Is there a lawyer in the house?

Dear Discovery Institute,

Today we will be looking at one of the star witnesses for the Intelligent Design movement, namely lawyer Phillip E. Johnson. With the publication of "Darwin on Trial" in 1991, Johnson instantly became a celebrity to those that would argue against evolutionary theory. Let's look at some of his works.

First, is Johnson's work consistent with the Discovery Institute's Wedge Strategy? Let's let his own words speak for him. The following is from his article "Evolution as Dogma: The Establishment of Naturalism":

"There are no scientific points in favor of creation and there never will be any as long as naturalists control the definition of science, because creationist explanations by definition violate the fundamental commitment of science to naturalism" (Johnson 2006 p. 32).

Johnson here precisely explains why Creationism is scientifically untenable. But Intelligent Design isn't creationism...is it? Johnson seems to think so:

"All persons who affirm that "God creates" are in an important sense creationists, even if they believe that the Genesis story is a myth and that God created gradually through evolution over billions of years" (Johnson 2006 p.28).

Johnson considers anyone who accepts the presence of a Creator, for scientific purposes especially or otherwise, a Creationist. And Johnson's entire attempt within the article cited is to overthrow "Scientific Naturalism" and replace it with a Theistic mindset, which aligns beautifully with the Wedge Strategy. Johnson's statement in "Darwin on Trial" thoroughly reveals his mindset:

"Darwinist evolution is an imaginative story about who we are and where we came from, which is to say it is a creation myth" (Johnson 1993 p. 133)

Telling. Can Phillip Johnson really be ignoring all evidence in favor of evolution? Not all of it. He mainly ignores the fossil record, which we will return to later. First, lets look at one of the evidences in favor of evolution that Johnson accepts:

"The most famous piece of evidence for Darwinsism is a study of an English peppered-moth population consisting of both dark- and light-colored moths. When industrial smoke darkened the trees that were the moths' habitat, the percentage of dark moths increased, because of their relative advantage in hiding from predators. When the air pollution was reduced, the trees became lighter and more light moths survived. Both colors were present throughout, and so no new characteristics emerged, but the percentage of dark moths in the population went up and down as chagning conditions affected their relative ability to survive and produce offspring." (Johnson 2006 p. 24)

This is at least an admission that microevolution can occur. To see how microevolution and macroevolution can occur together in a population, refer to my discussion of ceratopsians in my fossil record blog.

What does Johnson have to say about fossils? Let's consider "Darwin on Trial":

[in reference to Darwinian Natural Selection] "There was a way to test the theoryby fossil evidence, however, if Darwin and his followers had wanted a test. Darwin was emphatic that the number of transitional intermediates must have been imense, even "inconceivable". Perhapse evidence of their existence was missing because in 1859 only a small part of the world's fossil beds had been searched, and because the explorers had not known what to look for. Once paneontologists accepted Darwinism as a working hypothesis, however, and explored many new fossil beds in an effort to confirm the theory, this situation ought to change. In time the fossil record could be expected to look very different, and very much more Darwinian.

The test would not be fair to the skeptics, however, unless it was also possible for the theory to fail. Imagine, for example, that belief in Darwin's theory were to sweep through the scientific world with such irresistible power that it very quickly beecame an orthodoxy. Suppose that the tide was so irrestible that even the most prestigious of scientists---Harvard's Louis Agassiz, for example---became an instant has-been for failing to join the movement. Suppose that aplentologists became so committed to the new way of thinking that fossi lstudies were published onliy hf they supported the theory, and were discarded as failures if they showed an absense of evolutionary change. As we shall see, that is what happened. Darwinism apparently passed the fossil test, but only because it was not allowed to fail." (Johnson 1993 p. 48)

First, evidence of stasis (periods of no evolutionary change) is published, as with Eldredge and Gould's work on Punctuated Equilibrium. Second, there are ways for evolution to fail the fossil record test. For example, show me a panda in the Permian, and you have disproven evolution. Third, evolution has passed the test. There are huge volumes of known transitional fossils (see my fossil record blog for just a few examples) available to paleontologists. It is when authors such as Johnson, who have no background in paleontology, brush past known fossil evidence in an attempt to support their ideas that there are problems with grasping the fact that the fossil record does indeed support evolutionary theory. See, for example, the following quote:

"The story to be tested is that a fish species developed the ability to climb out of the water and move on land, while evolving the peculiar reproductive system of amphibians and other amphibian features more or less concurrently. No specific fossil fish species has been identified as an amphibian ancestor, but there is an extinct order of fish known as the rhipidistians which Darwinists frequently describe as an "ancestral group" The rhipidistians have skeletal features resembling those of early amphibians, including bones that look like they could have evolved into legs. But according to Barbara J. Stahl's comprehensive textbook, "Vertebrate History", "None of the known fishes is thought to be directly ancestral to the earliest land vertebrates. Most of them lived after the first amphibians appeared, and those that came before show no evidence od feveloping the stout limbs and ribs othat characterized the primitive tetrapods"

In 1938, a coelacanth, an ancient fish thought to have been extinct for about seventy million years, was caught by fishermen in the Indian Ocean. Many paleontologists considered the ceolacanth to be closely related to the rhipidistians, and thus a living specimen was expected to shine light on the soft body parts of the immediate ancestors of amphibians. When the modern coelacanth was dissected, however, its internal organs showed no signs of being preadapted for a land environment and gave no indication of how it might be possible for a fish to become an amphibian. The experience suggests that a rhipidistian fish might be equally disappointing to Darwinists if its soft body parts could be examined." (Johnson 1993 p.76-77).

Johnson seems to ignore transitional fossils that prove a fish ancestry for amphibians. While Tiktaalik wasn't known in 1993, Icthyostega was! Here are the transitional forms Johnson wants (see following link)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7085/abs/nature04639.html

Kind of kills Johnson's argument. Perhaps his lack of understanding of the fossil record has clouded his judgement, or maybe he has a prior commitment to the Wedge Strategy. Either way, he aims to change the rules of science to incorporate the supernatural, a strategy I've discussed many times before. Johnson is a lawyer, and therefore good at making the most of small amounts of evidence. However, as shown by the above quote on fossils, Johnaon himself does exactly what he accuses "Darwinists" of doing, namely, warping the evidence to suit his views.


Works Cited:
Johnson, P. "Darwin on Trial". Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove. 1993
Johnson, P. "Evolution as Dogma: The Establishment of Naturalism". presented in Dembski's "Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals who Find Darwinism Unconvincing". ISI Books, Washington. 2006. p. 23-40