A muscular wedge

Phillip Johnson is the grand old man of the Intelligent Design Movement (IDM) in the United States, a conservative and mostly Christian current devoted to opposing Darwinism. It's main institution is the Discovery Institute (DI) in Seattle, to which Johnson belongs. Opponents view Intelligent Design as a form of religiously motivated creationism. Indeed, the DI is dominated by “old earth creationists”, Christians who accept the old age of the Earth, while rejecting the idea of evolution in all its forms (including its Christian form, “theistic evolutionism”). Johnson himself is an old earth creationist. The teaching of Intelligent Design in public schools was banned by a court decision in 2005 (the so-called Dover trial).

An internal DI document known as “The Wedge Document” was leaked on the web in 1999, and is often used by opponents of the IDM to prove that the goal of the movement is religious, rather than strictly scientific. The title of Johnson's book (published in 2000) might therefore come as a surprise. Actually, Johnson openly says in all his books that the goal of the IDM is to re-Christianize America, bringing back a conservative form of Protestantism as the dominant force in society, culture and politics. In practice, the IDM seems to have a dual strategy, with Johnson being muscular and “in your face”, while other writers (such as Michael Behe) represent the softer side of the wedge, a kind of “creationism with a human face”, which “only” demands an equal voice in science for reasonable doubt about naturalist evolution. I doubt that “The Wedge of Truth” would have worked during the Dover trial!

To Johnson, the conflict isn't really about “science”. To be more specific, divergent views about the role of science are only a part of a broader cultural conflict between secularism (today mostly in a liberal form) and traditional Christianity (and perhaps other monotheist religions). Science has been recast as a strictly “naturalist” (materialist) enterprise, and is portrayed as the hegemonic producer and arbiter of “true knowledge”. Evolution has become a dogma that can't be challenged, since it's the naturalist “creation story” of secular-atheist-liberal society. Indeed, some form of Darwinist evolution is the only possible form a naturalist “creation story” can take, and hence has to be defended at any cost, even in the teeth of contrary evidence. This is connected to the idea that science simply has to be naturalist, and that the only “real” explanations are naturalist anyway.

With this absolutist view of the evolution-creation controversy, it's no wonder that Johnson wants some form of creationism to be taught in public schools, and in general wants to drive out materialism or naturalism from science, and make theology the paramount form of true knowledge.

To Johnson, the key to everything is precisely the naturalist assumptions that govern science and education, and his “wedge strategy” is directed against these. That's why he wants to crack Darwinism, which in Johnson's mind is the glue holding the secular cultural framework together. At one point, Johnson openly says that he doesn't want to propose an alternative theory of the origins of species, rather he wants to change the entire topic of the conversation, to one which is “asking the right questions”. The last section of the book contains a pitch for Christianity, with Johnson telling us that both naturalism and the idea of a personal creator-god are starting presuppositions, rather than things that can be independently “proven” by science. He never tells us how to chose between the alternatives, but veers towards the claim that the existence of God is something “we can't not know”, i.e. denial of God is really a more or less conscious rebellion and sin against a being we deeply within us know exists.

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and similar bodies claim that Darwinian evolution and belief in God are compatible. Johnson believes that materialists can take this position only because they cock-surely regard “God” as a purely subjective belief, with no real bearing on science. How can a theory which says that humans are an unintentional product of blind processes be neutral towards theistic religion? Johnson points out that most prominent scientists are atheists, and aren't shy about it in their own circles, but in the more public arena have to pretend that (Darwinist) evolution and belief in God really are compatible. Stephen Jay Gould's NOMA proposal (discussed in the book “Rocks of Ages”) is also rejected by Johnson. If the Biblical God exists, humans can't be products of chance and/or blind necessity, and signs of intelligent design in the cosmos should be detectable by science. Thus, NOMA makes sense only to those who believe that God doesn't exist or doesn't have any bearing on our origins, i.e. atheists and agnostics. Gould's supposedly irenic proposal is really an atheist-agnostic demand of religious surrender. It's interesting and not a little intriguing that Johnson's criticism mirror those of Richard Dawkins, who says exactly the same thing, but from the opposite side of the fence!

In contrast to the author, I'm not a creationist (not even of the “human face” variety). But then, I'm no materialist either (not even of the “saving face” variety). While I find Johnson's absolutist and “fundamentalist” perspective unhelpful, I admit that he was something of a guilty pleasure to read. It can hardly be denied that he is often right, as far as it goes, when criticizing materialism. The chapter on morality, “Darwinism of the Mind”, is particularly strong. He is also more or less on target when criticizing Robert Pennock's comparison between language evolution and biological evolution, Dawkins' weasels and biomorphs, or the truly hilarious claim that a monkey with a typewriter could produce “Hamlet” purely by chance. These claims, while admittedly intended as pedagogical tools rather than “evidence” (well, I hope!), very obviously confuse the supposedly blind and undirected process of evolution with the thing they are intended to disprove: design, goal-directedness and meaning. (Even during my most Darwinist period, I was somewhat uneasy with these splendid analogies.) Johnson believes, rightly I think, that Darwinists don't see the problem with these examples since in their materialist worldview unguided evolution simply *must* be true, period, and hence every example of “change” is either seen as evidence for the theory, or as a pedagogical tool to teach the truth to the masses.

Inevitably, given my own “presuppositions”, I consider Johnson's main theological point to be his weakest one: the idea of Intelligent Design in its creationist version. Johnson uses the concept of “information” to prove divine design, or at least show its plausibility. I find it difficult to understand what information could possibly *be* when applied to a living, biological entity, or to the natural world at large. The IDM seems to be saying that biological information is similar to ditto found in a computer. This mechanical analogy is obviously “late modern” and implies that humans are some kind of biological machines. This is ironic, given Johnson's rejection of Dawkins' claims that humans are survival machines programmed by their selfish genes (not to mention the “weasels” and “biomorphs”). Even more ironically, the information angle smacks of a deist deity, a kind of computerized version of Paley's watch-maker, not the loving person (Christ) who Johnson believes is at the center of creation. Somehow, it's the almost uncanny *difference* between dead objects designed by humans and living organism which point to the mystery underlying the material world – how can a seemingly non-designed thing, like an animal, function and even be *alive*?

Although I happen to disagree with Phillip E Johnson on many issues, I nevertheless regard “The Wedge of Truth” as a necessary read for those who want to understand the broader cultural and philosophical context of the creation-evolution controversy. It will challenge everyone who reads it, and force the reader to clarify his or her most basic presuppositions. For that reason (and because I want to live dangerously on the web this week) I award Johnson's hard hitting wedge five stars!