Here are two Breakpoint articles about Johnson's new book "The Wedge of
Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism".

BreakPoint with Charles Colson
Commentary #000724 - 07/24/2000
Fences for Tearing Down: The War of Science and Religion

Suppose you woke up tomorrow morning to find that your neighbor had
moved his chain-link fence all the way across your yard -- right up against
your door. So you call him on the phone. "What's up with the fence?" you
ask.

"Not to worry," he says. "Just ignore the fence. You see, I'm only claiming
physical reality for my domain. And since you're such a spiritual person,
you don't care about that, right? Look, you still have your personal,
subjective, religious yard. Isn't that great? Now we won't come into
conflict with each other! Like the poet Robert Frost said, 'Good fences
make good neighbors.' "

It sounds crazy. Yet this sort of arrangement is exactly what prominent
scientists like Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould have proposed as
the proper relationship between science and religion. In his new book, THE
WEDGE OF TRUTH, Christian thinker Phillip Johnson challenges
scientists like Gould to admit that their fence-building proposal is a bad
idea, both for religion and science. There can only be a proper balance
between science and religion if there's an open, honest relationship between
them.

To see why, start with the quote from Frost: "Good fences make good
neighbors." We often hear this line quoted as if Frost thought it were true.
But he actually used it as a shallow clich=82. In his poem, "Mending Wall," he
wrote:

        Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
        What I was walling in or walling out,
        And to whom I was like to give offence.

When a scientist like Stephen Jay Gould proposes to keep peace between
science and religion by putting a fence between them, we need to look at
where he wants to put the boundary.

As Johnson points out, Gould's boundary line claims the whole realm of
knowledge for science, effectively "walling out" religion, putting it into a
private, subjective ghetto.

The old adage, "Science tells us how the heavens go, while religion tells us
how to go to heaven," might be reasonable only if there really is a place
like heaven. And it makes sense only if there really are souls that might go
to heaven, and a God who created them. In short, "religion tells us how to
go to heaven" makes sense only if we genuinely know about God, souls,
salvation, and heaven.

But, as Johnson explains, that's exactly what Gould doesn't want to hear.
His definition of knowledge itself turns the whole of physical reality over to
science, just like the neighbor's fence that, one morning, swallows up your
entire yard.

Religion, claims Gould, cannot include anything about real history,
including the life of Jesus, because history belongs to science. Gould calls
this his "first commandment" of the relationship of science and theology.
It's a view widely shared by scientists today.

In his excellent new book, Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson exposes
Gould and others for "dressing up naturalistic philosophy as if it were
science." And he equips believers to challenge this specious argument
wherever we encounter it -whether it's in schools or in casual conversation
with our neighbors. Which is precisely what we must do. Whether fences
make good neighbors or not, they certainly do not encourage academic
freedom in the pursuit of truth.
 

You can order your own copy of Phillip Johnson's
The Wedge of Truth from BreakPoint Online at <http://www.breakpoint.org>.

Copyright (c) 2000 Prison Fellowship Ministries