Posted by
Rob on Tuesday, March 16, 2010 7:39:30 PM
(Cross-posted at
Uncommon Descent
I normally don't write reviews of slanderous articles, but
Pennock piqued my curiosity by claiming that ID-founder,
Phillip Johnson, is a Post-Modern Fundamentalist Creationist. Since most Fundamentalists would deny any relation to PoMo, and most Presbyterians would deny being Fundamentalists, I had to read the article. And once I began to read the article, I had to post a response. So here goes.
Pennock starts out with the worst name-calling he can think of, calling Johnson "illegitimate" and a "bastarde" child of his two worst nemeses: fundamentalism and post-modernism. Then on page 4 he whines that Johnson is name-calling when he says Darwinism is a creation-myth. Somehow I get the sense that this isn't going to be a cool-headed, objective analysis.
But nevertheless, having written often on the subject of PoMo and its influence in biblical studies, I wanted to know the basis of his identification. His footnotes are telling: Barbara Forrest and himself. He even goes so far as to quote a paragraph or so of himself as proof of Johnson's PoMo! (I can't make this stuff up.) Here's him quoting himself:
"When he claims, for example, that scientists are attracted to naturalism because ‘‘It gives science a virtual monopoly on the production of knowledge,’’ he is echoing the deconstructionist charge that knowledge is not discovered but rather is fabricated by the intellectual capitalists who own the factories of the knowledge business."
In other words, "Johnson says X which I interpret as PoMo Y." This is the basis of his titular claim for PoMo? Whom does he think he's fooling? Us? The editor? Is a quote more reliable than an opinion? You can do it too. "Rob says that when Pennock makes claims for illegitimacy, he is echoing Derrida that facts are in the mind of the beholder, thus demonstrating Pennock's complete reliance on post-modern metaphysics."
It must be true, it has a quote mark around it.
You gotta love this postmodern parody!
But what he really hates, is when Johnson uses the PoMo critique to attack MN. Evidently, the wielder of the tool is not to be distinguished from the maker of the tool. One doesn't have to agree with everything Derrida says in order to see the value in his critique of methodological
naturalism. But evidently for Pennock, some questions put you beyond the Pale. By having the gall to criticise Darwin, Johnson is a bastarde PoMo Fundamentalist Creationist! (Nope, no name-calling here.)
Most significantly, Pennock demonstrates that he neither understands Johnson nor Derrida when he equates the two. Here's the money quote:
"And so we are back again to Original Sin—it is the sin of pride that comes before the fall. Naturalism, liberal rationalism, postmodernism and the morally hollow culture they purportedly cause are the result of the prideful attempt to usurp the authority of God. In postmodern terms, it is the rejection of any God’s-eye view or master narrative. Because everything is but an interpretation, we become the authors of our own narrative."
Notice how Pennock lumps naturalism and PoMo as equally bad in Johnson's eyes, which is a peculiar thing if Johnson really is a PoMo. Then he goes on to say that PoMo sees sin as the rejection of a master narrative. No, Pennock, that is called "Christian"; PoMo denies that
there IS a master narrative, and hence rejection is a good thing. Only the last sentence might be PoMo, but it is actually a Christian condemnation, not a victorious PoMo commendation.
So in essence, Pennock confuses a Christian critique with a PoMo assertion, and the thesis of his paper is complete bunk. Johnson is no more PoMo than Pennock is a Christian. If I can interpret Pennock's confusion, he seems to think that modern science has made the Bible irrelevant, and so the sting of Johnson's critique can't be due to pre-modern Fundamentalist dinosaurs, so it must be due to some recent development. [
Joseph Bottum explains this peculiar link between pre-moderns and post-moderns.] And the name-calling is there just to establish his liberal, sociological bona-fides.
For whether Pennock wants to admit it or not, he's very concerned about his social standing, just as Feyerabend, Derrida, and Johnson said. After all, it isn't science that is in need of redemption, it's scientists. A pity that Pennock can't see the difference.