Writing Studies 3302 Spring 2009

I liked the way Kenneth Miller did his lecture much better than the way Richard Dawkins did. I think Miller is much more accepting of other people’s beliefs than Dawkins and he isn’t afraid to say he doesn’t have the answers to everything. I also thought he had a good sense of humor throughout the lecture. I enjoyed how Miller kind of gave a behind the scenes look at the preparation he and others made in preparing for the Dover and Georgia trials on evolution. I found it quite odd that anyone would ask to put a disclaimer on a textbook because it presented the theory of evolution. I also found it interesting that the individual, who coined the term intelligent design, said that the theory’s evidence has no comparison to Darwin’s theory of evolution. I think it would be better if most people who challenge the theory of evolution admit to having little evidence rather than completely making stuff up, or conveniently leaving out information like in Of Panda’s and People. His criticism of implicating that we are a result of mistakes, I found intriguing. Miller said in essence, if mistakes aren’t made, organisms can’t make adaptations and therefore will not be able to survive. I have never heard that argument before, but I think that is something that is difficult to argue to. It doesn’t have to be a physical adaptation, it can be a mental adaptation, and I think that everyone on Earth has done that at some point in their life.

I really enjoyed Kenneth Miller’s presentation. I thought he was a wonderful speaker and connected very well with the audience. He presented some very complex material, but he used simpler examples and analogies to help the audience to understand. I also enjoyed that I knew a lot of what he was talking about already because we have discussed a lot of the issues in class. It definitely helped to have the background knowledge. The scientific evidence was very compelling and easy to understand including the transitional fossils and the “lost” chromosome. He also talked about how without mutations of genes and evolution there would be no survival of species because we would be unable to adapt, and I thought this was an interesting and undeniable point. I felt like he kind of added religion in at the very end as a side note, but I think he still did a good job at representing it and making his point known that he believes the two topics are not mutually exclusive but that they can coexist and that evolution makes him believe more thoroughly in the possibility of a God. I loved the jabs he made towards Dawkins, including the sign that Dawkins put on a bus. It was also interesting when he quoted someone from 410 AD (can’t remember the name?), who said that religious people should not quote the bible because if they are proved wrong, the audience will doubt the whole message that the bible represents. I thought that Ken knew his audience well when responding to their questions, but I wondered how much he was responding to the audience and how much of what he said is what he really believed (for example, he said that he believed in a personal God and he is speaking at a Catholic school). I am not doubting that he beliefs in God, but I wonder if he tailored his answers at all. Also, I liked his idea that the proper place to seek God is not in what we do not know but in what we do know. I think that overall, Ken did a great job at relating the subject to his audience and I think he presented his message very clearly. I really liked hearing him speak, especially after hearing Dawkins, and I would be interested in reading more of his material.

I found Miller to be much more personable then Dawkins was. This was the type of guy you could actually sit down with and have a conversation to share your viewpoints on the topic of evolutionism and ID. Dawkins I feel would speak condescendingly, thus not having a conversation but a "You're wrong, I'm right" talk. So obviously, his few jokes at Dawkins expense made me chuckle. But anyway, Miller stated that ID's evidence had no comparison to that amount that backs up evolution, and it was wise of him to say that. It shows that while he does believe ID can be a plausible method of explaining our origins, it is still a new theory and has lots of holes and needs more information to back it up. Taking the honest approach implies a better view of ID as a hole, and not the type that the Dover supporters would have taken (ID is right, evolution is the work of the devil).

When Miller referred to his hypothesis on humans being created due to mistakes in the evolutionary process, I was taken back. Did he mean mutations were the mistakes? Or did he mean the process of trial and error? Perhaps it is both, but either way I find that this thought train would be hard to differentiate from Darwin's theory on "natural selection". After all, species who make mistakes and learn from them survive, and others who have mutations to adapt to their surroundings excel. So in essence, they are the same concept just with different wording. Overall, I liked Miller's personality and attitude while giving the lecture. He used examples that most everyone could understand, and was very relateable to the audience as a whole. I will most likely end up searching for more of this lectures on Youtube, and I encourage others to do so as well.

I really liked Kenneth Miller’s lecture. He was very agreeable and eloquent and I found him to be quite persuasive to his point of view. I found out he wrote my tenth grade biology book which made the lecture that much more interesting for me. It is always interesting to hear someone state their opinions in front of you versus reading, hearing or watching them over the internet.
I thought Miller had very strong evidence supporting his position, considering he has quotes and evidence from all sides of the argument. For example, he has the founder of ID, Phillip Johnson, saying that ID is not at all a comparable theory to evolution. This quite effectively rules out all possibilities of ID ever being taught in schools. He has the Pope saying that we “must listen to the voice of the Earth” and he has a scientist, I didn’t catch who, saying he is both a creationist and an evolutionist. Miller makes it clear the there is plenty of room for God in evolution, especially since he is religious himself.

I went home and checked out the clip of him on the Colbert Report and he said something I found very interesting: that everyone who gets a flu shot should have to sign a form that says “I believe in evolution” because without evolution, one would not need to get a new flu shot each year. This is quite true and I wonder how many people demonstrate this type of hypocrisy.

I thought the first part of Miller’s presentation was entertaining, but it did not take on the important questions. As the majority of the first half of his lecture was more factual, my opinion is bias as we just watched the film “Judgment Day” in class. The latter half of his discussion however was most intriguing. The implications of evolution described by Sen. Rick Santorum [quoted by Miller] seem to be a consensus among proponents of creationism and ID. In short, Santorum stated evolution relieves humankind of all moral obligations and ID or creation impels a moral obligation upon humankind. Humankind’s moral obligation is evolutionarily possible, and in many trains of logic, probable. If one is to examine any species as a whole, the ultimate goal for each individual is to propagate the species by all means necessary. The development of morality likely came about due to selective pressures in attaining this goal. Groups of people who developed and observed moral practices likely had a better chance at survival. In essence, the development of morals was a way to streamline behavior so as to maximize reproductive success. My favorite part of Miller’s lecture was his final stanza–explaining the synergistic relationship between science and religion. In an ideal world, a reality of Miller’s creed would be equivalent to the reconciliation of the middle east. I think it would definitely solve many world problems, however it is idealistic. I am compelled to read Miller’s books as I think (and hope) they go into more detail and press the fine details of matters. On the whole, I thought his presentation was compelling with a degree of inspiration, and above all, profoundly articulate.

I really enjoyed Dr. Miller’s lecture. I think Dr. Miller is one of the most talented “spokespersons” for science, and I wish more scientists would adopt his style of persuasion. There are plenty of outspoken Rick Santorum’s, but not enough scientists willing to take a stand like Dr. Miller. Dr. Miller shut down the dissenter in the back of the room from interrupting his explanation until he was done explaining himself, and then let the dissenter ask a follow up question. From my observations, Dr. Miller’s style is an exception to the norm. It is rare that practicing scientists and researchers are interested in writing books for the lay audience. Dr. Miller said he is concerned about the future of science in America. He was concerned about the threat that an uneducated public that challenges science has for our competitiveness. I agree, and I hope more scientists and researchers will write for the lay audience. I could tell why Dr. Miller was such a good expert witness during the Dover trial based upon his lecture style tonight. He was engaging and easy to listen to. He did a good job using questions and answers to lay out his persuasion points.

The evidence about the accumulated molecular errors in human hemoglobin matching accumulated errors in chimpanzees was very persuasive. Proponents of ID claim that some human systems are so complex that they cannot be created by random errors over time. In the case of the hemoglobin, the random errors are too complex to NOT be created and passed on over time. One of my favorite quotes was when Dr. Miller said that either evolution was the only possible explanation or the Designer was having fun and trying to confuse us.

Overall, this was a really good lecture. I'll probably try to read Dr. Miller's books.

I feel obligated to state that Miller was an eloquent with great stage presence and a great talent for using powerpoint such that it added to his presentation in a meaningful and often interesting way (a rare skill). There were a few points that I would like to highlight as particularly interesting, the first being his reworking of "mistake" and "design." Many fight evolution due to its supposed assertion that mankind has risen out of some cosmic chance, based on a series of random mistakes. What Miller stated was that nature in fact tends towards "mistakes," preferring organisms that have a capacity for change, a tendency that he called "facilitated variation." This inherently gives meaning to our existence as something greater than chance, and led into his conclusion that design was indeed present in evolution. He of course changed "design" from a theological creator to the simple presence of structure and function (as dictated by evolution) within organisms. The issue, he concluded, was not whether or not design and order are present within nature/evolution, but what the SOURCE of these qualities is. This analysis was very much in sync with Collin's "The Language of God," though Collins went much more in depth on how he reconciles his belief in a personal god with science. Also like Collins, when asked the relationship between the material world and the transcendent, non-material world, Miller was upfront in admitting that he has absolutely no idea, no explanation. This is much more refreshing, and more believable, than the stammered explanations of doctrines and theologians that try to account for every interaction between these two realms.

At his talk, Kenneth Miller made a powerful case for evolution then argued for a faith that would not continue to oppose and defy science. With support from Miller’s arguments, here is what I came away with:

Creationists who don’t believe in evolution say that there are gaps in the theory. For example, “Of Pandas and People,” arguably the foremost textbook for Intelligent Design, asserts that the fossil record does not include a transitional species to show the evolution of life from water to land. This is false. In 2004, scientists went looking for such a fossil in 375-million-year-old exposed rock, precisely the age at which life was thought to have begun the transition from water to land. Sure enough, they found the fossil they were looking for now named Tiktaalik. Tiktaalik was a perfect example of transitional species closing the gap between previous fish species and early amphibians. The animal had weight-bearing wrist bones and fingers allowing it to prop itself up in shallow waters, primitive lungs in addition to its gills allowing it to breath in open air, and a neck making it a better predator in non-water environments. “Of Pandas and People” also calls attention to problems linking humans and apes. It points out that humans only have 23 pairs of chromosomes while every other species of great ape has 24 pairs. It consequently concludes that it would be impossible for humans and apes to have evolved from a common ancestor. This is also false. Recently, scientists hypothesized that, at some point, either one of the 23 pairs had split yielding a total of 24, or one of the 24 pairs had combined yielding a total of 23. In 2005, they were proven correct. Normally, a chromosome has two “caps,” one on each end, called telomeres, and one center point called a centromere. Scientists found that human chromosome number two has telomeres in the center, where two chromosomes likely joined together, and evidence of a second inactive centromere, giving additional support to the hypothesis. The Intelligent Design argument had been invalidated.

Kenneth Miller made an interesting point at his talk: “We should look for God in the light of science and not in the darkness of what we do not know.” Historically, we have used God and religion to answer the questions that we could not understand. In the last few centuries, science has answered many of those questions. One might even argue that we know more about the universe than we do not know about it. We have reached an evolutionary point in our psyche where we assume there must be a scientific explanation for something that happens when it otherwise seems unexplainable. In many such cases, we are more likely to look toward science for answers than to the supernatural. After hundreds of years of experience with science, we must trust in its integrity and credibility. It is time for religion to evolve along with science. As Kenneth Miller said about his own faith in God, our beliefs need not be supported by science, but they should be consistent with science.

h9kXb8