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In his writings, law professor Phillip Johnson portrays himself as a soldier in the "culture wars," the point man in a "wedge strategy" to break apart the "religion" of evolution and to bring creationism into the mainstream. Johnson's is a philosophical attack, and the movement he leads is top-heavy with philosophers, such as William Dembski, Robert Koons, Stephen Meyer, J. P. Moreland, Paul Nelson, and Alvin Plantinga. It also includes conservative commentators, such as John Ankerberg and Nancy Pearcey, and even some scientists, like Michael Behe, Walter Bradley, and Jonathan Wells. In Tower of Babel, I discussed the most important contributions of these intelligent-design creationists (hereafter IDCS), and new writings of established creationists such as Norman Geisler, Henry and John Morris, and Hugh Ross. Contrary to Johnson's charge, I did not portray all creationists as Genesis literalists, but I was careful to describe (in their own terms) the interesting theological factionalism among Christian antievolutionists and antievolutionists who start from other religious viewpoints.
Johnson has organized an uneasy alliance against a common enemy. IDCS unite in their opposition to evolution and in their disdain for those Christians who believe one can be a theist while accepting its truth. William Dembski draws the new creationists' line in the sand, writing that IDCS "are no friends of theistic evolutionists." Johnson labels such believers "theistic naturalists" to highlight what he takes to be the incoherence of their "accommodationist" view. It is such compatibilist positions that his wedge aims to split, which is why, as he admits, so many Christian theologians oppose his movement.
Johnson says that IDCS push "the details" into the background. What this means is that they try to keep hidden their specific beliefs about the age of the earth, Noah's flood, and the goings-on in the garden. But scientists know that when testing a scientific hypothesis, the Devil is in the details. Johnson's generic design hypothesis that "God creates" is too vague to be tested scientifically, so science properly remains agnostic about the question, leaving such matters to religion.
Readers should thus beware when Johnson says IDCS want to resolve issues by "unbiased scientific testing," for theirs is not science as ordinarily understood, but rather something that would be taught in a special "department of theological science." The revolutionary "theory of knowledge" that this yet-to-be-developed theistic science will follow rests on what Johnson describes in Reason in the Balance as "the essential, bedrock position of Christian theism about creation," namely, the opening lines of the Gospel of John (1:1–3). According to Johnson, when the Bible says that in the beginning was "the Word," it speaks of "information," and "plainly says that creation was by a force that was (and is) intelligent and personal." However, knowledgeable readers will recognize that IDCS' references to complexity and information theory are no more than designer window dressing on a basic God-of-the-gaps argument.
Besides its obvious political utility, it is hard to know what to make of Johnson's claim that he is "so determined to keep the Bible out of the debate," for he often, though selectively, cites scriptural authority. He be moans, for instance, how naturalism has corrupted even the law, so that legislators no longer assume the authority of biblical morality, on issues ranging from divorce to homosexuality. In Tower of Babel, I show what happens when one drops the standard framework of methodological naturalism out of the law in the way that IDCS recommend it be dropped from science. Johnson continues to decline to de fend his proposal on his home turf.
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