Phillip E. Johnson

Phillip E. Johnson (June 18, 1940 – November 2, 2019)^[1] was an American legal scholar who was the Jefferson E. Peyser Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley.^[2] He was an opponent of evolutionary science, co-founder of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC), and one of the co-founders of the intelligent design movement, along with William Dembski and Michael Behe.^[3] Johnson described himself as "in a sense the father of the intelligent design movement".^[4]

Johnson was an opponent of "fully naturalistic evolution, involving chance mechanisms and natural selection".^[5] Johnson argued that scientists accepted the theory of evolution "before it was rigorously tested, and thereafter used all their authority to convince the public that naturalistic processes are sufficient to produce a human from a bacterium, and a bacterium from a mix of chemicals."^[6] The scientific community considered Johnson's defense of intelligent design to be pseudoscientific.^{[7][8][9][10]}