LA MIRADA, CALIF. — What is the value of a human being? When someone is sick, who decides on the medical treatment they receive? If someone is judged to be disabled or ‘inconvenient,’ who decides whether they live or die? Bioethical and medical questions like these are important in the science and religion dialogue.

This year the Master of Arts in Science and Religion program at Biola University is honoring a leading bioethicist Richard Land with the 2010 Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth, in recognition of his advocacy for human dignity, the rights of the unborn and infirm, pro-family policies, and other conservative evangelical bioethical concerns.

The Johnson Award is given every other year to a nationally or internationally recognized scholar who challenges the materialistic bias of the modern academy and advances a position that fosters an integrative approach to science and religion.

Land is also being honored for his efforts to advance and protect religious freedom at the national and international levels. The academic freedom to follow the evidence where it leads is impossible in a culture or state that denies its people religious freedom. Biola’s science and religion program and the broader intelligent design community are sensitive to the bioethical and religious freedom issues that shape our culture and influence scientific progress.

Biola University established the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth in 2004 to honor legal scholar and Berkeley law professor Phillip E. Johnson, who was the award’s first recipient. The award recognizes Johnson’s pivotal role in advancing our understanding of design in the universe by opening up informed dissent to Darwinian and materialistic theories of evolution. The late British philosopher Antony Flew, once considered the most prominent defender of atheism in the English-speaking world, became the second recipient of this award in 2006 for his Socratic approach of “following the evidence where it leads” and abandoning atheism on account of design arguments. Lawyer and former presidential speechwriter Ben Stein received the award in 2008 for his key role in the major feature film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which documented the harassment of intelligent design sympathizers.

Land is president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention and serves on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Land will receive the award during a luncheon on May 15, 2010 at Biola University. Further details are available at https://www.biola.edu/events/christian-apologetics.