inherently a lifetime union between a husband and a
wife, looking to the production of children. It was defined that way
in a pre-modern culture, and our modernist or post-modernist culture
can redefine it to include arrangements intended to be only temporary,
or same-sex unions, or even arrangements involving multiple partners.
Why not, now that we know the God who supposedly created marriage was
in fact created out of the imagination of our ancestors?
Modernism Defined
The long name for our established religious philosophy is scientific
naturalism and liberal rationalism; for convenience I will simply
refer to it as "modernism." Modernism is typically defined as the
condition that begins when people realize God is truly dead, and we
are therefore on our own. Modernism has a number of real or apparent
advantages that have enabled it to become the ruling philosophy of our
time. I will list these advantages as a defender of modernism might
describe them. My critique will come later.
(1) Modernism's metaphysical foundation rests firmly upon scientific
naturalism, which is "the way things really are." Through science we
now know that nature, of which we are a recently evolved part, really
is a purposeless system of material causes and effects, whether we
like it or not. Any other system-particularly one based upon supposed
divine commandments-would therefore be founded upon illusion rather
than reality. The fact is man invented God, rather than the other way
around. Once science has established the facts, there is no going back
to prescientific beliefs, however attractive those beliefs may have
been in their time.
(2) Modernist naturalism equals rationality because it excludes
consideration of miracles, defined as arbitrary breaks in the chain of
material causes and effects. This way of defining rationality is
particularly important to scientists, who see the success of science
as inextricably linked to the presumption that no supernatural mind or
spirit ever interferes with the orderly (but purposeless) course of
natural events. For most modernists, the identification of naturalism
with rationality is so complete that they do not think of naturalism
as a distinct and controversial metaphysical doctrine, but simply
assume it as part of the definition of "reason."
(3) Modernist naturalism is liberating, especially in gender roles and
sexual behavior, because it frees people from the illusion that
outdated cultural norms have permanent validity as commands of God.
Persons who attack scientific naturalism, or the theory of evolution,
probably do so as part of a disguised agenda to re- establish a
patriarchal and stifling code of sexual behavior. Thus the Los Angeles
Times has repeatedly attacked the Vista, California (San Diego
County), School Board for threatening to allow challenges to Darwinism
in the curriculum and for attempting to institute a sex education
curriculum based upon abstinence rather than "safe sex." The modernist
media see challenges to Darwinism or sexual freedom for teenagers as
equivalent manifestations of religious fundamentalism, and hence
unconstitutional.
(4) Modernist naturalism supplies the philosophical basis for
democratic liberty, because it relies only upon knowledge which is in
principle available to every citizen. Persons who wish to make public
policy from some divine revelation are inherently undemocratic,
because they assert authority based on knowledge revealed only to
them, and hence is not available to others.
In contrast, the observations and methods of reasoning employed by
science are universally accessible in principle, although the special
study required limits the capacity of ordinary citizens to understand
them in practice. If public debate is carried out only on the basis of
knowledge derived from sensory experience and scientific
investigation, then in principle everyone can participate on equal
terms. Debates between competing supernaturalistic ideologies can be
settled only by force, whereas debate on naturalistic principles is
open to reason and hence to peaceful solution.
(5) Finally, modernist government is acceptable even to many religious
people, including theists who prudently want to avoid clashing with
natural science. Modernism is not anti-religious, as we have seen,
provided that "belief in God" stays in its proper place in private
life. Believers may have their own churches, and may send their
children to private religious schools if they can afford to do so,
provided they do not try to claim a place for their views in the
public square by, for example, seeking to advocate them in the public
schools.
To the extent that the religious folk agree to remain in the sanctuary
of private life, and cede control of the public square and especially
public education to the modernists, the modernists can afford to leave
them alone. If faced with a genuine challenge to their right to rule
the culture, however, modernists would have to fight back by making
explicit what is already implicit in their philosophy: man created God
rather than the other way around. Theistic religion can escape the
potentially lethal scrutiny of modernist science only by accepting
modernist domination of public life.
Rule by modernists may actually be more acceptable to many theists
than rule by theists. Theistic religion takes many forms, and
Protestants, Catholics and Jews may in some cases be more suspicious
of each other than they are of modernist agnostics, who claim to be
"neutral" on disputed questions of religious doctrine.
The restriction of religion to private life therefore does not
necessarily threaten the vital interests of the majority religion, if
there is one, and it protects minority religions from tyranny of the
majority. It also provides theistic religion in general with a measure
of protection from the potentially lethal scrutiny of scientific
naturalism.
When I describe modernist naturalism as the established religious
philosophy of America, therefore, I do not mean that everyone is
required to believe it. The American version of modernism does not
aspire to obliterate theism, as Soviet Marxism did, but to marginalize
it and thus render it harmless. Modernism is established in the sense
that the intellectual community, usually invoking the power of the
federal judiciary and the mystique of the Constitution, vigorously and
almost always successfully insists that law and public education must
be based upon naturalistic assumptions.
Although the national motto may be "In God We Trust," good citizens of
the modernist state trust in God only with respect to matters that
concern no one but themselves and their families. When they take
actions that affect others, trust in God becomes unconstitutional.
Despite the great cultural authority of modernist philosophy today, I
believe its hegemony will come under severe challenge in the 21st
century. This is a complex subject that requires book-length
treatment, but I will attempt here to describe briefly how the five
apparent advantages of modernism may turn into disadvantages.
First, naturalism is not "the way things really are." The impression
that science has validated naturalism is a metaphysical illusion. What
has happened is the enterprise of historical science-the scientific
picture of the history of the Cosmos from the big bang to the
appearance of human consciousness-has been defined by metaphysical
naturalists as the application of their philosophy to cosmic history.
This is best seen in terms of the history of life, where it is
axiomatic with evolutionary biologists and chemists that only
purposeless, unintelligent material processes were involved in
creating the immensely complex and diverse forms of life that exist
today.
As the experience of Dean Kenyon, professor at San Francisco State
University, illustrates, the alternative possibility-that a
pre-existing intelligence brought life into existence for a purpose-is
ideologically unacceptable and may not be considered. In my experience
many evolutionary scientists, including professors at Christian
institutions, are so thoroughly indoctrinated in the premise that
science means naturalism that they are unable to formulate the concept
of intelligent cause as a hypothesis, or to imagine how something
might show signs of being created by intelligence rather than by
non-intelligence.
The dogma that life is the product of unintelligent material processes
is not only unproven, it is quite improbable when it is not assumed as
part of the definition of science. An attempt to back up that
statement would be beyond the subject of this paper; the case is made
in books like my own Darwin on Trial and Thaxton, Bradley, and Olsen's
book The Mystery of Life's Origin [published by and available from
CLM]. A substantial literature following up on these books is already
in press or in preparation, and I am confident that unbiased
investigation will eventually undermine the monolithic materialism of
the biological research community.
My point for now is not to argue the case for the existence of a
creator, but to point out the importance of the issue. Many Christian
intellectuals have mistakenly assumed that naturalism in science can
be smoothly combined with theism in religion and ethics, as if
naturalism and theism were "two truths" that do not conflict with each
other. But theological or ethical reflection makes sense only against
a corresponding background reality. If naturalism is "the way things
really are," then theistic religion does not go out of business, but
it does change its character. It becomes tacitly understood as part of
human subjectivity, so that the test of a good religious belief is not
objective truth, but whether the belief has beneficial effects in the
life of the believer.
The spirit of religion in a culture where only naturalism can be
objectively true is captured by the remark attributed to President
Eisenhower: "Every American should have a religion, and I don't care
what it is." The same relativistic spirit pervades Yale Law Professor
Steven Carter's recent defense of "religion in general" in The Culture
of Unbelief.
The metaphysical problem explains why Christians as such have next to
no scholarly standing in the secular academy. When George Marsden
complained in a recent paper that theistic thinking remains shut out
of academic discourse, Berkeley History Professor David Hollinger
replied by doubting whether theists have anything distinctive of value
to say. It is a fair point in a naturalistic academic culture. If God
is a product of the human imagination, how can attributing human
beliefs to this imaginary being add anything of objective value to the
conversation? On the other hand, if God is objectively real, and if
our culture is ignoring that reality, then theists have something as
valuable to say as did the prophets of Israel in their time.
Does Modernism Equal Rationality
The second advantage claimed for naturalism is that it is equivalent
to rationality, because it assumes a model of reality in which all
events are in principle accessible to scientific investigation. Recall
the Los Angeles Times editorial, which characterized reliance on the
supernatural (after the ultimate beginning) as "seek[ing] refuge from
scientific uncertainty in the irrational." When an unusual scientist
like Dean Kenyon suggests the possibility that organisms may contain a
kind of complex information that can come only from intelligence,
scientists-including many who are professors at Christian
institutions, recoil in horror from the thought. Any visible sign of
God's activity seems to threaten a world of constant miracles where
nothing can be predicted with confidence.
The assumption that nature is all there is, and that nature has been
governed by the same rules at all times and places, makes it possible
for natural science to be confident that it can explain such things as
how life began. This advantage comes at a heavy price, however.
Naturalism opens up the whole world of fact to scientific knowledge,
but by the same token it consigns the whole realm of value to human
subjectivity. This consequence is unavoidable, because humans created
by purposeless material processes can have nothing but themselves to
look to in deciding how life ought to be lived. On questions of value,
science, the only source of objective knowledge, cannot supply
answers. On naturalistic assumptions science can say a lot about how
creation may have occurred, but one thing it can never say with
certainty is that the world so created is good. Only God can say that.
Of course I am describing the famous fact/value dichotomy, which says
that we can have knowledge of facts but only beliefs about values. The
inevitable consequence is that the relativistic position on values or
ethics always has the upper hand. Yale Law Professor Arthur Leff
expressed this whimsically in an outstanding lecture that I have
quoted elsewhere. Say that adultery (for example) is wrong, Leff said,
and you are likely to be met by "the grand sez who." There may be
arguments against committing adultery, but there are counter-arguments
as well (love must not be denied). Who can decide? A bumper sticker
common in college towns like Berkeley says "Question Authority." I
have heard of another sticker that reads: "Who are you to tell me to
Question Authority?"
The practical consequences of this anarchy on value questions are
visible in our naturalistic universities today. On the "fact" side of
the campus, in the hard sciences, a model of objective knowledge
rules. On the "value" side, in the humanities, we find
multiculturalism, post- modernism, and deconstruction. The most
influential voices in the humanities tell us our thought should not
seek to provide a "mirror of nature," and that truth is relative to
particular interpretive communities, who interpret texts by standards
valid only for them. Multiculturalism and postmodernism are even
beginning to threaten part of the realm of natural science, as the
panicky tone of the Los Angeles Times editorial indicates. Where
science continues to provide valuable technology it will probably be
safe, but historical sciences like physical anthropology have little
to do with technology and provide fertile terrain for mythmaking.
The growing irrationalism on value questions suggest that a need may
be felt for a broader concept of rationality, one which invites us to
consider the possibility that writers like Dante and Milton knew
something important which we have forgotten in our desire to maximize
our control over the material world. Of course, a desire to have a
more comprehensive model of rationality cannot be satisfied if
modernist naturalism is "the way things really are," but it may
dispose humanists to look favorably upon efforts to subject
naturalistic assumptions to critical scrutiny.
Does Naturalism Liberate?
The third advantage claimed for modernism is that it is liberating,
especially in the area of sexual behavior and gender roles. Obviously
the death of God makes people free from rules based upon what had been
thought to be the word of God, and therefore invites a rethinking of
such things as gender roles and sexual morality. We all know that this
trend has gone very far, but some people think it should go still
farther. Kristine Gebbie, the White House Assistant for AIDS programs,
says that we are still a repressed, Victorian society that does not
talk frankly about sex, especially in terms of emphasizing the
positive side of sexual experience to teenagers. I would not have
thought our faults lay in that direction, but Ms. Gebbie's view that
the sexual revolution has not gone far enough is common in some
circles, and especially among sex educators.
My own opinion is Gebbie does not represent the wave of the future.
Our nation is undergoing an epidemic of illegitimate births, with
rates of illegitimacy among whites now soaring to 28 percent while
rates among inner city blacks in some areas are over 80 percent. The
majority of these illegitimate births are to teenagers.
A constitutional democracy is in serious trouble if its citizenry does
not have a certain degree of education and civic virtue. That virtue
is not likely to be cultivated effectively in families headed by
unmarried teenagers. Experience has shown condoms are not the answer
to the problem of teen pregnancy, nor do they help make absent fathers
more responsible. If our opinion leaders do not grasp the dimensions
of the problem, and persist in thinking our situation calls for more
sexual liberation rather than self-control and family responsibility,
I think they may learn better before long. But changing this situation
will take powerful medicine, and not just words of exhortation. It may
take a basic change in thinking.
Is Naturalism democratic?
The fourth advantage of modernism is said to be that it is democratic.
Consideration of this claimed advantage takes us back to the
naturalistic model of rationality. Modernism begins with the death of
God, and this begins when modern people, enlightened by science, grasp
that God was never anything but a projection of our own selves, or
perhaps our fathers' selves. It seemed to follow that when we
discarded the illusory God, we would retain everything of value in
religion, but relocate it in human experience, which is where religion
must have come from in the first place. Knowledge founded on human
experience, and thus in principle accessible to everybody, would
provide a basis for a democratic political and ethical conversation to
which all could contribute on equal terms. Combined with free public
education, a secular monopoly of public discourse could secure
democratic liberty and minimize religious discord.
It should be evident by now, however, that things may work out very
differently. What modernism may lead to is a growing doubt that there
is any such thing as objective truth, with a consequent fragmenting of
the body politic into separate groups with no common frame of
re-ference. We hear much less about truth these days in the academic
world than we hear about knowledge and power. Power ideologies, as
20th century history has demonstrated, are every bit as dangerous as
religious fanaticism. Fragmentation in the academic world mirrors the
fragmentation in geography, where empires are splitting up and the
remnants are threatening to go to war with each other. The great need
of the 21st century may turn out to be a unifying vision, and I do not
think that science will be able to provide it.
Benevolent Neutrality of Modernism?
Finally, I noted that modernism as a ruling philosophy has been
acceptable or even welcome to many theists. If each religious group
could maintain its identity and values in private life, under the
benevolent neutrality of modernists indifferent to religious
controversies, then why protest? This comfortable arrangement depends,
however, on a large and robust sphere of private activity. In the
early twentieth century, the scope of government, especially national
government, was modest. As the decades have gone by, however, the
institutions of government directed by modernist philosophy have grown
much more all-encompassing. Confining religion to private life means
something entirely different when practically everything is regulated
by public standards.
For example, even public schools used to be private in the sense they
were responsive to parents and local community values; now they are
much more under the control of professional educators carrying out
national policies based on modernist assumptions. Anti-discrimination
laws also reach very far, and informal coercive policies of the same
sort (such as have been directed against the Boy Scouts) reach even
farther. Accrediting agencies are beginning to impose "diversity"
standards upon private colleges, and this concept may eventually
require institutions not only to accept students and faculty who do
not believe in or practice Biblical moral standards, but even perhaps
to maintain a campus atmosphere that is supportive of practices that
the churches have traditionally discouraged. Legal scholars are
already discussing proposals to remove tax exemptions from churches
that do not meet secular requirements of gender equality. The
political climate may not be prepared for such strong measures yet-but
the history of anti- discrimination and affirmative action laws shows
how rapidly such measures can expand.
These examples are symptomatic of a broader problem. Believers in God
cannot effectively in-sulate themselves from modernist influence by
retiring to the sanctuary of private life. Modernism invades the
sanctuary not only in the form of legal regulation, but through
television, academic literature, and every form of cultural
penetration. As a result, religious colleges, seminaries, and church
bureaucracies are saturated with modernist thinking. As this becomes
increasingly apparent, Christians are not likely to remain satisfied
with a naturalistic culture that will not leave them alone.
I will give just one current example. My own denomination, the
Presbyterian Church (USA), is embroiled in a controversy over an
international women's conference that denominational bureaucrats
helped to sponsor last year, titled "Re-Imagining God, Church, and
Community." The publicity has focused upon various horrors that
occurred there, involving worship of the goddess Sophia, but I will
not go into details because my point is a more general one.
The very title of the conference implied its modernist foundations,
regardless of what specific events were planned. The conference
organizers considered it natural to "re-imagine God" because they took
for granted the modernist assumption that God was imagined by humans
in the first place. In re-imagining God to fit late 20th century
feminist ideology, they were merely doing what modernists think
theists always do. They were projecting their own qualities and
desires onto an imaginary deity, and worshipping themselves. That such
a conference could be planned by church staff, and subsidized with
church funds awarded through regular processes, indicates that a very
large party within the church has no idea that there is anything wrong
with that way of thinking about God.
In some ways the situation is discouraging, but in other respects it
is good that the corruption is so apparent that many congregations
within the denomination are finally grasping what is at stake and
taking strong action to curb the abuses. The important thing is they
learn that the problem goes beyond specific abuses and reflects a
penetration of the church by a non-Christian philosophy which employs
God-talk for relativistic ends. I am seeing many signs that the
willingness to challenge modernist assumptions is growing among
Christians. I find this very encouraging, because modernist
penetration of the church is most dangerous when its philosophical
roots are concealed and Christians are fooled into thinking that they
and the modernists are still fundamentally on the same side.
If modernist naturalism were true, there would be no objective truth
outside of science. In that case right and wrong would be a matter of
cultural preference, or political power, and the power already
available to modernists ideologies would be overwhelming. We would
have no hope. But modernism is not true, and scientific research does
not really support it if we can disentangle science from its
domination by naturalistic metaphysics. All that requires is a
determination to focus attention on the verbal manipulations and
circular reasoning by which naturalism retains its power. Once the
light is in the world, we know that the darkness can never put it out.
http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri-intro/isgodsum.html
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| User: "maff" |
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| Title: Re: Is God Unconstitutional? |
21 Oct 2004 03:24:02 AM |
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(Voice of Truth) wrote in message news:<816e1d8c.0410201705.a68f6cd@posting.google.com>...
Is God Unconstitutional?
The Established Religious Philosophy of America
By Phillip E. Johnson
Professor of Law
University of California, Berkeley
[...]
Phillip Johnson is a scientifically illiterate moron.
Phillip Johnson
http://www.google.com/search?q=Phillip+Johnson&num=100&hl=en&lr=&tab=nw&ie=UTF-8&sa=N
http://www.google.com/search?q=Phillip+Johnson&num=100&hl=en&lr=&output=search&cat=gwd/Top
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q=Phillip%20Johnson&safe=images&as_scoring=d&lr=&num=100&hl=en
http://news.google.com/news?q=Phillip%20Johnson&num=100&hl=en&lr=&sa=N&tab=gn
Edwards v. Aguillard: U.S. Supreme Court Decision
http://talkorigins.org/faqs/edwards-v-aguillard.html
Read the U.S. Supreme Court decision dealing with creationism in
public school science classrooms. The majority opinions and the
dissenting opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia are provided along with
the amicus curiae brief filed by 72 Nobel Prize winning scientists.
naturalism
http://www.google.com/search?q=naturalism&num=100&hl=en&lr=&tab=nw&ie=UTF-8&sa=N
http://www.google.com/search?q=naturalism&num=100&hl=en&lr=&output=search&cat=gwd/Top
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q=naturalism&safe=images&as_scoring=d&lr=&num=100&hl=en
http://news.google.com/news?q=naturalism&num=100&hl=en&lr=&sa=N&tab=gn
Naturalism
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/naturalism/index.shtml
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| User: "Tock" |
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| Title: Re: Is God Unconstitutional? |
20 Oct 2004 08:43:23 PM |
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Constitutional or not, God still needs to be registered to vote.
-Tock
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| User: "Dave Lister" |
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| Title: Re: Is God Unconstitutional? |
20 Oct 2004 09:41:37 PM |
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"Tock" <tock@sbcglobal.net> wrote in news:%uEdd.8228$Lk3.5747
@newssvr12.news.prodigy.com:
Constitutional or not, God still needs to be registered to vote.
I'm not sure he even has a green card.
--
Bush Lied.
Anybody But Bush.
Regime change begins at home.
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| User: "The Palindrome Would Be Notyalc...It Dont Work" |
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| Title: Re: Is God Unconstitutional? |
21 Oct 2004 07:48:41 PM |
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"Dave Lister" <retsildivad33@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9588C85848986retsildivad33hotmail@68.6.19.6...
"Tock" <tock@sbcglobal.net> wrote in news:%uEdd.8228$Lk3.5747
@newssvr12.news.prodigy.com:
Constitutional or not, God still needs to be registered to vote.
I'm not sure he even has a green card.
Well he is originally from the middle east...he therefore belongs in
Guantonimo Bay!!!
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| User: "thomas p" |
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| Title: Re: Is God Unconstitutional? |
21 Oct 2004 01:50:42 PM |
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On 20 Oct 2004 18:05:46 -0700, (Voice of
Truth) wrote:
Is God Unconstitutional?
The Established Religious Philosophy of America
By Phillip E. Johnson
Professor of Law
University of California, Berkeley
Phillip Johnson has been a professor of law at the University of
California, Berkeley, for 26 years. He received his B.A. from Harvard
and his J.D. from the University of Chicago. Johnson is the author of
Darwin on Trial, a work which contends theories of evolution are based
on philosophical naturalism. Since the writing of his book, Johnson
has spoken and debated extensively with other experts on the issue.
How is a professor of law an expert in the field of biology?
snip of very long piece by a non-expert who cares nothing about
honesty.
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| User: "Christopher A. Lee" |
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| Title: Re: Is God Unconstitutional? |
21 Oct 2004 03:21:38 PM |
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On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 20:50:42 +0200, thomas p
<thomasagainspam@yahoo.dk> wrote:
On 20 Oct 2004 18:05:46 -0700, (Voice of
Truth) wrote:
Is God Unconstitutional?
The Established Religious Philosophy of America
By Phillip E. Johnson
Professor of Law
University of California, Berkeley
Phillip Johnson has been a professor of law at the University of
California, Berkeley, for 26 years. He received his B.A. from Harvard
and his J.D. from the University of Chicago. Johnson is the author of
Darwin on Trial, a work which contends theories of evolution are based
on philosophical naturalism. Since the writing of his book, Johnson
has spoken and debated extensively with other experts on the issue.
How is a professor of law an expert in the field of biology?
He was on talk.origins a decade ago, and the epitome of the dishonest
sleazy lawyer. He wasn't there to learn, and he wasn't interested in
facts, just to ask loaded questions and reinterpret responses to fit
his agenda.
Johnson is lying, pure and simple, when he accuses people of
"philosophical naturalism.
snip of very long piece by a non-expert who cares nothing about
honesty.
Neither the hypocrite pretending to be the voice of truth, nor the
"authority" he cited care about it.
But what puzzles me, is what the pretentious, in-your-face moron hopes
to achieve by this? Does he imagine he is making a point? Does he
imagine he is going to win hearts and minds by rubbing such dishonesty
is people's faces? Does he imagine calling himself "voice of truth"
means we think he will be truthful?
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| User: "thomas p" |
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| Title: Re: Is God Unconstitutional? |
22 Oct 2004 09:01:43 AM |
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On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 20:21:38 GMT, Christopher A. Lee
<calee@optonline.net> wrote:
On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 20:50:42 +0200, thomas p
<thomasagainspam@yahoo.dk> wrote:
On 20 Oct 2004 18:05:46 -0700, (Voice of
Truth) wrote:
Is God Unconstitutional?
The Established Religious Philosophy of America
By Phillip E. Johnson
Professor of Law
University of California, Berkeley
Phillip Johnson has been a professor of law at the University of
California, Berkeley, for 26 years. He received his B.A. from Harvard
and his J.D. from the University of Chicago. Johnson is the author of
Darwin on Trial, a work which contends theories of evolution are based
on philosophical naturalism. Since the writing of his book, Johnson
has spoken and debated extensively with other experts on the issue.
How is a professor of law an expert in the field of biology?
He was on talk.origins a decade ago, and the epitome of the dishonest
sleazy lawyer. He wasn't there to learn, and he wasn't interested in
facts, just to ask loaded questions and reinterpret responses to fit
his agenda.
Johnson is lying, pure and simple, when he accuses people of
"philosophical naturalism.
snip of very long piece by a non-expert who cares nothing about
honesty.
Neither the hypocrite pretending to be the voice of truth, nor the
"authority" he cited care about it.
But what puzzles me, is what the pretentious, in-your-face moron hopes
to achieve by this? Does he imagine he is making a point? Does he
imagine he is going to win hearts and minds by rubbing such dishonesty
is people's faces? Does he imagine calling himself "voice of truth"
means we think he will be truthful?
He imagines he is an intellectually and morally superior person who is
witnessing to the truth and being laughed at by the mob. He is a
martyr and expects to be well-paid by his Lord.
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| User: "raven1" |
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| Title: Re: Is God Unconstitutional? |
20 Oct 2004 11:25:52 PM |
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On 20 Oct 2004 18:05:46 -0700, (Voice of
Truth) wrote:
Phillip Johnson has been a professor of law at the University of
California, Berkeley, for 26 years. He received his B.A. from Harvard
and his J.D. from the University of Chicago. Johnson is the author of
Darwin on Trial, a work which contends theories of evolution are based
on philosophical naturalism.
Tell you what, how about scientists agreeing not to pontificate on
matters of law if Johnson agrees not to pontificate on matters of
science?
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| User: "Alfred Einstead" |
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| Title: Re: Is God Unconstitutional? |
21 Oct 2004 09:55:57 AM |
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raven1 <quoththeraven@nevermore.com> wrote:
Tell you what, how about scientists agreeing not to pontificate on
matters of law if Johnson agrees not to pontificate on matters of
science?
That unfairly discriminates against those who are knowledgeable
in BOTH the sciences and law.
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| User: "raven1" |
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| Title: Re: Is God Unconstitutional? |
21 Oct 2004 02:50:31 PM |
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On 21 Oct 2004 07:55:57 -0700, (Alfred Einstead)
wrote:
raven1 <quoththeraven@nevermore.com> wrote:
Tell you what, how about scientists agreeing not to pontificate on
matters of law if Johnson agrees not to pontificate on matters of
science?
That unfairly discriminates against those who are knowledgeable
in BOTH the sciences and law.
Johnson's not one of them.
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| User: "thomas p" |
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| Title: Re: Is God Unconstitutional? |
21 Oct 2004 01:50:42 PM |
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On 21 Oct 2004 07:55:57 -0700, (Alfred Einstead)
wrote:
raven1 <quoththeraven@nevermore.com> wrote:
Tell you what, how about scientists agreeing not to pontificate on
matters of law if Johnson agrees not to pontificate on matters of
science?
That unfairly discriminates against those who are knowledgeable
in BOTH the sciences and law.
No it doesn't.
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