Creationism

Nevertheless, by the beginning of the 1990s, creationism had again reared its head. The spark was an antievolutionary tract, Darwin on Trial (1991), by a Berkeley law professor, Phillip Johnson. Although smoother in presentation, the work covered familiar ground: gaps in the record, the complexity of DNA, the origin of life, the randomness of mutation. The main difference in Johnson's strategy was to turn the debate in the direction of philosophy. He argued that the creation-evolution debate was not just one of science versus religion or good science versus bad science, but rather of conflicting philosophical positions—with the implication that one philosophy is much like another, or rather with the implication that one person's philosophy is another person's poison and that it is all a matter of personal opinion. Thus, if it is all a matter of philosophy, there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that bars the teaching of creationism in schools.

Crucial to Johnson's position are a number of fine distinctions. He distinguishes between what he calls "methodological naturalism" and "metaphysical naturalism," and contrasts them with what he calls "Christian theism" or "theistic realism." A methodological naturalist is one who assumes there is no god when he or she does science. All must be explained through unbroken law. A metaphysical naturalist is one who believes that there is no god. He or she is directly opposed to any kind of theist, who starts with the assumption that there is a god who was and is active in the creation. According to Johnson, although you might think that you can be a methodological naturalist, something which he links with evolutionism, without necessarily being a metaphysical naturalist, in real life the former always slides into the latter. Hence, the evolutionist is the methodological naturalist, is the metaphysical naturalist, is the opponent of the theistic naturalist, which for Johnson is the equivalent of denying God's existence—that is, denying theistic realism. So ultimately, it is all less a matter of science and more a matter of attitude and philosophy. Evolution and creationism are different world pictures, and it is conceptually, socially, pedagogically, and with good luck in the future, legally wrong to treat them differently. More than this, Johnson's argument suggests that creationism (a.k.a. theistic realism) is the only genuine form of Christianity.