Phillip Johnson | Playing Chess with Pigeons

I recently crossed swords on X with whoever (is that you Casey?) runs the Intelligent Design The Future account, a mouthpiece, pun intended, of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, over the spectacle of Lawyers pontificating on scientific subjects.

Here’s how it went:

IDF: In this new interview, an attorney evaluates the evidential strength of the arguments for intelligent design.

Me: Why not ask an electrician or an office manager? Lawyers don’t have any training, as lawyers, in evaluating scientific issues.

IDF: You miss the point of connection. Lawyers don’t need to be trained specifically in scientific matters in order to apply their training in evaluating evidence for scientific claims. In addition, they also have skill in making complex ideas easier to understand.

Me: No, I understand the rhetorical point you’re trying to make, I simply reject it as being merely that, rhetoric. Lawyers are advocates who operate under very different rules than those of scientists. I could go on but I think Genie Scott did a better job than I could in a piece she wrote in 1993 in response to similar arguments made by Phillip Johnson in his book Darwin on Trial (1991) and I would direct those who are interested to read that: Darwin Prosecuted: Review of Johnson’s Darwin on Trial by Eugenie Scott

This little exchange got me thinking.

Creationist lawyers like to style themselves as noble truth-seeking prosecutors working tirelessly to indict the perfidious theory of evolution (or Charles Darwin etc.), for being fraudulent and leading the innocent astray.

But that’s not what they are.

They’re not prosecutors at all. They’re defense attorneys —and not particularly ethical ones— working on behalf of a client who never hired them and would prefer they stop talking: evolution itself (and every other science rejected by creationists).

Now, stay with me here.

Evolution (and I will focus on that since it is my forte) is guilty. Guilty as sin. The evidence against it is overwhelming. There’s the testimony of the rocks (my apologies to Hugh Miller 1802-1856) i.e. the fossil record, genetics, comparative anatomy, comparative embryology, systematics, biogeography. Every witness for the prosecution points the same way and delivers the same verdict:

Guilty beyond a reasonable doubt — of being the best scientific explanation for the change and diversification of life on Earth through time.

Enter the defense: the creationist attorneys.

They’ll argue almost anything —no matter how absurd or misleading— to get evolution off the hook. They endlessly try to poke superficial holes in the insurmountable evidence again their unwilling client.

They argue that we should ignore the smoking gun of reliable forensic evidence against evolution in favor of hearsay testimonials in ancient texts that an “intelligent designer” (wink, wink) did it through some unknown and unknowable process, for reasons, and in a manner, known only to itself.

And they’ll denounce as “unfair” and “unjust” the scientific rules of evidence, such as a reliance on methodological naturalism, for disallowing their preferred theory of the “crime”, “God did it”, due to a lack of testability.

Sorry, creationist lawyers, only two explanations consistent with the evidence:

A) Evolution really did it.

B) Or God has gone to extraordinary lengths to stage a cosmic frame-up so perfect that mere mortals cannot hope to see through it. Is that the story you want to go with?

Of course, none of their machinations have a prayer of working on a jury of scientific peers, but this is not the true target of creationist lawyers, rather their rhetoric is aimed at two other groups. 1) Those unfamiliar with either the workings of science or the particulars of the evidence in question that they hope to sway to their cause and more importantly, 2) those that care not about science or the evidence, who are already convinced of evolutions innocence and wish to have their prejudices reinforced.

But in all seriousness, history has shown repeatedly that lawyers taking up the antievolution cause get things just as wrong as creationists from other backgrounds. If lawyers really had some special insight into this subject, then history should reflect that, it doesn’t.

My thanks to Wesley Elsberry for some comments and suggestions.

On the one hand the ID creationist crowd wail and moan about how they supposedly face discrimination and censure (that’s what film Expelled is about), and on the other we find this sort of stuff:

Pandas Thumb reports on an article in the Washington Post that talked about the case of Nancey Murphy of the Fuller Theological Seminary:

Nancey Murphy, a religious scholar at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., said she faced a campaign to get her fired because she expressed the view that intelligent design was not only poor theology, but “so stupid, I don’t want to give them my time.”

Murphy, who believes in evolution, said she had to fight to keep her job after one of the founding members of the intelligent design movement, legal theorist Phillip Johnson, called a trustee at the seminary and tried to get her fired.

But this isn’t the only example.

Back in the mid-1990’s Christian biochemist Terry M. Gray was tried and convicted of heresy by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church for daring to suggest that humans have primate ancestors in a review… wait for it… of Phillip Johnson’s book Darwin on Trial (1991).

A. We charge that Dr. Terry Gray has committed the public offense of stating that Adam had primate ancestors~ contrary to the Word of God (Genesis 2:7, 1:26,27) and the doctrinal standards of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (WCF IV.2, W L C 17).

Fortunately Dr. Gray wasn’t put on the rack or burnt at the stake for his “heresy” (like they used to do), but he was censured and had to write a recantation.

Dr. Gray has a page on links to articles on the incident: Documents Related to the Evolution Trial in the OPC

A similar example is Christian physicist Howard Van Till, of Calvin College in Michigan had the school’s board of trustees questioning his views after he wrote in a book (The Fourth Day 1986) in which he argued that “…the stories of the Bible and science’s account of evolution could both be true” (from chicagotribune.com):

His critics on the school’s board of trustees had no interest in reconciling the religious account of creation with a naturalist explanation of how life and the universe have evolved over the ages. For years after the book’s release in 1986, Van Till reported to a monthly interrogation where he struggled to reassure college officials that his scientific teachings fit within their creed. Van Till’s career survived the ordeal, but his Calvinist faith did not. Over the next two decades, he became the heretic his critics had suspected.

Over a span of three years a conservative businessman Leo Peters ran thirty full-page ads in the Grand Rapids Press attacking Van Till for his views.

Seems they can dish it out but can’t take it; though they really haven’t had to actually take it because most (if not all) of their claims of discrimination or censure are nonsense.