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Science historian on Darwinist Ken Miller’s new book, The Human Instinct: Asserting consensus in the midst of growing conflict

From science historian Michael Flannery at ENST, a review of Brown University’s Ken Miller’s The Human Instinct: How We Evolved to Have Reason, Consciousness, and Free Will Miller is one of those “settled science” bullies. Here he sets his sights on essayist Marilynne Robinson’s 1998 collection, The Death of Adam. According to Miller, Robinson is wrong in asserting the demeaning and destructive influence of Darwinism. For Robinson, the reductionist materialism of the Darwinian paradigm has left humanity bereft of meaning and value, corroding the moral and ethical foundations on which Western civilization was built. Miller, a Darwinian theist, insists that Robinson is completely mistaken: Let me be clear that I do not believe that the scientific core of [Darwinian] evolution Read More ›

Michael Flannery on Ken Miller’s podcast at Scientific American: “More nonsense”

Podcast with Steve Minsky:  A transcript is to be made available. Science historian Michael Flannery is, we hear, not a fan of Brown University Darwinian biochemist Ken Miller’s new book, The Human Instinct: How We Evolved to Have Reason, Consciousness, and Free Will. Re the accompanying podcast, he writes, More nonsense from Miller. Miller’s new book is largely science and theology “explained” by double talk. He argues for human uniqueness and then proceeds to argue against it. He argues for free willl and then proceeds to argue against it. He complains about the term “Darwinism” and then uses the term himself (repeatedly). He talks about design only to argue against it. He writes against what he calls the “scientific creationists” Read More ›

Physics needs Darwin? Ken Miller should hear this

From Michael Price at the Evolution Institute, interviewing independent scholar John Campbell, author of several books on universal Darwinism, John O. Campbell, an independent scholar from British Columbia, has published several works [1-4] describing his version of universal Darwinism. This framework proposes that Darwinian selection explains what exists not just biologically but in many other realms as well, from the quantum to the cultural to the cosmological. My interest in John’s framework developed after I began researching ‘cosmological natural selection with intelligence’ [5-7], and seeing how concepts like entropy, selection, and adaptation seem fundamental in both biology and physics. My research led me to the Evo Devo Universe research community, to which John also belongs, and I soon learned of his remarkable Read More ›

Catholic Darwinist Ken Miller claims increasing information in life forms is easy

What’s needed to drive this increase? Just three things: selection, replication, and mutation.” – Kenneth Miller, Only a Theory, p. 77 Thoughts? See also: Wow. Catholic Darwinism goes nuts. A mass for Darwin. Or is this a joke? Open a window, someone, please. Follow UD News at Twitter!

Playing Fast and Loose with the Facts: How Ken Miller Misrepresented Phil Johnson

An old debate, featuring Dr. Kenneth Miller and Dr. Paul Nelson, has found its way onto YouTube. The debate took place at the time of the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial in Pennsylvania in 2005. Moderated by Sally Satel at the American Enterprise Institute, it focuses on the question of teaching evolutionary theory and intelligent design in science classrooms. Ken Miller’s presentation is predictable: He talks about the type III secretion system and the fusion origin of chromosome 2; about how ID is allegedly nothing more than a negative argument against evolution and really a form of disguised creationism. His arguments have been so thoroughly responded to at ENV and elsewhere that further discussion is unnecessary. I do, however, want to draw attention to a Read More ›

Ken Miller’s Strawman No Threat to ID

Earlier today the News desk posted a video of Brown University biochemist Ken Miller’s takedown of ID. This is a fascinating video and it is worthwhile to post a transcript for those readers who do not have time to stream it. The video is excerpted from a BBC documentary called, with scintillating journalistic objectivity, The War on Science. BBC Commenter: In two days of testimony [at the Dover trial] Miller attempted to knock down the arguments for intelligent design one by one. Also on his [i.e., Miller’s] hit list, Dembski’s criticism of evolution, that it was simply too improbable. Miller: One of the mathematical tricks employed by intelligent design involves taking the present day situation and calculating probabilities that the Read More ›

An information systems prof has some questions about Ken Miller’s “spitball” mousetrap

Thumbnail for version as of 14:41, 25 May 2009
courtesy Captain Phoebus

While explaining how he believes complex biochemical information just happen to arise through random processes, Brown University’s Ken Miller dismisses Mike Behe’s mousetrap, introduced in Darwin’s Black Box. To show that it is not an example of irreducible complexity that points to design, he recounts a childhood recollection of a pupil using a mousetap to fire spitballs, which showed that the mousetrap could be used for something other than killing mice (pp 54-57). That is how Miller, who has just won the Stephen Jay Gould award for promoting Darwinism,  knew that ID biochemist Behe was wrong.

Ralph David Westall, an IS prof at California Polytechnic University, Pomona*, contacted Uncommon Descent to say, Read More ›

Atheist philosopher has some questions for anti-ID Catholic biochemist (and recent Darwin prize recipient) Ken Miller

The most recent Stephen Jay Gould prize has been awarded to anti-ID Catholic biochemist Ken Miller of Brown University:

Through his writings, teaching and appearances in court, Dr. Miller has proved an eloquent and passionate defender of evolution and the scientific method.

Some Miller comments:

The argument for intelligent design basically depends on saying, ‘You haven’t answered every question with evolution,’… Well, guess what? Science can’t answer every question. – Kenneth MillerThe new strategy is to teach intelligent design without calling it intelligent design. – Kenneth Miller

There is no controversy within science over the core proposition of evolutionary theory. – Kenneth Miller

Bradley Monton, atheist philosopher and author of Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design (Broadview Press, 2009), who thinks carefully about intelligent design, has some thoughts on Miller’s arguments:

Now, Miller thinks that naturalism is an essential part of science. He holds that if one drops the constraint of methodological naturalism, then science will stop, because one can imply appeal to God as an explanation of any scientific phenomenon. Miller writes:

A theistic science … will no longer be the science we have known. It will cease to explore, because it already knows the answers. Read More ›

Atheist philosopher Bradley Monton rebuts “anti-science” claims re ID, contra Ken Miller

Bradley Monton, author of Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design (Broadview Press, 2009), has this to say about design theory as a legitimate approach to science:

I’ll start with Ken Miller’s 2008 book Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul. In additon to giving straightforward biology-based criticisms of Behe’s irreducible complexity argument … Miller also has a more fundamental critique of intelligent design (the “Battle for America’s Soul” part).

Miller makes the claim that the intelligent design movement doesn’t just want to “win the battle against Darwin”; the intelligent design movement wants to “win the greater war against science itself.”
This claim that the intelligent design movement is anti-science is quite a strong claim. The way intelligent design proponents typically portray their activity is that they are looking for scientific evidence for the existence of a designer. This may be confused science, but it’s not anti-science. Moreover, some Read More ›

Ken Miller and Chromosome Fusion

In the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District court case, federal judge John Jones was heavily influenced by the first expert witness, evolutionist Ken Miller. As Jones later recalled, he “was taken to school.” Unfortunately what Miller “taught” Jones was a series of scientific misrepresentations. Miller focused on two examples from molecular biology: a pseudogene and a fused chromosome. In both cases Miller gave Jones many facts but the lessons were carefully tailored to misrepresent both the science and evolutionary theory.  Read more

Why Ken Miller is Right About Our Backward Retina

In the steady-stream of “not junk after all” findings it was inevitable that our backward retina would be discovered to work quite well, thank you. But if you think it is another icon of evolution that has been shattered, think again. Evolutionary explanations of vision go back to Darwin, and they haven’t changed much in spite of our much improved understanding of how vision actually works. And now new findings that the inverted design of our retina isn’t as bad as it looks, while interesting, are not much more than a yawner for evolutionists.  Read more