Phillip Johnson

Former law professor at UC Berkley School of Law. Author of the Discovery Institute wedge strategy.


 * A conservative Christian who began attacking evolution after a conversion experience, Johnson makes little effort to downplay his theological  opinions. He tells religious audiences that evolution inherently promotes atheism while outlining his plan to use ID to cast doubt on Darwin’s theory. ... Once people are persuaded that evolution denies the existence of God, Johnson  said, they are ready for the next step: They are introduced to “the truth” of  the Bible, “the question of sin” and finally “introduced  to Jesus.”

In 1996, he said “My colleagues and I speak of ‘theistic realism’-- or sometimes, ‘mere creation’ -- as the defining concept of our movement. This means that we affirm that God is objectively real as Creator, and that the reality of God is tangibly recorded in evidence accessible to science, particularly in biology.” “If life is not simply matter evolving by natural selection, but is something that had to be designed by a creator who is real, then the nature of that creator, and the possibility of revelation, will become a matter of widespread interest among thoughtful people who are currently being taught that evolutionary science has shown God to be a product of the human imagination.”

In an interview with the evangelical magazine World in 1996, Johnson said, “This isn’t really, and never has been, a debate about  science…. It’s about religion and philosophy.”

In a 2003 appearance on American Family Radio, a broadcast outlet run by the Rev. Donald Wildmon of the Tupelo, Miss.-based American Family Association, he explained “Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get  the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before  the academic world and into the schools.”