Johnson on his roll in ID

P. Johnson at Northshore Church in Everett, WA. 04/19/2001
Question/Answer period

 The last question is more personal, "You're a lawyer. How did you
 personally start into this journey of bringing the Darwinian Theory to the
 table and analyzing the support?
 
 Johnson: How did a lawyer get involved in this, a law professor? You know
 my enemies always say, 'That lawyer from California', like I'm an ambulance
 chaser. The never say, the Jefferson E. Pfizer, distinguished professor of
 Jurisprudence. You know that sounds (?)
 
 You know, the thing is, this was a lawyers job.
 
 When I took up the study of evolution in England in 1987-88 what I
 discovered was that this isn't really about science. It's about thinking.
 It's about logical thinking and illogical thinking. It's about given
 assumptions and definitions. You define the terms so you get the answer you
 want.
 
 In our legal system when we teach people how to argue cases before a court
 we have a brief. A written argument to the court. The first section is the
 question to be presented. What is the question? And you always tell them,
 if you can get the court to accept your carefully drafted statement of the
 question presented, they will give the answer you want. Get the question
 right, it's likely the answer follows. So there is a target that leads to a
 plan in the question. So, since the Darwinists insist on defining the
 question asked, "How did creating get done without God?' The rules of the
 game are that you cannot bring God into the courtroom. I recognize that.
 
 Now biologists are not trained to recognize that court sort of thing.
 They're trying to do what other biologists do. Good thinking is thinking
 like other biologists do. They would never question things that are
 fundamental knowledge, the way I did. So it was a matter of finding the
 tricks. The definitions. The way in which the argument was skewed by tricky
 words and changing definitions. The very tricks of logic and arguing.
 
 Who knows more about dirty tricks, I ask?
 
 There's only one thing lower than a lawyer. Lawyers like to tell lawyer
 jokes. There's only one thing worse than a lawyer and that's somebody who
 teaches other people to become one. So that's what I do. So what I teach in
 them is good thinking which is to say how to spot bad arguments. So I feel
 right at home in this deal in the beginning.
 
 The other thing that was different about my approach from the scientists
 view, lots of people made arguments against Darwinism and they made good
 arguments. The same kind of ones I made in 'Darwin on Trial." There's a lot
 of antecedents for every point. But, they couldn't win. They couldn't win
 the argument. Why not? They were caught in the "Inherit the Wind"
 stereotype. They were caught in the stereotype of the argument. They were
 trying to argue about the evidence and the real problem was the whole game
 was stacked. It had to come out with the answer 'nature did the creating.'
 So it was futile to make a specific argument.
 
 I understood that and understood how to craft a winning strategy. And
 that's why I immediately became the leader of the whole movement. That's
 what everybody wanted. A strategy that would win in the sense of getting
 the right questions on the table and having a fair debate in which case the
 proposition that you really do need a creator would tend to prevail because
 that's what the evidence supports. So that is how we have been able to come
 in ten years or a dozen from nowhere to the front page of the New York Times.
 
 It was a job for someone who understood logic. Who understood how people
 argue and how they think. And then if you are thinking of becoming, and
 the  point of law school, that, that is the most valuable thing you learn
 there, if you do learn something. Is, how people think. How they argue. And
 how illogical and badly reasoned ideas can become powerful by the use of
 power. Now that is a knowledge can be used for good or evil. But used
 rightly, it is a powerful way to bring out the truth. And to free peoples
 minds and that is why I titled one of my books, "Defeating Darwinism by
 opening Minds." That's always been my objective. To free people to think
 their own way to the right answers.