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Post details: Phillip Johnson on the recent PBS Nova program on the Dover Trial - partial transcript

11/14/07

by Denyse O'Leary 07:26:46 pm, Categories: Commentary -Events, 371 words

Phillip Johnson on the recent PBS Nova program on the Dover Trial - partial transcript

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

A friend was kind enough to provide a transcript of a podcast of Phillip Johnson talking about the recent PBS Nova episode on the Dover Trial. The interviewer is Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute.

Here are points I thought particularly salient:

Johnson: ... What's going on here is a process of soothing. The scientific establishment has decided that the way to get a reluctant American public to put aside their doubts and believe what they're being told in the mass media, and in the textbooks, and in the museums about evolution is absolutely true is to reassure them that it doesn't threaten [their] religion. Then after they have been talked into accepting the theory, then the types like Richard Dawkins will come out and say, "Well actually now that you've accepted it, we have to tell you that it does destroy your religion."

...

Luskin: And all this raises a question that I would be very interested in your answer in Professor Johnson, because you have followed this debate for many years. You're aware that for decades the scientific community has been issuing statements to the effect of science and religion do not conflict. They may even say they're totally different spheres that can't even conflict in principle. And yet public skepticism of evolution remains very high. What does this say to you? Why are these attempts to, as you put it, soothe religious people regarding evolution, really seems like it is failing (at least) the public that is largely religious and is still very skeptical.

Johnson: Yes, they are still very skeptical, and they don't believe the reassurances. They know in fact what's going on. The fact is that the public is not as stupid as the experts wish them to be.

Um, no.

Here's the whole of my friend's partial transcript.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

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