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iwb 's review for:
Darwin on Trial
by Phillip E. Johnson
I should like to give this book 1.5 stars but that is not possible.
If you want to know what it's like to get the theory of evolution wrong in so many ways, yet think you understand it well enough to refute it, then read this book and believe what the author says.
Coming from an intellect of Johnson's caliber, I'm deeply disappointed in the many sophmoric logical fallacies (I do mean of the standard textbook variety) he employs for the sake of rhetorical persuasiveness--the result of promoting an agenda rather than seeking truth.
This book is nothing less than a scientific farce and an intellectual junkyard.
He posits, what is now a mindless cliche, that Darwinism (a term he conflates with "evolution" and "theory of natural selection") is a faith system. Such nonsense, especially when he doesn't spell out the concept of faith in any robust sense. Does he presume to claim that the faith of the Darwinist is isomorphically analogous to the faith of the religious believer? If so, he does an incredible disservice to the religious believer because, since the Darwinist's 'leap of faith' does not yeild real knowledge of the object of that faith--it does not access truth, then neither does the faith of the religious believer yeild knowledge of God; thus the faith of the religious believer and the faith of the Darwinian scientist are on equal epistemic grounds--neither accesses the truth of reality; hence neither yeilds knowledge. Given this bitter pill, Johnson would do better to claim, on a charitable interpretation, that the faith of the religious believer and the faith of the Darwinian are analogous, but just not isomorphically so. But in what sense are they not isomorhpic? Johnson does not tell us so. He also doesn't give a robust account of a fact.
My intuition is that, granting Johnson's claim that Darwinism is a faith system for the sake of the argument (a claim to which I do not subscribe), the faith of the Darwinian and that of the religious believer are disanalogous. But this requires a well-defined notion of faith, which, I'll remind you, Johnson does not provide. I didn't say he doesn't have a definition; He doesn't provide a well-defined notion.
If you want to know what it's like to get the theory of evolution wrong in so many ways, yet think you understand it well enough to refute it, then read this book and believe what the author says.
Coming from an intellect of Johnson's caliber, I'm deeply disappointed in the many sophmoric logical fallacies (I do mean of the standard textbook variety) he employs for the sake of rhetorical persuasiveness--the result of promoting an agenda rather than seeking truth.
This book is nothing less than a scientific farce and an intellectual junkyard.
He posits, what is now a mindless cliche, that Darwinism (a term he conflates with "evolution" and "theory of natural selection") is a faith system. Such nonsense, especially when he doesn't spell out the concept of faith in any robust sense. Does he presume to claim that the faith of the Darwinist is isomorphically analogous to the faith of the religious believer? If so, he does an incredible disservice to the religious believer because, since the Darwinist's 'leap of faith' does not yeild real knowledge of the object of that faith--it does not access truth, then neither does the faith of the religious believer yeild knowledge of God; thus the faith of the religious believer and the faith of the Darwinian scientist are on equal epistemic grounds--neither accesses the truth of reality; hence neither yeilds knowledge. Given this bitter pill, Johnson would do better to claim, on a charitable interpretation, that the faith of the religious believer and the faith of the Darwinian are analogous, but just not isomorphically so. But in what sense are they not isomorhpic? Johnson does not tell us so. He also doesn't give a robust account of a fact.
My intuition is that, granting Johnson's claim that Darwinism is a faith system for the sake of the argument (a claim to which I do not subscribe), the faith of the Darwinian and that of the religious believer are disanalogous. But this requires a well-defined notion of faith, which, I'll remind you, Johnson does not provide. I didn't say he doesn't have a definition; He doesn't provide a well-defined notion.