Biology expert testifies. Professor: Intelligent design is creationism.

Dover Area School District's federal trial began yesterday in Harrisburg with talk ranging from divine intervention and the Boston Red Sox to aliens and bacterial flagellum. After about 10 months of waiting, the court case against the district and its board opened in Middle District Judge John E. Jones III's courtroom with statements from lawyers and several hours of expert testimony from biologist and Brown University professor Kenneth Miller.

On one side of the aisle, several plaintiffs packed themselves in wooden benches behind a row of attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, Pepper Hamilton LLC and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. On the other side of the aisle, nine school board members, only three of whom were on the board when it voted 6-3 to include a statement on intelligent design in biology classes, piled in behind lawyers from the Thomas More Law Center. Assistant superintendent Michael Baksa and superintendent Richard Nilsen shared a bench with Michael Behe, a Lehigh University professor expected to take the stand in defense of intelligent design.

Miller, whose resume is several pages long and includes a stint as a professor at Harvard University, was the first witness called for the parents. Miller co-wrote the Prentice Hall textbook "Biology" with professor Joe Levine. The book is used by 35 percent of the high school students in the United States, Miller said. His were some of the thousands of biology books in which school officials in Cobb County, Ga., ordered stickers to be placed, warning that evolution is only a theory, "not a fact." Miller also testified in a lawsuit filed by Cobb County parents, and a judge later ordered that the stickers be removed.

Yesterday, the scientist's testimony was at times dominated by scientific terminology, though he jokingly told ACLU attorney Witold Walczak he would do his best to explain things in the layman's terms he uses with his mother.

Miller said intelligent design supporters think an intelligent designer must have been involved in the creation of life because science can't yet prove how everything evolved. He said the intelligent design idea that birds were created with beaks, feathers and wings and fish were born with fins is a creationist argument.

Intelligent design supporters often cite "irreducible complexity" in their research, he said. "Irreducible complexity" means that a living thing can't be reduced by any part or it won't work at all. So those living things could not have evolved in the way Darwin suggested; they had to be created with all of their existing parts, Miller said.

Intelligent design proponents often cite the bacterial flagellum, a bacterium with a tail that propels it, Miller said. Behe and his colleagues claim bacterial flagellum had to be created with all of its parts because it couldn't function if any of them were taken away, Miller testified. But scientists have proved that the bacterial flagellum can be reduced to a smaller being, a little organism that operates in a manner similar to a syringe, Miller said.

One of the biggest problems with the scientific viability of intelligent design is there is no way to experiment with the presence of a supernatural being because science only deals with the natural world and theories that are testable, Miller said.

Some people might suspect divine intervention last year when the Boston Red Sox came back to win the World Series after losing three games in a row to the New York Yankees in the playoffs. It may have been, but that's not science, he said. And intelligent design proponents haven't named the "intelligent being" behind their supposition, Miller said. They have suggested, among other things, that it could be aliens, he said. He said there is no evidence to prove intelligent design, so its proponents just try to poke holes in the theory of evolution.

You can check fossil records and find some evidence of evolution. However, it's a huge jump of faith to extrapolate that and say that the world evolved from some form of primordial sludge at the beginning of time.

Maybe, although you probably would be less inclined to say that if you understood the evidence that exists. As of right now, evolution is the best theory we have for explaining origins. Of course it's not perfect, but it's idiotic to propose not teaching it now because it can be proved incorrect in the future. If you, and whoever is on the receiving end of this science education, understand how science works, then the future possibility of a complete reversal of a scientific theory is not a problem at all. It's completely normal.

Even then evolution cannot explain where that primordial sludge came from.

Nobody, except those that mischaracterize the theory and those that do not understand it, is proposing that evolution explains where the "primordial sludge" came from. Different branch of science.

If not being able to be proven makes it not be science, evolution is not science.

This statement is correct. However, since "not being able to be proven" does not make something "not be science", your statement is irrelevant. In fact, and you're not going to hear this only from me, nothing in science is ever proven. Surprise!

There are still simply questions that are better answered by divine intervention than by evolution.

Perhaps, but science is purely naturalistic, purely agnostic. It relies solely on empirical evidence. Evolution is the best explanation we have been able to come up with based on the empirical evidence. For the sake of science, it is imperative to assume that only naturalistic explanations exist within the context. You're free to come up with your own philosophical or theological explanations.

Actually we don't have the means to prove or disprove scientific theories, or they're no longer theories. If we can prove it it is considered a law, not a theory. The scientific process is the search for a way to prove or disprove a theory.

You're getting stuck on terminology and not thinking about concepts. Ignore the common usage meanings of "law" and "theory". They are meaningless in a scientific context. Science uses theories to propose explanations of natural occurances described by laws. Theories are always going to change and be proven "wrong", this is not news to anybody. This is why I propose that you not get stuck up on what's "actually correct" as opposed to what's "wrong" - our knowledge base is constantly changing, and it's best just to accept the theories for what they are: the best explanation right now for the evidence available.

Exactly, you just contradicted your assertion that intelligent design isn't a scientific theory because it we haven't found a way to prove it.

ID isn't not a scientific theory because we haven't found a way to prove it; it's not a scientific theory because we haven't found a way to disprove it.

There isn't an invisible wall between science and religion. A honest scientist will tell you that there's much more about this world that we don't understand than we do understand.

Yes there is. You're looking to science to answer some questions for you that it never will. Yes, scientists know we don't understand the world, but science, by very definition, cannot address that which is not naturalistic. Perhaps your worldview includes the supernatural. That's fine, but it's not something that's even relevant to science.

If you forget that and close yourself off from possible theories because of dogma, you're limited your ability to learn through the scientific method.

Please go back and review what the scientific method specifically involves.

People who say that one or the other is not are not doing so on the basis of science, but on the basis of blind faith. That may be faith in God, or faith in something else.

No, people that say ID is not science are doing so because ID is not falsifiable.

You have not shown what increased complexity is let alone shown why it is necessary for speciation.

Speciation has no bearing on the mechanism that has produced the complexity evident in living organisms. Beneficial mutation does not lead to an increase in complexity; it only indicates the organism remains functional. The function of the genome is in it's marvelous intelligent programing. That it has maintained viability for this many years without the programmer making purposeful corrections is a testament to His genius.

Consider for example the callous. It does not code-in unless the person puts a stress on the epidermis for an extended period. This adaptation is similar to what Darwin discovered in the Finch beaks. Within the programming of the Finch was an ability to adapt beak strength and size to accommodate the conditions. When conditions reverted back, the Finch beaks followed suit, just as a good program would allow for. However if Shumaker-Levy struck the earth, beak strength wouldn't mean too much (it happened to a planet in our solar system within our geologically insignificant lifetimes).

BTW, what does gene duplication followed by modification provide?

1. This is an example of argument from incredulity, because irreducible complexity can evolve naturally. Many of the proteins in the bacterial flagellum or eukaryotic cilium are similar to each other or to proteins for other functions. Their origins can easily be explained by a series of gene duplication events followed by modification and/or co-option, proceeding gradually through intermediate systems different from and simpler than the final flagellum.

Beware: Talk Origins Link

These guys are trying to convince the great unwashed that because the parts could be interchangeable, they can logically assemble themselves into a mechanism of miraculously complexity. The design of the flagellum cannot come about with the concerted efforts of the entire scientific community (creating the chemistry that would assemble and maintain these strings of proteins into a functioning nano machine like the flagellum is way beyond our capabilities), and yet T.O. claims that because certain proteins are floating around performing other functions, the over 20 piece puzzle will self assemble (unlike the Infinite Monkey Theorem, chemistry removes the font from the page as the hammer retracts). Think it through man.

The human diseases that cripple and kill an increasing percentage of our population demonstrates that the evolutionary model being pawned is not making advances in beneficial characteristics. Considering the number of people that I know who would die if not for modern medicine, nature is failing miserably. And modern medicine is wearing boxing gloves in a china store, even with all of our directed intelligence.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.