Kenneth R. Miller, Ph.D., Embarrassment to Brown University — Exemplifies Intelligent Design With Tie Clip!

Public Broadcasting (PBS) on November 13, 2007, aired their best shot at dogmatizing evolution in the name of countering the concept of Intelligent Design (ID). The television show is based on the Kitzmiller versus the Dover Board of Education trial that was concluded by the decision written by Judge Jones in 2005. The trial is over, the debate is just beginning. NOVA, in the episode entitled “Judgement Day – Intelligent Design On Trial” shows examples of evolution without critique, but in cases where examples of ID are illustrated, the show adds a negative or a rebuttal spin. As a scientist with a doctorate, as the author of this piece you are now reading, I’ve learned to be more the detective, more discerning, than what PBS has done with their programming. If I were to give ID a chance to be known for what it is, I’d engage in a more objective review. Which NOVA did not do … to the detriment of us all.

The Unsuspecting Viewers That We May Be

To the unsuspecting viewer, the anti-religion theme wins the day while leaving unanswered the real question as to whether any other theory offers sound thinking on the origins of complex life. Is it really (macro-) evolution? By the way ID proponents don’t think science evidence nor even the use of the word evolution is to be cast away. Micro-evolution is something ID considered as credible (follow the link to read about the difference between micro- and macro-evolution).

The notion that some highly specific examples within our bodies, organs, and cells, reveal evidence to life being by design was grossly misrepresented by PBS. Case in point, Dr. Kenneth Miller, of Brown University, makes a most UN-academic and scientifically humiliating example of himself, and thus of the Ivy League itself. During the Dover trial, Dr. Miller tried to make light or fun of the concept of intelligent design. In so doing, he only proved ID a possibility and perhaps simply correct.

A Trait of Design Comes With Complexity

In Dr. Michael Behe’s book (“Darwin’s Black Box”), a mouse trap is used as an analogy to illustrate design and complexity. Intelligent design appears in the form of irreducible complexity. The mouse trap is NOT a mouse trap without all its component parts. Take away any one part and the trap is non-functional–not a mouse trap. How could the trap evolve by a step-by-step process. It just has to be put all together at one time to work.

Dr. Miller, in the Dover courtroom, wore a mousetrap (minus two parts) to illustrate how the remaining parts make a tie clip. He wore the dismembered mouse trap as a clip on his tie when in the courtroom. NOVA used this example to make the point that something functional could still be derived from the parts of the mouse trap … as if to say the trap might still evolve from the tie clip. [In fact to de-evolve by loss of parts is something that indeed occurs in nature, in the other direction is a more improbable biological road to travel]

What the editors and producers of NOVA don’t want you to realize is that Dr. Miller had to THINK about the alternatives. Dr. Miller was a cause for the intelligent removal of two parts of the trap and he by his own directed intelligent agency placed the non-functional trap onto his own tie.

Intelligent Design is not only illustrated by Dr. Miller, a critic of ID himself mind you, but he opens the door to the concept that there is irreducible complexity in that if we remove yet one more piece, not even the tie clasp would function. Both the tie clasp and the mouse trap really have no progenitor other than by intelligence.

Design by Examples

Intelligence DESIGNS mouse traps, tie clasps, new models of automobiles (for every new model year, humans are the designers), and many other examples of highly specified structures that we commonly encounter in our daily lives. Why is it so hard to see how intelligence can easily be responsible for the complex molecular machines in cells, the incredibly mated structures of male and female reproductive organs (you think chance developed all that stuff?), the highly specific genetic code (that goes way beyond the complexity of computer code created by humans), and the fact that multiple mutations (that are presumed to drive evolution over time) are now shown to lead to lethal results. A single mutation might be benign or of some benefit, but add a second and third mutation in combination and evolution theory is in trouble! Is evolution and life by chance?

Dr. Miller should not be credited for an example of how ID fails–instead he only makes the point for ID!

The episode of NOVA fails to put all the cards on the table and the producers have played slight of hand–hidden key cards–failed to tell the whole story. But then the editorial staff has designed the show to tell the story the way they want you to see it.

See The Big Picture!

At Windowview we encourage our visitors and viewers to read more and to explore the depths of the issues. One of the religiously motivated persons on the NOVA episode was actually correct in saying “Why shouldn’t we examine all sides of the issue. Why shouldn’t that be the part of an open, free thinking curriculum in the public classroom?” [paraphrase]

Stripped of outside religious bias or spin, ID is really focused on the scientific evidence and where it leads. The NOVA episode barely showed the number of publications that span the sciences– ID looks at evidence from biology, chemistry, physics, microbiology, cell biology, genetics, information theory, astronomy, and more.

The conclusion we leave you with is simple … life, its origin, and your being conscious and being human is incredible! We know YOU ask the questions! You know that being alive is special. To explore for answers is really our task in life. To be empowered to seek answers truthfully is a wonderful place to be!

Perhaps Dr. Miller fails to open the door to free thinking–even in the face of compelling thoughts and evidence for ID. He used intelligence to design an illustration to mock ID, but then only proved the very point he was criticizing! “Go figure.” Go forth and figure for yourself!

2022 UPDATE – New Publications Add Vital Important Evidence

From the time of the trial to 2022, numerous books have been published that provide so much evidence for design in nature that the trial in 2005 would have had an entirely different outcome. To see titles of many of the newer and important books covering complexity of information in life, fossils and body plans, scientific evidence that covers astronomy to cell since, click on this link to review more recent title!

Director, Windowview.org 11/16/07 Update 11/12/22

by Logan Gage:

The Examiner, Nov 17, 2006

WASHINGTON – When it comes to science and God, Americans want it all —”MRIs and miracles,” according to this week’s Time magazine. Increasingly, however, evangelicals are standing in the way. But these religionists may not be who you think.

Richard Dawkins, Oxford Darwinist and best-selling author of “The God Delusion,” says you can’t have it all. Religion is pernicious and survives only because it has direct or indirect Darwinian survival value. Faith is largely a side-effect of the trust we learn as youths.

But luckily for us, according to Dawkins, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”

Atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett, recent author of “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon,” has long claimed Darwinism to be a “universal acid” which eats through all traditional notions of God and morality. For Dennett, religion survives because our brains evolved, albeit irrationally, to fall in love, which of course has reproductive advantages.

And in a recent Newsweek, atheist neuroscientist Sam Harris, author of “The End of Faith” and most recently “Letter to a Christian Nation,” presents his “Case Against Faith.” And where does he begin? At the beginning, of course, deriding the faithful for suggesting God had something to do with nature.

What is happening? Is it all just election-year hoopla against the religious right? I suggest another explanation. A quiet revolution is underway; and it will not be publicized.

It’s now been more than 80 years since Hubble observed evidence for the Big Bang, challenging the conventional wisdom among scientists that the universe was eternal. As theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking commented, “Almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the Big Bang.”

Four decades ago, scientists began to notice the ‘fine-tuning’ of the laws of physics, thus revealing the vast odds against a life-sustaining universe. As just one example, if gravity were one part in 100 billion greater or smaller, life would not be possible. Our universe would have kept expanding without forming galaxies, or matter in our universe would have stuck together without forming stars and planets.

And it’s been 10 years since Michael Behe’s “Darwin’s Black Box” first awakened a slumbering world to the “irreducible complexity” of many molecular systems, showing that a step-by-step Darwinian process couldn’t have produced them and that, instead, intelligent foresight was necessary.

We are in the midst of not one but two information revolutions. In the last half-century, scientists have recorded reams of genetic information as well as an intricate system for storing, copying, and editing this information, leading Bill Gates to comment that “DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.” The cell is a far cry from what scientists in Darwin’s day thought was something like a simple blob of Jell-O.

Some intellectuals are noticing. Probably the most cited atheist philosopher of the last half-century is Antony Flew. At Oxford, Flew sparred at C.S. Lewis Socratic Club. But in case you missed it, due to the mounting scientific evidence, Flew has become a theist. “I think the argument to intelligent design is enormously stronger than it was when I first met it,” Flew said in an interview.

He insists that he doesn’t believe in heaven, hell or the God of the Bible but that he now sees the origin of life as strong evidence for intelligent design, commenting that “the findings of more than 50 years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.”

Books on atheism used to quote Flew abundantly and authoritatively. Not anymore, although Dawkins derisively mentions Flew’s conversion in his old age.

Just as we have confidence that black holes exist, not by direct observation, but because of the movement of bodies around the blackness, so, too, can one be sure an intellectual revolution is underway when we increasingly find books on The New York Times best-seller list by evangelical atheists like Richard Dawkins.

These authors are surely responding to something. That something is powerful scientific evidence challenging their worldview. Time got it right: “This debate long predates Darwin, but the anti-religion position is being promoted with increasing insistence by scientists angered by intelligent design.”

Logan Paul Gage is a policy analyst with Discovery Institute in Washington. [This article reprinted with permission by author extended to Windowview.org]

For more on science and Intelligent Design go to WindowView!

Intelligent Design is Blasphemy So Says Dr. Francisco Ayala!

On the evening of March 23, Dr. Francisco Ayala, along with his wife (Dr. Hanna Ayala) spoke before an assembly of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS; widely known for its publication of Science magazine). The evening presentation was more an informal event where both Dr.s Ayala spoke of their professional experiences and current activities.

Of note were the comments of Dr. Francisco Ayala with regard to the teaching of evolution in public schools. Dr. Ayala is a well known biologist with academic interests in genetics and evolution. He also proclaims to have a theistic side and some studies in theology. What becomes clear however is a propensity among some scientists to state evolution is a “fact”more than a theory. The rejection of biblical literalism becomes full grounds to say church and state must remain separate and schools must teach evolution. But most are unaware of why the United States originally was founded with the principles of a separation of church and state. This has nothing to do with scientific evidence or misguided assumptions.

Perhaps what we might fear is a scientific literalism that prevents thinking about all the implications of the scientific data. Dr. Ayala also wants us to believe that any discussion of the topic of intelligent design is pure religion. The hot button word of the day always seems to be an emotional rejection of something called creationism. But if he is referring to an old school of thought, then he is likewise putting up a smoke screen to avoid the direction in which discussions on intelligent design lead to.

Find out why Dr. Ayala thinks ID is blasphemy! Listen to and read the text from this event at Ayala Article at Windowview.org