Rating: 
Summary: Evidence on trial
Review: There is obviously quite a deal of confusion surrounding this book, and the author must take responsibility for some of it. To begin with, the title - Darwin on Trial - creates some misleading expectations. When someone is on trial, the burden for producing the evidence falls on the prosecution, which must prove its case beyond reasonable doubt. However, it is not Darwin who is on trial here, but his ideas, or rather the evidence supporting his ideas. In most court cases, it is not the evidence that is in the dock. Readers complaining that Johnson's evidence is at fault or that he doesn't prove his case are on the wrong track, but it's the author who has sent them there.The confusion is unfortunate, because this book's critical focus on the evidence for the theory of natural selection is just what is needed in the debate. Darwin himself was well aware of the evidence problem, and quite accurately pointed out all the areas in which his theory was vulnerable. Darwinists in the nineteenth century indulged in a free-for-all of skewed and jumped up, sometimes even fraudulent evidence, especially when they came to apply his theory to human beings. Darwinists in our time keep claiming that the evidence is irrefutable and overwhelming, but somehow they never quite get around to citing it in a way that is persuasive to a sceptical reader who knows the difference between evidence and argument. Having ploughed my way through a large amount of the literature written by neo-Darwinists for non-scientists, I can't say that I have ever come across an explicit discussion of the evidence. All I find is countless assertions that the evidence is there, and some not very veiled insults about the intelligence of those who refuse to believe it. There are repeated declarations that all scientists and experts know that the evidence is irrefutable, but that it is so intricate and sophisticated and comprehensive, no lay reader could begin to follow it. In place of the evidence the reader can't be expected to understand, and that a popular book just can't be expected to encompass, s/he is offered argument and reasoning. As a reader who doesn't know much about biology but who is pretty well educated in traditions of rhetoric, argument and reasoning, what I read bothers the hell out of me. It's a mix of empty assertion, blind faith, second rate poetry, pretentious imagery, tautology and fallacy. Johnson does a great job of pointing out this and other problems, which he illustrates very well. He has a clear line on the evidence problem, concentrating on the question of macro evolution (evolutionary change that can account for large differences between species). Most of Darwin's work was about the differences between varieties rather than the differences between species, so he himself never tackled the problem of macro-evolution. In his work it was just a "hypothetical", and in the end, he had to resort to Lamarck's reasoning to account for it. I wish that Johnson had given his book a better title, but more than that, I wish he had kept his own agenda out of it. If he's playing the lawyer, he shouldn't double in the role of amateur case cracker and offer a solution of his own, in the form of a commitment to the design argument. Since this argument is favoured by creationists, Johnson simply opens the way for his work to be dismissed as yet another example of special pleading by those who just can't do without what Daniel Dennett calls skyhooks. Johnson himself points out that Darwinians tend to argue as if their only opposition is from dumbos whose brain circuits are hardwired into biblical dogma. This is a huge problem in the debate. The anti-creationist polemic is so entrenched and obsessive, it is quite foolish to present any opportunity for stirring it up if your aim is to clear the ground. Johnson does an enormous amount of ground clearing but the dust just blows right back. This book is a couple of steps away from being the really powerful critique that is so desperately needed in the field.
Rating: 
Summary: It may sway a jury, but not a scientist
Review: Johnson deserves at least two stars for his lawyerly presentation of his case. The way he stresses certain selected "facts," however, calls to mind the "Dream Team" in the O.J. Simpson trial, where the lawyers played on the jury's sympathies by hammering on certain selected points and ignoring most of the rest of the evidence. "If the glove don't fit, you must acquit!" The "evidence" that Johnson, himself a lawyer, presents in this book (and his others as well) might sway an emotional jury of creationists who are biased toward his case from the start, but it would have a tougher time in a court that required the full array of evidence to be considered. If there was any chance that Johnson's "evidence" would hold up under actual scientific scrutiny, then he would also be publishing in serious scientific journals and not just writing books to sway the general public.
Rating: 
Summary: Put the Darwinists on trial
Review: I already figured evolution was probably a hoax, but after reading this book now I'm sure. Johnson proves why science is wrong and people shouldn't question the Bible. Since some people gave this book one star it proves Johnson's idea about how science is a religion for them instead of the Bible. They should read this book again and again until they finally believe the truth! Let's get "biology" out of the schools and put God back in. The schools should be teaching about morals and God's creation, not the hoax of evolution.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, but somewhat hard to understand in places
Review: Although I have not yet read the whole book, I think I have read enough to say that it is excellent. The author has made some very good points, even if he sometimes did them in a more roundabout way than he had to. I'd recomend it to anyone who is interested in this kind of thing.
Rating:
Summary: Reasoned
Review: A very intelligent critique of Darwinian thought. I took human evolution in College by a Prof. Wolpoff (recognized in his field), and came away thinking "geesh, is this all the 'proof' that anthropology has to offer for human evolution." True enough, something is going on in the fossil record; however, for evolution to be taught as good, proven science will not stand. The proof is not there.
Rating:
Summary: Educated on the subject.
Review: An online reviewer ( from boulder, colorado December 14, 1999 ) shows a problem that Johnson is making an attempt to fix. People have stopped thinking. He writes " scientists never, i repeat, NEVER attempt to distort facts." -- this is simply not true, for this is elevating all "scientists" to god-hood, perfect beings, whom we must follow, for they always set the standard of truth. No, that of course isn't the case. I recommend that you read Johnson's book with an open mind. Be willing to tolerate differing ideas than what you have been told in the past. Think.
Rating:
Summary: Evolutionary theory is not science
Review: You can call modern evolutionary theory a lot of things, but one thing you can't call it is science. One of the basic tenets of science is that is has to be repeatable. No one has been able to "repeat" one species turning to another, or even show how it's done. Because of this evolutionary theory is automatically excluded as science. You can call it philosophy, or religion--but not science (or if you do, it's 'soft' science and not 'hard'). As Johnson notes, the holes in evolutionary theory are substantial. Out of 100 million fossils discovered, none are intermediate. Mathematicians have pointed out there hasn't been enough time (or enough particles in the universe) to create, through blind chance, what exists today. Since there is not the slightest scrap of evidence that one species has ever evolved into another, evolutionary theory, like many other things, is ultimately based on faith. This doesn't mean there isn't truth in it. But the whole truth? Uh uh.
Rating:
Summary: We aren't just the jury.
Review: Phillip Johnson's arguments are worth reading, but only if you also read Charles Darwin's <<On the Origin of Species>> and Ernst Meyr's <<The Growth of Biological Thought>> carefully. This will acquaint you with the additional physical evidence for evolution by natural selection that he omits. I don't know why he ignores this persuasive evidence. Ignorance of it is one possibility; unwillingness to confront it in his book could be another. The bottom line is that evolution by natural selection is a very useful model of the relationships among living creatures, well-supported by the available physical evidence. The model is still incomplete, and there is plenty of room for additional investigation. However, while we can always speculate about possible supernatural causes for the phenomena we observe, that speculation will always be outside the realm of science, in which we make <<and test>> inferences from that which we can observe. On each page of Johnson's, Darwin's and further using observable physical evidence? What physical phenomenon could I study carefully to test any of the arguments advanced here? These are the questions that Darwin and Meyr asked themselves over and over in their long careers, and they are still the most relevant questions to ask ourselves today. When we serve on a jury, we are prohibited from collecting our own additional information about the case being tried. The jury's role is to reach a verdict solely on the basis of the admissible evidence presented by the attorneys for both sides. But there are no such limitations on our role in the conflict that has arisen over the merits of evolution as a scientific theory. We are free to investigate this question as deeply and as thoroughly as we choose, and to unearth as much new physical evidence as we are able to do. I encourage everyone with an interest in this question to reach beyond the arguments presented in these books, and contribute your own original research. There's plenty of room for more investigators.
Rating: 
Summary: get educated on the subject
Review: first of all, it is important to remember that Johnson does not have a degree in biology. Johnson is a lawyer. He is paid to twist facts and bend what people say to his own gain. scientists never, i repeat, NEVER attempt to distort facts. one of the goals of science is complete honesty. if you are deceitful, then you are not a scientist. i am currently enrolled in a philosophy of religion course, and one thing i've learned is that you never resort to name calling. a big problem i had with this book is the way Johnson utterly destroys this rule of philosophy. he consistently calls his evolutionary conterparts immoral, and in one of his papers i've read, he calls them heretics. this is unacceptable behavior. johnson seems to forget that although his book is titled "darwin on trial," this book does not take place in a courtroom and slander is not how you solve these problems. johnson forgets that this is a mainly a PHILISOHICAL issue and tries to turn it into a scientific issue. i just don't comprehend how creationists believe they can win this battle. evolution has enormous amounts of actual, physical data to back it up. not just enormous amounts of data, but staggering, mind boggling amounts of data. creationist have yet propose one theory that even is remotely in the same ballpark as evolution. if you read and agreed with this book, may i suggest that you read "tower of babel" by robert t. pennock. this book completely destroys johnson's arguments. please read it if you want both sides of the story.
Rating:
Summary: This book is not aging gracefully
Review: Reading this book with a background in biology, I find that Johnson either profoundly misunderstands or seriously misrepresents not only the theory of evolution (which is actually a very complex web of theories, but Johnson has a knack for oversimplifying) but the way science itself operates. Johnson appeals to the layman's misunderstanding and mistrust of evolution, and of science in general, but is still unable to explain why the overwhelming majority of scientists accept evolution as fact, even the ones who are not atheists. In the course of his attack, he uses misdirection, innuendo, and misrepresentation and omission of evidence. Johnson rests his case on two rather shaky assumptions: first, that absence of evidence is evidence is absence, and second, that the fossil record truly has an appalling absence of evidence for evolution. Not only has the fossil evidence always been better than Johnson leads the reader to believe, but the evidence continues to be found, not only in paleontology, but also in the fields of genetics, developmental biology, and molecular biology. Johnson is remarkably unimaginative when it comes to ways to test evolutionary theory, aside from pointing to gaps in the fossil record. Johnson goes into detail about the origin of mammals from reptiles as the "best" evidence of major transitions in the fossil record, yet there is abundant evidence from other groups, much of it published and available in the literature long before Johnson's book. One has to wonder how Johnson deals with the truly startling recent fossil discoveries in China. Evolution is tested by each new fossil discovery. Yet Johnson dismisses the existing evidence while neglecting to explain why new evidence keeps turning up. Amazingly, Johnson ridicules the discoverers of a whale fossil with hind leg bones for using standard scientific wording, then uses this wording to imply the leg bones they found might not even belong to the whale fossil in the first place! Johnson attempts to discredit physical evidence, such as the transition from reptiles to mammals, so that he can concentrate heavily on biological systems, such as the eye, which by their very nature cannot be studied in the fossil record. He often asks questions like "how did a bacterium become a bird?" but doesn't ask "how did a jaw bone become an ear bone?" presumably because this can (and has been) studied and documented. Johnson will grudgingly concede a certain amount of speciation or "macroevolution." Johnson's actual claim is that evolution and natural selection are incapable of explaining the origins of higher-level groups like phyla, classes, and genera. Here Johnson makes the twin mistakes of assuming that phyla and other major groups evolve, and that the boundaries between higher level taxa are easily defined. Species evolve; higher groupings are artificial and the recognition of discrete groups with large gaps between them is in large part an artifact of taxonomic classification. As do all creationists, Johnson completely overlooks plant evolution. Johnson is not entirely at fault here, since plant evolution has been woefully neglected by the popularizers of evolutionary biology like Dawkins and Gould, and Johnson himself admits that general and popular publications have been among his primary sources of information. In particular, I wonder how Johnson would deal with the huge number of plants that are fully capable of hybridization--both between species in the same genus, and between species of different genera, often wildly different in morphology, yet in many cases producing fully fertile hybrid offspring. Johnson further makes the mistake of assuming that species are both easy to recognize and to define. Such basic concepts as "species" and "speciation" are incredibly problematic in botany, precisely because evolution is an ongoing process and there are many populations representing the full spectrum from fully interbreeding through incapable of interbreeding--in other words, at every point along the road to speciating. In the end, it's hard to know exactly what Johnson DOES believe, and he gives precious few clues as to what evidence he WOULD accept as convincing that evolution has occurred. I suppose it's progress that Johnson does not claim a literal interpretation of Genesis, or that the earth and universe are only 6000 years old. Although he takes pains to distance himself from the young-earth creationists, Johnson takes very personally the anti-creationism, pro-evolution, and occasionally anti-religious writings of many biologists that have been aimed precisely at the rightly-ridiculed "scientific" claims of the young-earth creationists. One wonders why Johnson gives credence to geologists--after all, nobody actually SAW the sedimentary layers being laid down millions of years ago--yet treats the science of biologists with such disdain. This book is yet another case of a creationist (Johnson broadens the definition to include pretty much everybody who believes in God) pointing out errors, flaws, and weaknesses in evolutionary theory that biologists have made no effort to hide--yet failing to stem the tide of evidence that continues to unfold for evolution. In the end, Johnson's attitude seems to be that, since biologists themselves can't agree on all of the details of evolution, the theory itself must be wrong. Yet all biologists accept (1) that life has a long history on the earth, (2) that living things have changed over time, and (3) that living things have diverged from a common ancestry. One final note: in the "epilogue" in the paperbook edition, Johnson complains about his treatment at the hands of evolutionary biologists. In particular, he complains bitterly about a book review by Stephen Jay Gould, in which Gould criticized both the style as well as the scientific content of the book. In other words, Johnson is complaining that a book reviewer is acting like a book reviewer, precisely as he had previously criticized a scientist for acting like a scientist.
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