Darwin on Trial - Softcover

Johnson, Phillip E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0830813241 ISBN 13: 9780830813247

Publisher: IVP Books, 1993

Synopsis

In 2006, Christianity Today voted this title to be one of the top 50 books that have shaped evangelicals! A Christianity Today 1992 Book of the Year Runner-up! Recipient of a Christianity Today 1992 Readers' Choice Award! Here's the book that has rocked the scientific--and Christian--establishment. Phillip Johnson's critique of Darwinian evolution touched off explosions among scientists and theologians almost from the day of its publication in 1992. The volatile debate was at first carried on in academic journals and in magazines like Nature and Scientific American. It even engaged the attention of leading evolutionists like Nobel Laureate physicist Steven Weinberg and prominent naturalist Stephen Jay Gould. Johnson was invited to debate several of his opponents at universities across the country. And he was himself the subject of debate: Michael Ruse, author of Darwinism Defended, spoke at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on the topic "Nonliteralist Anti-Evolutionism: The Case of Phillip Johnson." Darwin on Trial also shook up theistic evolutionists. William Hasker (Huntington College, Indiana) in the Christian Scholar's Review, Howard Van Till (Calvin College, Michigan) in First Things and Owen Gingerich (Harvard Center for Astrophysics) in Perspectives on Science & the Christian Faith all published their critiques of Darwin on Trial. Clearly, Johnson's arguments have been taken seriously by Darwinists of every sort. And though at first the mainstream press seemed to be out of earshot (except for reviews in Publisher's Weekly and The National Review), news of Darwin on Trial eventually reached wider audiences. Last summer, Johnson appeared with William F. Buckley on Firing Line. And in May 1995 he was interviewed on the PBS telecast In the Beginning: The Creationist Controversy with Randall Balmer. These and other indications of expanding interest in his critique is good news for all who wish to bring the debate over Darwinism into the bright light of day.

About this title

About the Author

Phillip E. Johnson is a graduate of Harvard and the University of Chicago. He was a law clerk for Chief Justice Earl Warren of the United States Supreme Court, and taught law at the University of California at Berkeley. He took up the study of Darwinism because he saw that the books defending the theory were dogmatic and unconvincing. He wrote Darwin on Trial to give Americans the information they need to make up their own minds.

From Publishers Weekly

In his own era, Darwin's most formidable opponents were fossil experts, not clergymen. Even today, according to the author, the fossil record, far from conclusive, does not support the presumed existence of intermediate links between species. A law teacher at UC-Berkeley, Johnson deems unpersuasive the alleged proofs for Darwin's assertion that natural selection can produce new species. He also argues that recent molecular studies of DNA fail to confirm the existence of common ancestors for different species. Doubting the smooth line of transitional steps between apes and humans sketched by neo-Darwinists, he cites evidence for "rapid branching," i.e., mysterious leaps which presumably produced the human mind and spirit from animal materials. This evidence, to Johnson, suggests that "the putative hominid species" may not have contained our ancestors after all. This cogent, succinct inquiry cuts like a knife through neo-Darwinist assumptions.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: IVP Books
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0830813241
• ISBN 13: 9780830813247
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 220