Ken Miller's Talk on ID: A Thorough Dissection

Fire Fly · Post by **Fire Fly** » 2006-12-09 07:38am

I found this video while exploring youtube a few days ago. Its close to a year old but Ken Miller presents some information that I never knew before, namely the chromosomal evidence of humans and chimpanzees and how Creationism turned into ID. This talk happened after the Dover School Board case in the United States. For those who do not know, the Dover School Board voted to have ID discussed in biology classes. Some of the parents of the students sued the school board and eventually, ID was thrown out and all of the members were voted out.

The video is a bit long but I strongly suggest people to at least watch the lecture part, which is about 70 minutes long.

Post by **K. A. Pital** » 2006-12-09 07:56am

how Creationism turned into ID

Creation Biology (1983), p. 3-34:
“Evolutionists think the former is correct; creationists because of all the evidence discussed in this book, conclude the latter is correct.”

Biology and Creation (1986), p. 3-33:
“Evolutionists think the former is correct, creationists accept the latter view.”

Biology and Origins (1987), p. 3-38:
“Evolutionists think the former is correct, creationists accept the latter view.”

Of Pandas and People (1987, creationist version), p. 3-40:
“Evolutionists think the former is correct, creationists accept the latter view.”

Of Pandas and People (1987, “intelligent design” version), p. 3-41:
“Evolutionists think the former is correct, cdesign proponentsists accept the latter view.”

Prozac the Robert · Post by **Prozac the Robert** » 2006-12-09 02:42pm

Thanks for posting that, was interesting to watch.

Fire Fly · Post by **Fire Fly** » 2006-12-09 06:56pm

Does anyone else feel that the comment on how the Right tends to support sciences more than the Left does seem a bit misconstruded? Granted, there are crazies on the Left as well who seem a bit more anti-science, PETA comes to mind, but it seems like the majority of the anti-science rhetoric (global warming, stem cells, abortion, homsexuality as a natural product) comes from the conservative side.

Post by **K. A. Pital** » 2006-12-10 12:52am

Does anyone else feel that the comment on how the Right tends to support sciences more than the Left does seem a bit misconstruded?

Yes. It's valid only if you equate "Left = Radical Green" (almost in the "ecoterrorist" ballpark).

D.Turtle · Post by **D.Turtle** » 2006-12-10 03:20pm

Very, very interesting.

I found it especially interesting when he went and showed how the 24 chromosomes, and the supposedly irreducible complex machine show exactly how evolution and science works.

Also very interesting was at the end during the Q&A when he mentioned that there are bacteria that have developed enzymes in order to break down TNT and NYLON.

Obviously God gave bacteria the ability to break down Nylon, so that when we invented it, they could break it down...

Medic · Post by **Medic** » 2006-12-11 01:45pm

D.Turtle wrote:Very, very interesting.

I found it especially interesting when he went and showed how the 24 chromosomes, and the supposedly irreducible complex machine show exactly how evolution and science works.

Also very interesting was at the end during the Q&A when he mentioned that there are bacteria that have developed enzymes in order to break down TNT and NYLON.

Obviously God gave bacteria the ability to break down Nylon, so that when we invented it, they could break it down...

Hehe, sounds like that video Atheist Delusion "well obviously, god sent the light so that it would appear to take billions of years to come here so we'd have lots of pretty stuff to look at!"

Another link on the flagellum linked to in earlier threads in this here forum: and as it mentions in here, this poster-boy of ID was in fact debunked rather early on. It's notoriety wholly manufactured by ID proponents.

The great irony of the flagellum's increasing acceptance as an icon of anti-evolution is that fact that research had demolished its status as an example of irreducible complexity almost at the very moment it was first proclaimed.

Half the battle is ALWAYS representing what scientists are actually saying, researching and finding out, since as a rule, everything will be strawmanned, ommited or outright fabricated if it's creationists making the claims.

Love this too. (YouTube)Take this opportunity to make fun of this.

Unfortunately, evolutionist oppose this theory based strictly on materialistic beliefs. And this is a true detriment to real science. Meanwhile, they stubbornly maintain their faith in natural selection - listen to Richard Dawkins - note especially the last words in the following video:
http://www.arn.org/docs/daw...

[Excerpt - In exressing why natural selection is believed to find creative designs/solutions to all these kinds of intermediate problems]: "Natural selection is uhmmm..uhhh.. well, I suppose that is a sort of matter of faith on my part." - Richard Dawkins

1st of all I find it patently absurd when people post these fucking videos and disable comments. It's something I've noticed Islamic creationists do habitually on YouTube. Rant aside though...

On the bolded part, the faith described here is merely an admittance: no, we cannot travel back in time and see every single transitional form. That's impossible; the analogy to combat the fallaciousness of that critique is best found in Darth Wong's recent page on ID and his analogy on driving a car from point A to point B. You may not have been in that car, and directly observed it's trip, but if it took the expected amount of time, that lack of knowledge isn't relevant, as a working theory quite accurately predicated the outcome.

Dawkins realizes this and merely didn't insert an appeal to ignorance, or as Ken Miller more amusingly puts it an "argument from personal incredulity." In that sense, projecting a sense of faith onto Dawkins is some kind of wierd appeal-to-the-ignorance-of-an-authority fallacy.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-12-12 11:06am

The greatest goal of ID proponents is to pretend that scientists have no more of a valid methodology than they do. Their job is made easier by the fact that laypeople have no idea how much work goes into real scientific theories. So they act as there is nothing beneath the surface of both theories, when in fact evolution has enormous volumes of detail and research once you scratch the surface while ID has nothing.

Post by **K. A. Pital** » 2006-12-12 11:32am

No, actually, if you scratch ID, there's a lot of religious motivation behind it... save that, however, there's nothing. But few people comprehend the difference between science and religion. Even if some see it as opposing powers, they're generally though to be of equal value - the "golden mean" in action.

Darth Raptor · Post by **Darth Raptor** » 2006-12-12 07:28pm

I fucking loathe centricism on matters like this. Americans have internalized the Golden Mean Falacy to almost psychopathic levels. Hence, every viewpoint must be given equal consideration- no matter how utterly retarded, insane or unethical it is. I suppose I should be greatful that the movement to ban biology outright seems to have gone extinct (hurr!), but Americans are so mealy-mouthed they think giving shit like this airtime in the classroom makes them the truly enlightened and thoroughly reasonable ones.

petesampras · Post by **petesampras** » 2006-12-12 08:27pm

Darth Raptor wrote:I fucking loathe centricism on matters like this. Americans have internalized the Golden Mean Falacy to almost psychopathic levels. Hence, every viewpoint must be given equal consideration- no matter how utterly retarded, insane or unethical it is. I suppose I should be greatful that the movement to ban biology outright seems to have gone extinct (hurr!), but Americans are so mealy-mouthed they think giving shit like this airtime in the classroom makes them the truly enlightened and thoroughly reasonable ones.

I think it could be a bit of a double-edge sword, so to speak. There was a time when only one view point was allowed on such matters, that being the Christian view. There has been a liberal shift towards considering different views on issues and I would hypothesise that that same shift has also led to the cultural relativist viewpoint of all views being equally valuable. I think it comes down to a confusion of the ideas of allowing people to express whatever views they wish and having to respect other peoples views.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-12-12 09:02pm

That's precisely the problem. People define open-mindedness as an uncritical approach toward ideas, rather than an acceptance of cultural diversity so long as it doesn't harm others. We have gone from the notion that "it's OK to think something is wrong just because it's different" to "it is never OK to think something is wrong even if you can produce overwhelming evidence that it is".