Phillip E. Johnson Quotes & Sayings

Science ... has become identified with a philosophy known as materialism or scientific naturalism. This philosophy insists that nature is all there is, or at least the only thing about which we can have any knowledge. It follows that nature had to do its own creating, and that the means of creation must have included any role for God. — Phillip E. Johnson

Evolutionary biologists are not content merely to explain how variation occurs within limits, however. They aspire to answer a much broader question-which is how complex organisms like birds, and flowers, and human beings came into existence in the first place. — Phillip E. Johnson

Biochemists assume that the three cellular kingdoms evolved from a single common ancestor, because the alternative of supposing an independent origin of life two or more times presents still greater difficulties. The common ancestor is merely hypothetical, as are the numerous transitional intermediate forms that would have to connect such enormously different groups to the ancestor. From a Darwinist viewpoint all these hypothetical creatures are a logical necessity, but there is no empirical confirmation that they existed. — Phillip E. Johnson

Trying to get to the answer before one has understood all the right questions is a prime source of error in human affairs. — Phillip E. Johnson

I approach the creation-evolution dispute not as a scientist but as a problem of law, which means among other things that I know something about the ways that words are used in arguments. What first drew my attention to the question was the way the rules of argument seemed to be structured to make it impossible to question whether what we are being told about evolution is really true. For example, the Academy's rule against negative argument automatically eliminates the possibility that science has not discovered how complex organisms could have developed. However wrong the current answer may be, it stands until a better answer arrives. It is as if a criminal defendant were not allowed to present an alibi unless he could also show who did commit the crime. — Phillip E. Johnson

Scientists have long known that Darwinism is false. They have adhered to the myth out of self-interest and a zealous desire to put down God. — Phillip E. Johnson

Darwinism is not merely a support for naturalistic philosophy: it is a product of naturalistic philosophy. — Phillip E. Johnson

Truth as such is not a particularly important concept in naturalistic philosophy. — Phillip E. Johnson

Modernist discourse [ ... ] incorporates semantic devices - such as the labeling of theism as 'religion' and naturalism as 'science' - that work to prevent a dangerous debate over fundamental assumptions from breaking out in the open. — Phillip E. Johnson

If we understand our own times, we will know that we should affirm the reality of God by challenging the domination of materialism and naturalism in the world of the mind. With the assistance of many friends I have developed a strategy for doing this ... We call our strategy the wedge . — Phillip E. Johnson

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. — Phillip E. Johnson

Evolutionary naturalism takes the inherent limitations of science and turns them into a devastating philosophical weapon: because science is our only real way of knowing anything, what science cannot know cannot be real. — Phillip E. Johnson

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. — Phillip E. Johnson

The Intelligent Design movement starts with the recognition that "In the beginning was the Word," and "In the beginning God created." Establishing that point isn't enough, but it is absolutely essential to the rest of the gospel message. — Phillip E. Johnson

The problem with allowing God a role in the history of life is not that science would cease, but rather that scientists would have to acknowledge the existence of something important which is outside the boundaries of natural science. — Phillip E. Johnson

No doubt it is true that science cannot study God, but it hardly follows that God had to keep a safe distance from everything that scientists want to study. — Phillip E. Johnson

So one reason the science educators panic at the first sign of public rebellion is that they fear exposure of the implicit religious content in what they are teaching. — Phillip E. Johnson

Modernism is typically defined as the condition that begins when people realize God is truly dead, and we are therefore on our own. — Phillip E. Johnson

Architecture is the art of how to waste space. — Phillip E. Johnson

In the most important sense a creationist is a person who believes in creation, and that includes people who believe that Genesis is a myth and that creation involved a process called evolution and consumed billions of years. — Phillip E. Johnson

First, Darwinian theory tells us how a certain amount of diversity in life forms can develop once we have various types of complex living organisms already in existence. — Phillip E. Johnson

To philosophical materialists God is no more than an idea in the human mind, and not a very important idea. — Phillip E. Johnson

Materialism sets us free from sin-by proving that there is no such thing as sin. There's just antisocial behavior, which we can control with measures like laws and educational programs. — Phillip E. Johnson

Some theists in evolutionary science acquiesce to these tacit rules and retain a personal faith while accepting a thoroughly naturalistic picture of physical reality. — Phillip E. Johnson

As a theist I believe that God exists and that God creates. — Phillip E. Johnson

Evolutionary biologists have been able to pretend to know how complex biological systems originated only because they treated them as black boxes. Now that biochemists have opened the black boxes and seen what is inside, they know the Darwinian theory is just a story, not a scientific explanation. — Phillip E. Johnson

As students grow more and more accustomed to assuming materialism and naturalism in their academic work, the concept of creation by God gradually tends to become less real to them. It is not so much that any single finding undermines their faith; rather, the day-to-day practice of thinking in naturalistic terms about academic subjects makes it awkward to think differently when it comes to religion. — Phillip E. Johnson

Although I insist that God has always had the power to intervene directly in nature to create new forms, I am willing to be per-suaded that He chose not to do so and instead employed secondary natural causes like random mutation and natural selection. — Phillip E. Johnson

"science" as defined in our culture has a philosophical bias that needs to be exposed. On the one hand, science is empirical. This means that scientists rely on experiments, observations and calculations to develop theories and test them. On the other hand, contemporary science is naturalistic and materialistic in philosophy. What this means is that materialist explanations for all phenomena are assumed to exist. And what that means is that the NABT's definition of evolution as an unsupervised process is simply true by definition
regardless of the evidence! It is a waste of time to argue about the evidence if one side has already won the argument by defining the terms. — Phillip E. Johnson

In short, it is not that evolutionary naturalists have been less brazen than the scientific creationists in holding science hostage, but rather that they have been infinitely more effective in getting away with it. — Phillip E. Johnson

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. — Phillip E. Johnson

In short, the proposition that God was in any way involved in our creation is effectively outlawed, and implicitly negated. — Phillip E. Johnson

We're not trying to prove the character of God through science. That's a bad idea. What I'm trying to do is clear away the misunderstandings, the debris that prevent people from accepting that God who wants to accept them. — Phillip E. Johnson

A constitutional democracy is in serious trouble if its citizenry does not have a certain degree of education and civic virtue. — Phillip E. Johnson

This [the intelligent design movement] isn't really, and never has been, a debate about science, it's about religion and philosophy. — Phillip E. Johnson

The monopoly of science in the realm of knowledge explains why evolutionary biologists do not find it meaningful to address the question whether the Darwinian theory is true. — Phillip E. Johnson

All the most prominent Darwinists proclaim naturalistic philosophy when they think it safe to do so. — Phillip E. Johnson

One of the truly bizarre things about our current cultural situation is that the leading figures of the scientific establishment seem genuinely amazed that the citizens do not accept finch-beak variation as proof of the claim that humans, like all animals and plants, are accidental products of a purposeless universe in which only material processes have operated from the beginning. — Phillip E. Johnson

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. — Phillip E. Johnson

The whole thing seems absurdly easy - so easy that you ought to smell a rat. — Phillip E. Johnson

Most importantly, I agree that the truth of these matters should be determined by interpretation of scientific evidence - experiments, fossil studies and the like. — Phillip E. Johnson

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. — Phillip E. Johnson