From:    James J. Lippard                       
To:      All                                    Msg #86, Jan-29-93 09:26AM
Subject: Re: Darwin, Schroedinger, and Bethe on trial

Organization: University of Arizona
From: lippard@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard)
Message-ID: <29JAN199310261102@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu>
Newsgroups: talk.origins

In article <107180@netnews.upenn.edu>, weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu
(Matthew P. Wiener) writes...
>As usual, the style of the particular attack on evolution is 100%
>bogus, only raised for topics that the speaker can't deal with for
>reasons of religious indoctrination.

In case there was any doubt about this, I quote from Tom Bethell,
"Darwin in the Dock," _The American Spectator_, June 1992, p. 14:

   It's not every day that you meet with such sentiments from a
   tenured professor at Berkeley's law school.  How did it happen?
   About fifteen years ago, Johnson experienced a personal and
   intellectual crisis.  His first marriage broke up, and when he
   told his daughter, he found himself ready to rethink his whole
   life.  He went to the Presbyterian Church on College Avenue.
   Listening to the minister, he thought:  "You know, this guy
   really believes what he's saying.  He lives it.  And I could
   too."
      Professionally, he had made the right moves.  He had gone
   to Harvard, then to the University of Chicago Law School;
   graduated top of his class, clerked for California Supreme
   Court Justice Roger Traynor, then for Chief Justice Earl
   Warren (1966-67 term).  In 1967 he became a member of the faculty
   at Berkeley, published articles, earned tenure.  "But nothing
   made any sense," he said.  All was shallow and self-defeating.
   Colleagues in the academy "could give you a thousand reasons why
   no positive statement could be supported.  But they could give
   no reason to believe in anything that was important."
      [...]
      In 1987, when he was a visiting professor at University College,
   London, he came across some books about evolution.  _The Blind
   Watchmaker_, by Richard Dawkins, made a particular impression.
   The book makes the argument, familiar since Darwin, that random
   processes are sufficient to explain the existence of animals and
   plants, without having to invoke a creator.  Johnson saw that
   actual evidence for evolution wasn't in the book, however.  This
   was papered over by rhetoric, "just the kind of stuff that lawyers
   do," he told Russell Schoch of the _California Monthly_.  "It gets
   you to accept the conclusion as an assumption and then carries you
   along with the brilliance of the argument."
      Johnson continued to study evolution for several years, and
   his book _Darwin on Trial_ was published by Regnery Gateway in 1991.

Jim Lippard              Lippard@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU
Dept. of Philosophy      Lippard@ARIZVMS.BITNET
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721