December 8 1997

ARTICLE TOOLS

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Redeeming Culture: American Religion in an Age of Science, by James Gilbert (University of Chicago Press, 407 pp.; $22.95, hardcover);

Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, by Phillip E. Johnson (InterVarsity, 132 pp.; $15.99, hardcover; $9.99, paper). Reviewed by Richard J. Mouw, president, Fuller Theological Seminary.

These two books cover somewhat different territory, but reading them together is a good exercise. Historian James Gilbert provides a fascinating study of the ways in which religion and science have interacted in twentieth-century American culture, while Christian apologist Phillip Johnson provides believers with what the book jacket tells us is "an easy-to-understand guide" to helpful tactics in the ongoing debate with the defenders of Darwinian thought.

Since Johnson's campaign against Darwinism has stirred up some controversy, even within the evangelical community, I should make it clear at the outset that I agree with the substance of his case against the evolutionist perspective as he defines it. Johnson contends that much science education these days simply equates scientific thinking with a naturalistic view of reality, with its credo that "nature is all there is."

Gilbert's opening chapter nicely corroborates Johnson's description of the perceived link between naturalism and the scientific enterprise. Gilbert sets up his chronicle of science and religion by explicitly endorsing the naturalistic scheme. "By definition," he tells us, science "denies the intervention of deity in any explanation"; scientific investigation offers us "explanations of natural phenomena capable of verification within a materialistic framework." Religion and science, then, represent "two very different and potentially hostile systems ...