Reason in the Balance
The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law Education
- Apologetics
- Publisher: InterVarsity Press
- Published: 1998
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Publisher's Description
In his first book, Darwin on Trial, Berkeley law professor Phillip E. Johnson took on the heavyweights of science. And he got their attention, even provoking a response from neo-Darwinist Stephen Jay Gould in the pages of Scientific American. Now Johnson's back with a book that expands his critique from science to law, education and today's culture wars. Is God unconstitutional? Why is morality forced out of public school curriculum? Can Christians believe in God and evolution? Why aren't we getting anywhere in the debate over abortion? Will the Grand Unified Theory solve the riddle of the universe? Johnson dares to answer these and other tough, touchy questions. He reveals why naturalism (the philosophy that the material world is all there was, is and will be) has become "the established religious philosophy of America," supplanting Judeo-Christian belief. He shows how naturalism undergirds science, law, education and popular culture. And he argues that naturalism has even infiltrated the church--marginalizing opposition as irrational, and encouraging Christians to adopt a more "reasonable" stance. In Reason in the Balance, Johnson writes energetically and persuasively--chapter by chapter zeroing in on the chinks in the argument for naturalism. He explores nearly every acre of today's cultural battlefield: God, sex education, evolution, abortion, cosmology and particle physics, what our public schools should teach, the basis of law, the meaning of reason and a few other things that matter. Armed with biblical truth, common sense and a clear understanding of his foe, he steps out like David to fell the intellectual Goliath of our day.
Endorsements (4)
“Phillip Johnson is a scrappy Christian thinker who is taking on several important debates about law, education and science in contemporary culture. He strikes many sparks, and some of them illuminate the issues in helpful ways. Reason in the Balance will inflict a few burns, but it will also shed some light.”
“Christians are beginning to leave their anti-intellectualism behind and recognize that ideas really matter. But with Reason in the Balance Phillip Johnson has moved this shift a quantum leap further. . . . No one who cares to understand the contemporary culture wars and be involved in their resolution can afford to neglect this book.”
“With rare lucidity and bracing urgency, Reason in the Balance makes a convincing case for the liberation of nature, and of human nature, from naturalism's claim that reality is less than we know it to be. In advancing this argument, Phillip Johnson proves himself a worthy heir of Samuel Johnson.”
“Phillip Johnson is an author who is simply to be read, and closely studied, by all who wish to understand the forces that actually govern the intellectual world in the United States today.”
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