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Mini-transcript from the first show:
Quote:
Hank: The idea that religion and science are mutually exclusive -- they're nonoverlapping noncompeting domains. All part of the Enlightenment's false dichotomy. Science gives us facts, religion gives us faith.
PJ: That's quite wrong, of course. It takes a lot of faith to practice science. Now, the best question to ask is not whether or not we should mix science and religious perhaps, but how should go about answering the question of origins. How did we get here? Now, the people who say that we shouldn't mix science and religion and leave this question to science, really mean that we should assume without any arguments whatsoever that we got here by a blind purposeless unintelligent process of evolution. There's no God who created us. Nature did all the creating by itself because Nature is all there is. They want to read that philosophical idea into the very definition of science. So we're asking the wrong question if we ask "Should we mix science and religion?" We're already mixing science and religion when we answer the question of origins by a definition of science that is biased towards a religious position or irreligious position -- that Nature did its own creating.
Hank: So, maybe a good way of getting people to understand what you're trying to accomplish with the thin edge of the Wedge is that perhaps your objective when you give a lecture is not to convince the audience that you have all the right answers but you want them to know that they have been asking the wrong questions.
PJ: That's correct. And they've been starting their logical train in the wrong direction. For example when I speak to a Christian audience particularly at a Christian educational institution, there'll be a lot of people there who'd be asking the quesiton this way: How can we fit a little bit of Christ or God into the naturalistic picture of reality that we are getting in our textbooks? How can we do that? Becasue they probably think that's they can best they can do, you can't challenge that picture of reality. So I would stop right there and I would say: Are we starting with the right picture of reality? Should we rather challenge those textbooks by a picture of reality that brings God into the picture? At least as a possibility. If not as a certainty. At least as a possibility.
Hank: Your conclusion would be that to date in our culture we're going about it all wrong because we have essentially a closed mind. You want to open our minds. You want us to be able to consider both supernatural and natural explanations for what we see in life. I mean that's truly opening our minds. If we just embrace naturalistic explanations and we reject the supernatural a priori, then we have a closed mind.
PJ: That's true. Why not put both on the table and say now: If we level the ... that table, and give them both a fair chance in which direction does the evidence tend to predominate? Does the scientific evidence by itself point towards the adequacy of naturalistic material processes to do all the creating? Can Darwin's mechanism of natural selection or some combination of chance and chemical laws bring life into existence out of non life? Well, all the evidence casts doubt on that proposition and points to the need for intelligence and purpose to get life started. I like to make that vivid for people by first putting it first in the Biblical language of John 1:1 -- In the beginning was the Word! God's creative purpose and intelligence. Proposition number 1. I'll read them John 1:1-14 because it's a church audience. But I'll say: well, is that true? And did anybody ever ask you that before? Is it perhaps just a pious kind of prayer? But is it as true in the sense that scientific claims are supposed to be true -- In the beginning was the Word? And to get them really thinking about that I'll tell them the opposite of John 1:1. A counter Scripture you might say, an anti-Scriptures -- these are my Satanic verses, that is assumed and taken for granted throughout the educational world. And I put it this way: In the beginning were the particles, not the Word ... in the beginning were the particles and the impersonal laws of physics. Uh... and somehow the particles became complex living stuff. That's the theory of evolution in brief. And the stuff imagined the God, but then discovered evolution. Now that is what the world thinks is going on when we speak of God. They think of God as something which is not real. Religious belief is something that is real. That's why people like the Agnostics can reject God and say in perfectly good faith that "I am very tolerant and compassionate and very understanding towards your religious belief. See, it's as if you're a psychiatric case or something -- and I am being gentle with you. Because you're imagining something... God that you've created and saying that's the creator of the universe and above. Now, that's a harmless delusion if it goes no further than that but then these same people feel that If you try to take this seriously the God you invented and pass laws on the basis of it, like laws of ... about marriage or morality. But, then you're dangerous and must be stopped. Then you're a fundamentalist, and a religious fanatic ... You're ... you're very much like the Taliban (ha ha ha). So I meet that all the time. So I ... I pose the following question ... this first of the most fundamental right questions. Is God real or imaginary? Did God create man or did man invent God -- as the world today tends to take for granted. Now that was why I went into the entire project of challenging Darwinian evolution. In all of my books, starting with Darwin on Trial and through the Wedge of Truth and now The Right Questions. Because the world rests on that Darwinian theory as justifying that answer that Man invented God. And when you remove that prop, then the false claim that Man invented God just withers away.
Hank: One of the points that you make in the book is that Darwinian evolution rests on intimidation and audacious bluff. Elaborate on that.
PJ: Well, there are two things. Intimidation and flattery. This is how all the great delusions of the 20th century have proceded. Freudianism and Marxism as well, and they're founded on Darwinism which gives the philosophical foundation -- gets rid of the Creator. You're intelligent if you accept Darwinism. So I might say, playing this Devil's game. Now, I know you Hank you're not unintelligent unlike those fundamentalists. You're smart. So, of course you realize that we have a common ancestor in snails and lobsters. You agree with that don't you? You wouldn't be a religious fanatic or a fundamentalist. So you wouldn't fall for that. But a lot of people do. See, that's the flattery. And the intimidation is the other side of it. You're going to be rejected as an idiot, as a person who is not modern. You're primitive.
Hank: And you have no chance of progressing in an academic environment.
PJ: Well, certainly in an academic environment. But also in the culture at large. Suppose you're a candidate running for office. The newspapers will start ridiculing you. They'll be able to count on a great mass of prejudice out there in the educated public because that's what people have learned all their lives. They've all seen the movie Inherit the Wind, which is a totally fictional distortion of what happened in the Scopes Trial of 1925, which was a publicity stunt by the ACLU, not a persecution of a teacher. But they have this Inherit the Wind stereotype in their minds. And so anybody who doesn't believe wholeheartedly evolution is like one of those Ayatollahs from the Middle-east, who wants to impose a religious dictatorship.
Hank: Philip, why is it that you are as strident as you are in your book and in public. It seems to me that you would agree with what I wrote in my book that this is the worst of all possibilities. That the moment you set forth theistic evolution. you're not gaining any ground whatsoever. In fact what you're doing is that you're asking people to be patronizing towards you.
PJ: That's exactly what it is. I am a little sorry to think that you think that TE is gaining ground. I hope we're doing a little better job than that. (huh hah huh) But maybe we're...
Hank: Well, I hear more and more Christians want to gravitate towards this theory as though somehow or another that they can maintain some respectability in public forums. So I find more and more in public forums and even in Christian schools that I've been in where people are forwarding this as a tenable possibility. And I think the point that you have made is so important to be underscored ... this does not advance the ball.
PJ: No it doesn't. The ... There is this false dream that we can have it both way. that we can give into the world and yet hold a little bit of Christianity. In fact, the world will take what you give. They'll say alright, you believe in something that is absolutely inconsistent with the basics of Christian faith. Logical train to agnosticism. but you need to hold on to that faith, so you need that crutch. So we'll be patronizing to you. As long you don't bother the grown-ups as long as you don't make trouble about its. That's all you'll ever got. It's always been true since the time of Jesus. If you're going to a real Christian, you're probably not going to gain the approval of the world for it. ... You're just going to have to manage.
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02-24-2003, 10:47 PM
