PS to Quetzel:
Thank you for helping me with my insults. However, "poser" means "one who poses" and the term is interchangeable with "wannabe". It applies to people like Crashfrog who poses as a know-it-all and makes unfounded assertions about people they don't know and have never met "spreading falsehoods". "Posers" never actually do get around to showing us HOW they know-it-all however...
I stand corrected. Turns out the two words are synonymous. I'd never seen "poser" used that way before. Thanks for the enlightenment. I'll stick with "poseur" variant, however. It's closer to the original French insult and has essentially the same meaning.
As to the substance of your post, I'll go out on a limb here and say that it's unlikely Johnson could ever be found guilty of a blatant lie. He's quite good as a lawyer. "Darwin on Trial", for instance, is as well-written a polemic as you could ask for. He's ever so much better at using rhetorical devices, vague or undefined philosophical or metaphysical concepts and statements, and subtle strawmen to lead his readers on to the exact stance that he wants them to adopt. He never actually lies, afaik. I also don't think he has ever - not once - made an actual postive claim in favor of creationism, which for me would be much more compelling. Most of what I've read of his rely on negative argumentation
against evolutionary theory - and he's very careful never to actually use specific cases in his arguments that could be refuted by appeal to actual scientific literature. In short, as a lawyer he's pretty good. As a philosopher he's pretty fair. As a "scientific creationist" he's abysmal, but then he's not alone in that.
BTW: he's at UC Berkley, not UCLA.
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