Interview With Phillip E. Johnson

MJ: Professor Phillip Johnson, thank you for joining us today.

PJ: I'm glad to have you here with me.

MJ: Well, we're here in your offices at U.C.

Berkeley. Tell exactly what it is you do here on the campus.

PJ: Well, I'm a professor of criminal law. I teach criminal

law, criminal procedure, I have textbooks out in those subjects. And I also

teach legal theory, which is the philosophy behind the law. How do we know

the difference between right and wrong? What should be legal, and what

should be illegal? These philosophical interests have taken my writing into

some unusual directions. As you know, I'm the author of a well known book

about Darwinism, that's very critical of Darwinian science and philosophy.

And I've taken that writing to a more philosophical and cultural level in

my latest book, which is called Reason in the Balance. So I have a varied

career you might say.

QUESTION: Are you actually a lawyer?

PJ: Oh yes. I'm a member of the California bar. I have been

a criminal prosecutor. And I sometimes testify in court as an expert

witness on professional responsibility. Legal ethics. What lawyers can and

cannot do, should and should not do. So I have a practical background in

the law, although recently my interests have gone into more theoretical and

scientific subjects.

QUESTION: What is life like here on the U.C. Berkeley

campus?

PJ: What is life like? Well it's a very pleasant place, you

see. It's a great university, with a great tradition, and a lot of

different things in it. Many excellent academic departments of different

kinds, a varied student body, a wonderful climate, beautiful scenery. It's

a wonderful place. And you know, thirty years ago, or let us say twenty

five years ago, it was very politicized. There was a great deal of radical

political activity, student demonstrations, now this is much quieter. And

while there's still a lot of politics, people are actually much more

pleasant to each other today than they were then.

QUESTION: Over the years, what are some of the strange

incidents that have happened on this campus? I know there must be many, but

if you could just pick a couple for us, that you remember.

PJ: Well, perhaps... We had the anti-Vietnam war

demonstrations of course, first. And then we had the great People's Park

riots, when the university tried to take a vacant lot, and use it for

buildings, and there were riots, and it's still a vacant lot. And we have

the homeless living there, and drug traffic and so on. It's been going on

forever. People all over the country always ask me about the strangest

things. They ask me about the naked student. We had a male student who went

naked to all his classes for a while before he got kicked out. But that

didn't really get much attention on the campus. It was a New York story,

you might say. So we have had many strange things. But you know, really,

this is a university which concentrates on science, scholarship, hard work,

and these eccentricities are very much a side story, not the main story.

QUESTION: How many years have you been a professor here?

PJ: I came in the fall of 1967, when I was only 27 years

old, so I'm going on 30 years. I've been here for some time.

QUESTION: Before that, we understand that you were a clerk

for a Supreme Court justice. Could you tell us about that experience?

PJ: Yes, I was law clerk to chief justice Earl Warren, who

was the most famous Supreme Court Justice of all time, I think, in America.

He had been governor of California, a presidential candidate, unsuccessful,

and then became the reforming chief justice, who brought the principle of

racial integration into the constitution. So I worked at his right hand,

you might say, writing legal opinions, doing the research, and, so on under

his supervision.

QUESTION: What did you learn from your time working at the

Supreme Court?

PJ:Well, a great deal, I would say, about how that

institution works. How it decides cases, how the justices relate to each

other. Unfortunately, the court has changed much. My information is very

much out of date. You know, back in those days, it was sort of a society of

gentleman, they were friendly to each other, they were very respectful and

courteous, and there was a unity of approach, a kind of general agreement

to a great extent. Now the justices are all going every which way, they

write very long opinions, many of them in the same case, so often it's... I

don't think it's very much fun for people as it was then.

QUESTION: What is your daily schedule like in

terms of classes and interaction with students here on campus?

PJ: Well, normally, a professor at this university will

teach on the average one one hour class a day in formal instruction. And

then of course there'll be time meeting with students other than that.

And... But the expectation of the university is that at least half of the

time when one is not teaching classes or in committee meetings, meeting

with students in the office, is for research and writing. We are very much

expected to be active participants in publishing and in scholarship,

developing a national or a world wide reputation in our subject. So I

suppose that's probably the most important part of our life.

QUESTION: There's a considerable amount of pressure on you

from the administration to publish to write books?

PJ: Oh yes. You see, you are appointed, as I was in 1967,

as an untenured professor. And then some time, perhaps 4 years later, that

would be very soon, or 8 years later, that would be later, a longer period,

you are evaluated for tenure, for a lifetime appointment. This is a very,

very strict and tough standard. They want people to have published in a

way that makes them at least have the promise of being a leading scholarly

figure in that discipline in the whole country during their career. So

there's a lot of pressure on for that. And then after you get tenure, it

continues. You never reach a point where you can't be promoted to

something higher. Just now I am being evaluated for the very highest rank

and so on, so it goes on even for those at my age level.

QUESTION: You're probably best known around the country for

your book Darwin on Trial. What did you learn about Charles Darwin as a

person that you maybe didn't know before?

PJ: Well, you know, the book isn't really about Charles

Darwin as a person. I certainly one thing I learned about both Darwin the

person, and Darwinism as a movement is that there was a lot more philosophy

to it, really, than most people imagine. See, the sense most people have

is that if something is labeled science, that means it's fact; somebody has

seen it really happen. And yet if you state the proposition that complex

organs, like my hand, your eyes, your hearing, or even more impressive, a

bat's hearing, you see, that it uses to navigate, that these things can

come about by natural selection - no intelligence, no creator is involved,

but just random mutations, and natural selection, and people will say,

"Oh, that's fact," or "That's science," or "People have seen that happen,

they know that it's true." And yet, I was struck by how little real

evidence there is, how much of it is presumption, how much of it is

speculation. And that really fascinated me, because the Darwinian

understanding of things is very important outside the scientific community,

it's important to ordinary people, because it's the creation story of our

culture.

QUESTION: What do you mean by that?

PJ: Well, you know, every society, whether it's a tribe in

the jungle somewhere, or whether it's a modern nation, must have a creation

story. A story of how we came into existence. This is at different levels.

In the United States we have our social creation story about the

Constitution, the War of Independence, you know and so on. But I'm

speaking of how we as people, as individuals, as human beings, came into

existence. Now, when our country was founded in the 18th century, the

universally accepted story that's reflected in all the literature of that

time, was that we are brought into existence by a creator; God, who has a

purpose for our lives, and who sets standards of right and wrong, who makes

a purpose for life.

Well, gradually, in the 20th century, this has been supplanted by what I

call the naturalistic story. People might say it's the scientific story,

and the story of Darwinism. And this story says, "There's no God. There's

no purpose behind things. It's just irrational. It's just chance. There is

matter, and by chance combinations it combines, and then natural selection

guides this, because the fittest combinations of matter survive, and that's

how we came into existence. So we can't say that God expects something of

us, because our real creator is natural selection. We make up the rules. We

can decide to do whatever we want." Now, this has become the official

creation story in this country, really, in the last 30 years. About the

time I've been on the faculty here, you might say. Maybe a little bit

longer. And it's had tremendous social consequences that has come to be

accepted.

QUESTION: Now, you are a very controversial figure, and you

have enemies on both sides, it seems to me. On the one side, you have

people maybe in the religious community who aren't happy with you because

you disagree with their views, and in the scientific community they're

upset with you because you question their views. How do you come down in

the middle, and how do you have so many enemies?

PJ: Well, I love my enemies, you see, because they get me

involved in very interesting arguments and give me many challenges. It's a

very stimulating life. When I started out to write about Darwinism, it was

when I was in London, in 1987, '88, and I had a sabbatical year, you see,

so I had time to take up this very interesting subject. I read a book

called The Blind Watchmaker, by Richard Dawkins, a zoology professor at

Oxford University, who had started, by the way, at Berkeley here; he was an

assistant professor here about the same time I started. I didn't know him,

though. But he's an Englishman, and he's at Oxford now. And he wrote this

fascinating book about, essentially, how Darwinism mean atheism, you see,

how... it's called The Blind Watchmaker. And the title means that we're

created by this blind, purposeless force, you see, not God. Well, I was

really interested in the book because it was so brilliantly argued, and

yet, as one whose specialty is in examining arguments, and looking for the

assumptions, I could see it was carried by its assumptions, but that the

evidence wasn't impressive at all; that what was impressive was that he

assumed the crucial points, and then filled it in with illustrations, and

made a brilliant, rhetorical treatment. And so I became fascinated with

this subject, and I read a great deal of the literature, all of the

literature available to the general public, and much of the professional

literature. And at this point I decided that the great confusion here in

people's minds was that they thought the debate between evolution, as

Dawkins was propounding it, and creation, was a debate about the Bible.

About the Genesis chronology, you see, and is the earth only 6000 years

ago, was it created in six days, and that that's was what the debate was

about.

But I could see that that wasn't what it was about, really. It was not

about whether a Creator did it in a short period of time, but whether a

Creator was involved at all. And, if Dawkins was right, a Creator had

nothing to do with our existence. Now that is a very much broader

controversy, you see, than the question of the exact timing of Genesis.

So when I wrote Darwin on Trial, I said, let's approach the subject this

way. Let's put the Bible aside, we'll say nothing about it. Just put it

aside, and say nothing about it. Let us look at the propositions of

evolutionary science, let us look at the blind watchmaker thesis, you see,

I took that from Dawkin's book. Let us ask whether a combination of random

mutations and natural selection really can do all this creating, of birds,

and plants and animals, you, me, everything. And I showed how the evidence

was very weak. Now, as you say, this surprised many of the biblical people,

because I was leaving the Bible out of it. But in fact, most of them have

been rather accepting of that. They, after a moment of shock, came to see

that I really was getting at the main problem.

I've also had a tremendous amount of opposition from the leaders of the

scientific party, you know, the people like Dawkins himself, or Steven J.

Gould, the Harvard professor, who is the leading American darwinist, and

I've had arguments with them. But you know the people who are most upset

with me? It is the Christian professors who have tried to convince

themselves that Darwinism and Christianity are completely compatible,

because what I've done, is to show the philosophical basis of Darwinism,

and that it is really atheistic to the core. Well, you see, this puts

people at a difficult choice. They either have to challenge this ruling,

powerful philosophy, you see, or else admit that their religion is

intellectually discredited. Now, I think the ruling philosophy is very

challangeable, and that's what I've argued in both Darwin on Trial and in

my new book, which is called Reason in the Balance, which is more about the

philosophical and cultural issues.

QUESTION: So you've got enemies on both sides. Is there

something about your personality that enjoys being in the center of the

storm or being a controversial person?

PJ: Well, I have to admit that I do enjoy it. That there is

a certain excitement of standing in front of the large audiences, or

really, the most exciting audiences are small ones, seminars of professors,

people that are really in the know on this. And of course, very often, the

people that are debating against me or questioning me very angrily in the

seminars, are overconfident. They think, "Well, he's a lawyer, he's a law

professor, how can he possibly understand all this detail, and the

biology, and the arguments," and they find out that often they're

surprised, that often I know more about it than they do. This, by the way,

is not so surprising, when you understand that many professional scientists

are overspecialized. They know an enormous amount about the very narrow

area that they're working at, but in terms of the general questions, which

I am addressing, they really know what they remember from their college

textbooks, often you see. So I am often correcting them on the facts.

But the main advantage that I have in those academic debates, is that I

am used to looking at people's assumptions. You see, if you tell me

something is true, I say, "Well, why do you assume it?" You know, and "what

do you really mean by that?" And the biologists are not used to doing that.

They are used to accepting a common body of assumptions about reality. One

of them is a materialistic philosophy; a naturalistic philosophy, that says

that, "Well, matter, nature had to be able to do some creating, because

that's all there is." You see, well, if I ask them, "How do you know that?"

they've never thought about that, because within their own circles, no one

challenges that. So I bring an outsider's point of view to it. That's

rather shocking to them, some of them they get angry because of that. But

we usually end up friendly. Maybe we go out for a glass of something.

QUESTION: What is Charles Darwin's place in history and is

he an important historical figure? Do we feel the effects of his ideas

today?

PJ: Charles Darwin's a very important historical figure. If

you ask any knowledgeable, intellectual historian who are the most

important figures in making the 20th century, in the intellectual sense,

the minds who have the greatest influence, they will all name four people.

There will be... maybe some others, too, but four names will be on every

list of five, let us say. They are Nietzsche, the philosopher who said,

"God is dead;" Marx, the atheistic philosopher of society and the social

order; Freud, the atheistic philosopher of the mind, and Darwin, especially

Darwin, who made it all possible by getting God out of nature, by saying

we don't need God to create, you see, nature can do its own creating.

So I think Darwin was, of all of the thinkers of the 18th or 19th

century, the one who had the greatest influence on the 20th century. He

really created the religion of the 20th century. And that religion played

itself out in different ways in different countries. In Germany, Central

Europe, Darwin's disciple Hegel, interpreted it in terms of racial groups,

social groups fighting each other, you see, that's the natural selection.

So we get German racialist philosophy. In Soviet Russia, we get Soviet

Marxism, you see, it's the class conflict. And that was how the basic

ideas played themselves out. In England and America, it was liberal

democracy, relativist, and free. The best of the alternatives, but now very

much in crisis because it's lost its moral basis. So I think the 21st

century will be very different but Darwin was immensely important in the

20th. QUESTION: What difference does it

make to myself, for instance, if I believe in Darwin's thesis, or if I

believe that as you said, there is a Creator? How would it affect my

life?

QUESTION: Well, if there really is a Creator, then the most

important kind of knowledge is to understand the Creator's will and

purposes. If there really is a Creator, then there is a good that we can

pursue. Beauty. You know, how about beautiful music; the last string

quartets of Beethoven. Are they more beautiful than heavy metal rock music?

More people go to heavy metal rock concerts, you see. I mean, but we've

always in our culture thought in the past, that there was something that

was truly beautiful, truly good, no matter what different people thought

about it. Now, Darwinian philosophy tells us that there's no one higher

than human beings. On all questions of value, we must decide them for

ourselves, and all questions of right and wrong, so we can change the rules

at any time no one thing is better...

BLACK

QUESTION: So there seems to be two choices. If I believe in

a creator, or if I believe in a naturalistic, Darwinistic philosophy, what

would be the difference in my life practically?

PJ: If the Creator is real, then the most important kind of

knowledge is knowledge of the Creator's purpose, and what the Creator

values. Because that's what makes sense out of our own lives. But if you

see, if you become a Darwinian, and you understand Darwinian philosophy

all the way down, profoundly, then you say, "Well, I just wake up. The

Creator is an illusion. Natural selection is the real creator. And natural

selection has no purposes. So it's up to me. I can make up morality. I can

make up right and wrong. We can change the rules at any time." Now, on the

one hand, this gives a sense of freedom, you see, we're not responsible to

God anymore, because God is dead. On the other hand, we lose a foundation

for all our decisions, and we see this, in the cultural consequences in our

educational system in the United States, and in our legal system, that

there's no grounding for anything anymore. Everybody just sort of does as

they please. And I believe that in some other countries, and probably this

is the case in Japan, the consequences are not as severe, because there's a

stronger authority of tradition you see, but America is not a country with

a lot of tradition. It's a country where we make up things new all the

time. And so ideas have more immediate consequences here.

QUESTION: You've also written a very controversial piece

with Cary Mullis, the Nobel Prize winner, and Charlie Thomas from Harvard.

Could you tell us about that article and what it's about?

PJ: Because I've been so involved in scientific issues and

the philosophy of science, I've gotten to know a lot of people in the

scientific world, and not all of therm are against me, by the way, I have

many friends and supporters there. One of the people I got to know was a

colleague of mine here at Berkeley, a world famous molecular biologist,

named Peter Duesberg, who has been virtually isolated from the whole

scientific community because he is a dissident from the HIV/AIDS theory.

Now it's very complicated to explain this in just a moment, but I think the

most important thing to understand is that the whole diagnosis of AIDS, and

that HIV, this virus, is the cause of it, was said at a press conference in

1984, before there'd really been any scientific publication on the matter.

So before the scientific community really had an opportunity to think about

it, a theory was set in concrete, and has been unchangeable. Now, it's

amazing how uncritical the scientists, and even the newspapers are about

this. You know, that AIDS in Africa is defined totally differently from the

way AIDS is defined in the United States. The virus is supposed to operate

totally differently in Asia than it does in North America and Europe. In

the United States, we've had no increase whatsoever, according to official

figures, in the number of HIV infected persons, ever since they began

testing for HIV. Yet we're supposed to believe that in certain areas of the

world, especially in ones where records are kept the most loosely, that

this virus is spiraling out of control, and infecting more and more people

every year. Well, this is only one of the many anomalies and unexplainable

things that are involved in this theory.

Now, one thing I've learned from my work with evolution, in Darwinism and

evolution and in this AIDS crisis, you know, the scientific people are very

very brilliant and very knowledgeable in their way, but they tend to work

within a paradigm, within some master theory, that is just sacred, you see,

and you don't challenge that and everybody goes along with the program once

it's set. So if you challenge the basic program, like my colleague Duesberg

did, you become an outsider. They kick you out of science, even though

you're one of the most famous scientists in the world. So I've been trying

to help professor Duesberg, together with the people that you name, we have

Nobel Prize winners on our side, we have some very eminent scientific

voices, but they cannot get a hearing, because the politics of AIDS, the

pressure groups, the patient advocacy groups, and the drug companies, the

scientific researchers whose livelihood depends on this, have managed to

shut down all criticism .

QUESTION: You and your colleagues believe that there is no

connection between HIV and AIDS?

PJ: Well, that's... probably not. I don't want to insist on

a complete set of answers at this point, my own position, after all, I'm a

supporter of the biochemists who are dissenting from this, but I don't

purport to have solved all the questions. It's simply clear to me that the

various kinds of research don't make any sense together, that there are

many contradictions in the paradigm, HIV is either harmless, or it's

certainly not a super virus that can do things in Africa that are totally

different from what it does everywhere else in the world, that the

statistics about AIDS are grossly inflated by the people who are asking for

money, to deal with this, and that there's a real need for an independent

voice, an audit of the books, as you might say. If telecasting this

interview in Japan would inspire any Japanese scientists, to say, "Let's

just take an independent look at this, and not believe everything the

Americans scientists tell us," that would delight me.And whatever answers

they come to, I'm prepared to live with.

QUESTION: What effect has all this notoriety and your

becoming quite well known had on your personal life?

PJ: Well, you know, it's been kind of exciting. My wife and

I have been involved with local things, with our local church, and my wife

has a children's library, in our basement, with 20,000 volumes. It's like a

public library, only it's just ours, and the children from all around the

city come in and they check out books. And she does some other things like

that, that I've been involved in supporting by now I'm traveling a whole

lot; with my new book coming out, I'm to about 20 universities around the

country, and I'm going now it seems, to a big scientific meeting in Spain,

to address that in the fall. I'm taking leave from the university for the

fall so that I can do that, until the end of the year. And I'm constantly

doing interviews, like with people like yourself. So I've become much more

of a public figure. And that's very exciting. What's particularly rewarding

about it to me though, is that I'm able to give some leadership and help to

some young people, young scholars; people who are coming up with the new

ideas that I really think are going to affect the 21st century. But who

have a hard time getting started, you see, because things are orthodox.

The climate isn't receptive to these new ideas very easily. So I'm able to

give them some help getting started. And that's the most rewarding thing to

me, is when I can do that

QUESTION: Professor Johnson, thank you for joining us

today.

PJ: It's a pleasure to have had you with me, and I wish the best to all the

people in Japan that see this.