A collection of quotes by Phillip E. Johnson.
Phillip E. Johnson (N/A)
This isn't really, and never has been, a debate about science, it's about religion and philosophy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Some theists in evolutionary science acquiesce to these tacit rules and retain a personal faith while accepting a thoroughly naturalistic picture of physical reality.
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.
A constitutional democracy is in serious trouble if its citizenry does not have a certain degree of education and civic virtue.
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.
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.
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.
![Modernist discourse [...] incorporates semantic devices - su](https://quotation.io/quotes/modernist-discourse-incorporates-semantic.jpg)
