Are You as Smart as a Second Year University Student? Q1

 
Here's a question from last month's test in our class on the evolution/creationism debate. How would you have done?

Philip Johnson is one of the leading advocates of intelligent design creationism, He argues that science is unnecessarily atheistic because it requires methodological naturalism.

Creationists are disqualified from making a positive case, because science by definition is based on naturalism. The rules of science also disqualify any purely negative argumentation designed to dilute the persuasiveness of the theory of evolution. Creationism is thus out of court—and out of the classroom—before any consideration of evidence. Put yourself in the place of a creationist who has been silenced by that logic, and you may feel like a criminal defendant who has just been told that the law does not recognize so absurd a concept as "innocence."

Is this a good argument for intelligent design creationism? Explain your answer.

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The Johnson quotation is from Johnson, P.E. (1990) "Evolution as Dogma: The Establishment of Naturalism" first published in First Things 6:15-22. reprinted in Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics Robert T. Pennock ed.