Zira_C

Hi galiel:

I have a hard time believing Ken Miller was bested in an ID debate. I think he understands completely what the ID agenda means to science, and to education. I saw him give a presentation last year at the university in my hometown, which countered the typical YEC misconceptions, and even took on the new old earth ID misconceptions. He laid the teach the controversy argument flat on it’s ass. His debates, his website, his textbooks, his popular book, all point to the fact that the best person to speak for Ken Miller is Ken Miller, and from what I’ve seen, one of the best people to speak for science and reason is Ken miller.

Is there a link to a transcript or something from this program? I’m curious to know the ID angle that was employed to win a debate against Ken Miller.

galiel

Zira_C,

Talk radio is a completely different animal than a college debate. It takes different skills to be effective.

Principia

zira_c,

Try this <a href="http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=836932" target="_blank">link</a>. You will need a Real Player.

What worked best in that radio segment, imo, were the comments of the callers. The comments of the Catholic priest were particularly effective, since he and other liberal Christians are the target group that DI can't seem to convert, and whose opinions hurt them the most. Didn't PJ say something to the the effect that theistic evolutionists are the ID mvt's worst enemies?

The one dissenting caller that I can remember made a fool of himself with the hackneyed 'evolution is not fact but theory' nonsense. Miller (I believe) addressed that concern quite effectively. But all in all, I think the listeners benefited from the callers because they could probably side with their views better. And the callers (save one moron) were not kind to Meyer at all. Plus, the host's occasional outbursts directed at Meyer were poignant.

Anyway, I agree that at least some mention of the Wedge was in order. I believe towards the end, Krauss (?) made an attempt to bring it up but was drowned out with cross-talk. I guess debating IDiots will evolve with time

[ November 09, 2002: Message edited by: Principia ]</p>

hezekiah jones

.

Stephen Meyer: "We at the Discovery Institute are affiliated with a number of the scientists such as Michael Behe and William Dembski ..."

Haha.

I wonder why the NPR page indicates the universities at which both Miller and Krauss teach, but not Meyer, who is only listed as a big kahuna at the DI.

Meyer is an associate professor of philosophy at Whitworth College, a small Presbyterian school in Spokane: "Whitworth's stated mission is to equip its graduates to honor God, follow Christ, and serve humanity."

hezekiah jones

What the hell are you talking about? Between them, Miller and Krauss rebutted every single "point" Meyer made, and then some.

Meanwhile, Meyer babbled on about "intelligent design theory" without once indicating what it is, despite vaguely claiming the results of "scientific experimentation" funded by the DI, and Owens Fink several times said "evidence against evolution" without actually mentioning any.

Meyer is full of shit: "[Darwinism] is a historical science ... You don't make predictions about the future in a historical science." What a ridiculous non sequitur.

The argument from (or to) design is a philosophical argument for the existence of god. It always has been, and it still is.

How on earth did you get the impression that Meyer somehow prevailed in this "debate"? He never said a damn thing of substance.

theyeti

Not only is it a non sequitur, it's also flat out wrong. Here are a few predictions for the future made by Darwinian evolution:

• There will be species that are not in existence today.
• Those new species will have come from other species.
• The gene pool of any population of any given organism will change.
• Sequenced genes and proteins will be more similar to those from morphologically similar species.

and so on...

theyeti

Garbles18

I think my favorite part was when the host cornered Steve Meyer by asking if there were any experiments that would prove the existence of a designer. Steve obviously didn't like that question since he tried to talk around to the point that the host told him to just answer the question. And then he still didn't.

I have to agree that Meyer had his ass handed to him and it was a great debate for evolutionists, particularly the Catholic priest that called in to agree with evolution.

Zira_C

I just listened to the radio segment from Principia’s link. I’d have to agree with the last few posters, it looks to me like Miller held his own. The Old earth Idist just kept making the same assertions over and over again. ID followers, it seems to me, lack the ability to recognize when they are being lied to, and lack the ability to feel impropriety when passing these lies on. That’s exactly this guy’s MO, he didn’t say anything new. Behe and Dembski are scientists working on ID? Well this is wrong, Dembski’s a mathematician, and Behe has published squat on ID in peer reviewed journals. There is evidence against evolution? Well this is wrong also, but he said it anyway. And was he trying say, that for peer review, modern scientists turn to popular books instead of refereed journals? Everything he said has been refuted ad-nauseum. He’s just unable to recognize it, and unwilling to stop repeating it.

I would say that the biggest thing Miller let go unanswered, is the repeated assertion that there is evidence against evolution. Old earth Idist’s use the word evidence like YEC’s use the word theory. In it’s common usage. It was my understanding that evidence in the scientific method is an observation that matches the predictions of a theory. It is not just bald observations, it springs from testing a hypothesis. Without a prediction you can’t have evidence. So the question is what prediction based on evolutionary theory have the ID community formulated, tested, and found observations inconsistent with? If they don’t have these predictions, they don’t have evidence.

I think though that ID is using an excellent negotiating strategy (I’m not saying I agree with it, I’m just saying its good). If you want the moon, ask for the sun, and then negotiate down to the moon. All creationism wants is for evolution not to be taught. Specifically what they want is for children not to be taught that there is a legitimate explanation for the origin of man exclusive of miracles. They then come in demanding to teach a theory of ID (that they know doesn’t exist anyway), but are willing to back off if we qualify science education to single out, for pejorative treatment, the theory that explains the origin of man. Then they can teach the evidence against it, in effect destroying the legitimacy of the explanation provided by the theory in the first place.

theyeti

I just listened to the whole thing, and I must say that I thought that Miller and Krauss really trounced Meyer. I also think that Meyer flat out lied on at least a few occasions. For instance, the Roger DeHart episode, word is that DeHart was fired for teaching creationism, and not anything to do with bringing a Stephen J. Gould paper into class. DeHart has kind of become the DI poster child, but they grossly distort the record of what went on.

Miller as usual made some excellent points. I like when he said that the recent research cited by Meyer was probably misunderstood, just as the bibliography submitted to the Ohio BOE was. As a matter of fact, I happen to know that at least one of them was indeed misunderstood. The Science paper that Meyer mentioned concerning micro and macro evolution was horribly misrepresented. Here is an <a href="http://www.arn.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=13;t=000429" target="_blank">ARN thread</a> about that paper. This is a quote from the first post of charlie d:

[emphasis original]

Everyone should read the rest of that post to understand what the paper was really about. Deliberate misrepresentation is of course the bread and butter of ID.

theyeti

Bubba

Why per se would thiestic evolutionists be the worst enemies of Iders? YEC's and Non-thiestic evolutionists don't like them either.

Bubba