These are my impressions of the presentation, generally in the sequence is which it was presented, but some bits and pieces may be out of order.
The program was opened with a prayer by a Lutheran minister who is also a physicist. Miller then introduced himself, and pointedly thanked the minister for the prayer, saying that he (Miller) joyfully took part. He explained that he is a Catholic who loves science. His theme, he stated, is "We live in interesting times."
The presentation was accompanied by a slide show, which was not completely effective for the webcast, as the images were quite small. The first slide showed a number of book covers representing Miller's output of textbooks. His most famous book (Finding Darwin's God) is now in its 23rd printing.
He quickly reviewed the Kansas school board politics since 1999, pointing out that earlier victories for science had been reversed with the last election there, and that he would be personally campaigning on behalf of science-friendly candidates there next summer.
He then began to talk about the nature of the ID debates that he frequently gets involved in. Those who debate in favor of ID always claim that their position is purely scientific and that God is not part of their "theory." But when he leaves the auditorium, he frequently encounters ID supporters with signs telling him that he'll burn in hell for denying ID.
Miller feels that the underlying sentiment from the religious supporters of ID is that the TOE is actually "evil," and whether evolution is true or not is irrelevant. He mentions that Answers In Genesis (the website) claims that the TOE is the foundation of all evil.
He went back to the subject of school boards and talked about Cobb County, Georgia, the home of the famous textbook sticker. Recounting a telephone interview with a reporter who was looking for a soundbite about his textbooks being stickered, he told her that he thought that the sticker didn't go far enough -- that it should say "This textbook contains science, and all science, is theory, and should be considered carefully, etc..." (I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea). He told the reporter that the sticker should be in all science textbooks, not just biology, because singling out biology tells a fourteen-year-old that "there's something wrong with biology" that's not wrong with physics, chemistry, geology, etc.
He touched on the difference between fact and theory, the nature of a scientific theory, and said that the "Atomic Theory" will never grow up to be the "Atomic Fact". This is all familiar territory for the crevo threads.
Miller was lead witness for the plaintiffs at the Dover trial. He presented his testimony, and was then cross-examined by the defense lawyers for two days. There were NO questions about his testimony. The defense lawyers did nothing but quote-mine his textbooks, bringing up statements and phrases that could possibly be construed to support the concept of ID. He said that this was a surprise, and that he had prepared to be challenged on his testimony, but that they never asked about that -- only his early writings. He had no problems at all with the cross-examination.
The Dover board was ousted in the next election, of course, but I was surprised to learn that the new board members are actually Republicans that registered as Democrats to be able to run against the incumbent Republicans. The population there is 75% Republican. Miller said that the ID folks had the "home field advantage" in Dover, and since they couldn't win there, they couldn't win anywhere, and "ID is dead."
A questioner at the end asked, "What's next? We know that they won't give up. What will be the follow on to ID?"
"Critical Analysis Of Evolution" will be the next theme. Who could object to that? A better sounding wedge from the PR department of the Discovery Institute.
The body of the talk was mostly on details of the various things that are "controversial" in biology -- the bacterial flagellum, the blood clotting sequence, transitional forms (too many, not too few), and the comparison of the Chimpanzee and Human genomes. All of which were familiar to me from the contents of the crevo threads.
Miller many a number of positive comments about Judge Jones. The Judge did get a bit exasperated with the defense for sending up five people in a row to testify about the flagellum, saying "Oh, goody!" after being told that the next defense witness after a break would talk about the flagellum. The witness acknowledged the judge's remark by saying, "I feel like Zsa Zsa Gabor's fifth husband -- I know what to do, but I don't know how to make it exciting."
On the book, "Of Panda's And People," Miller recounted the discovery process where the plaintiff's lawyers found the original documents where all cognates of the word "Creation" were replaced with the equivalent "Design" words, and nothing else was changed. He asked, "Didn't they learn anything from the Nixon Administration? Why didn't they burn this stuff?"
The first questioner said that she knew Behe, and she asked "What happened to him? He was such a nice man, why did he get involved with this?"
Miller recounted the earlier comments about the IDers believing that evolution is evil (which doesn't seem to apply to Behe -my comment), and then discussed Behe's indifference to documentation presented during the trial. Behe was shown 58 papers and 9 books written about the blood clotting sequence, and he just waved them away, saying that wasn't enough.
The impression that I got from Miller about Behe is that he's obsolete. He wrote up his ideas and talking points in the 80's and early 90's, and he's read nothing since. He's living off the lecture circuit, repeating the same debunked ideas over and over.
The second questioner asked why scientists can't defend themselves adequately in the media. Miller said, "We suck at getting ideas out," and went on to talk about the discovery (about 18 months ago) that the human chromosome 2 was equivalent to a combination of the chromosome 2 and 13 in the chimp genome, and that all great apes (and probably the common ancestor of humans and modern apes) have the separated pair. He said that this should have made the mass media, but was little known even in scientific circles. Thanks to Ichneumon (and others), we heard about that here at least a year ago.
Responding to a question about Islam and creationism, Miller said that he gets email from Iran, and that Islam teaches that the TOE is a Christian plot to destroy Islam.
And someone asked about the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Miller responded by saying that he's a big fan of satire, and that humor lubricates the discussion. Then he advised reading Judge Jones' formal opinion of the Dover case, saying "He's a funny guy."
The question period suffered from being in a school auditorium where the questioners could not easily be heard and understood. Also, many of the questioners just wanted to get a word in, and didn't really have questions. And at least one went off on an anti-Bush rant about fascism that was largely incoherent.
I have more details if anyone cares, but my notes are rather sketchy. Don't take any of the quoted passages above as 100% accurate, ad I jotted down the keywords and filled out the quotes from memory.
And I started it with a typo...
It actually took place Tuesday evening, 1-3-2006.
Excellent report. Thank you.
Miller was lead witness for the plaintiffs at the Dover trial. He presented his testimony, and was then cross-examined by the defense lawyers for two days. There were NO questions about his testimony. The defense lawyers did nothing but quote-mine his textbooks, bringing up statements and phrases that could possibly be construed to support the concept of ID. He said that this was a surprise, and that he had prepared to be challenged on his testimony, but that they never asked about that -- only his early writings. He had no problems at all with the cross-examination.Hah! Never be surprised to get argumentum ad quote-salad-um from creationists!
On the book, "Of Panda's And People," Miller recounted the discovery process where the plaintiff's lawyers found the original documents where all cognates of the word "Creation" were replaced with the equivalent "Design" words, and nothing else was changed. He asked, "Didn't they learn anything from the Nixon Administration? Why didn't they burn this stuff?"IIRC, they couldn't. The earliest published editions contained "creation" and "creationism" where they now have "design" and "intelligent design," etc.
Holy cow! Great job in filling in the play-by-play account. We bandwidth-challenged are forever in your debt.
The Dover board was ousted in the next election, of course, but I was surprised to learn that the new board members are actually Republicans that registered as Democrats to be able to run against the incumbent Republicans.
That was mentioned in one of the earlier threads, but the point got lost in the all the shouting.
"I feel like Zsa Zsa Gabor's fifth husband -- I know what to do, but I don't know how to make it exciting."
LOL
... discussed Behe's indifference to documentation presented during the trial. Behe was shown 58 papers and 9 books written about the blood clotting sequence, and he just waved them away, saying that wasn't enough.
I'm sure the Judge was impressed.