ID Godfather's thoughts on creationist students

Following up our discussion of the Creationist Museum here and here, Phillip Johnson wrote an interesting reflection on how an astronomy professor who accepts conventional dating for the age of the universe addresses the apparently substantial number of young earth creationists in his class:

Saperstein [the astronomy prof] concludes that, if very many students remain biblical literalists despite having had a scientific education, he fears for their future, the future of American science, and the future of an American society beset by problems amenable to scientific solutions. He does not explain why knowledge of how the world works now is not sufficient for a science that aspires to solve the problems that beset us. Perhaps our society is more in need of a sound spiritual grounding than of theories about the distant past that cannot be tested by observation or experiment.
I have observed that anti-Darwinist inclinations are fairly common among engineers, for example, who are the scientists most directly concerned with society’s practical problems. But creationists can also be found even among evolutionary biologists and paleontologists, whose theoretical work directly involves the more speculative historical subjects that arouse skepticism in Saperstein’s students.

Johnson also warns,

Alvin Saperstein is also a decent man who is trying to understand his students and reason with them rather than dictate to them. But he had better be careful, because persuasion can work in either direction. I know one senior professor, author of an influential book advocating a naturalistic, chemical evolutionary scenario for the origin of life, who was persuaded by his students that his theory was wrong and that life was intelligently designed. He got into a lot of trouble with zealous colleagues and administrators when he began expressing his doubts about his previous assumptions in his classes.

By the way, did you notice Johnson's "Leading Edge" column's masthead? Yes, that's it, all right - it's the infamous Wedge, and yes, Johnson is the indeed Godfather of the ID theorists.

In reality, of course, Johnson - a constitutional lawyer - was the guy who showed a bunch of isolated scientists how to make their case to a broader world, no matter how colleagues tried to stifle them. That was, as he himself said, a lawyer's contribution. His Darwin on Trial rocketed into the big time when it was denounced by rote in all the science journals.

DoT was probably the book that established the pattern: Publish a good case and use the negative energy of the denunciations by Darwinists/materialist atheists/religious fellow travellers to make up for the deficit in positive financial resources. The book remains a classic, and the strategy has not so far failed. That isn't surprising either - the screaming you hear from Darwinists is genuine frustration; they can't help but go along with it.

It was purely a stroke of luck for the ID theorists that conspirazoids later got hold of "the Wedge document" and sent half the Darwinists' forces down an irrelevant rabbit trail - obscuring the actual, highly effective strategy with rampant speculation about libertarian theocracies and such.

Surely Disco (the ID guys' think tank) did not offer it to the Darwinists as sucker bait? I refuse to allow my mind to go there. No! No! O, but the perfidy of the world ... Okay, okay, let's consider it. Possible? Yes. But likely? No.

No, the Wedge document just happened, and guaranteed Disco and the ID theorists still more exposure - at the cost of putting out a few more brushfires now and then. But so far as I can see, Disco was only ever in trouble with the materialists and their fellow travellers over that one, not with any significant number of people who think intelligent design is worth considering. That, of course, is why it never did the damage Disco's enemies were hoping for.

Thinkquote of the day: The infamous "Wedge" document

One thing that absolutely fascinates me is conspirazoids - people who think that social, demographic, philosophical, political, economic, or you- name-whatever-kind-of-change must originate in a conspiracy. Now, I have never been a fan of conspiracy theories, for the simple reason that in my experience as a journalist, most people cannot keep secrets if their social importance would increase as a result of spilling the beans. Also, I do not have a conspiracy theory about conspirazoids. I just think that some people deal with anxieties over unwelcome change by assuming that a "vast rightwing conspiracy" or a "vast left-wing conspiracy" is behind it. And heaven knows, some people have a lot to be anxious about.

Anyway, many Darwinists have been flogging the "Wedge document" for years, allegedly setting out the intelligent design guys' plan to take over the world. John G. West of the evil Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (the ID think tank) tells me,

The so-called "Wedge" document was simply an old fundraising proposal. As such, it wasn't a public document, and those who took it didnt have the right to release it. But the Darwinist's preoccupation with the document shows how little of substance they really have to focus on. Contrary to Darwinist claims, there was nothing "secret" about the proposal's explanation of the harmful consequences of the pseudo-science of scientific materialism. That same language had been used in all sorts of public documents. The effort by Darwinists like Barbara Forrest to portray this fundraising proposal as some sort of "secret strategy" is silly to the point of absurdity. Especially ridiculous was Forrest's painstaking effort in her book Creationism's Trojan Horse to try to determine whether this document really came from Discovery Institute. All she had to do was ask us and we would have verified it (we did to any reporter who asked). But she never did. She was too intent on her conspiracy-mongering.

Well, maybe she finds that sort of thing fun. My own take on the origin of the ID controversy is this: The intelligent design controversy is best understood as a conflict between materialist and non-materialist views of the origin and nature of the universe. Reputable scientists can be found on both sides. Because the two sides proceed from different assumptions, they do not agree, as Thomas Kuhn would say, on what would constitute a falsification of their premises. The controversy continues to grow because, while materialism is prevalent in academia and the media, it is widely discredited in the population at large, including the professional classes. No wonder the Darwinists prefer conspiramongering.

My other blog is the Mindful Hack, which keeps tabs on neuroscience and the mind.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

My review of Francis Collins’ book The Language of God , my backgrounder about peer review issues, or the evolutionary biologist’s opinion that all students friendly to intelligent design should be flunked.

Lists of theoretical and applied scientists who doubt Darwin and of academic ID publications.

My U of Toronto talk on why there is an intelligent design controversy, or my talk on media coverage of the controversy at the University of Minnesota.

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

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