Darwin Day, Philadelphia. 1. I meet Ken Miller

Last night’s keynote talk at the University of Pennsylvania’s Darwin Symposium was given by Ken Miller, and had the same title as his book: “Only A Theory, Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul.” Ken is undoubtedly the most tireless and effective opponent of creationism in America, a star witness for the prosecution in the Dover trial, and he also co-wrote our country’s most popular high school biology textbook, so I have always admired him a great deal. But the admiration is not unmixed. Ken is also an observant Catholic as well as an author and cell biologist, and his books, starting with “Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientists’s Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution,” have always tried to alloy religion and science, endorsing the idea that science and faith are compatible.

I have been uncomfortable with this view, and finally criticized it in a book review in The New Republic, “Seeing and Believing.” Miller responded in a piece on Edge.org. We are both ardent defenders of (excuse the term) Darwinism, but definitely part ways when it comes to faith.

So I was quite excited (and a bit nervous) about sharing a platform with Ken. I knew he’d be a good speaker, because I’ve seen his talks on YouTube and, of course, his famous appearances (twice) on The Colbert Report. His evening talk didn’t disappoint. Miller is a lively, humorous, and humane speaker, and develops a great rapport with the audience.

Miller’s talk was a pastiche, covering the Dover Trial, the morphing of creationism into intelligent design, and the evidence for evolution from fossils (Tiktaalik featured prominently) and from the fusion of two chromosomes present in our common ancestor with other apes into the single second chromosome of humans. All good stuff, and extremely enjoyable.

It was in the last ten minutes that Miller took up the issue of evolution and God, and that is where I had to part company with him once again. Over the years Miller has tried several ways to reconcile these two areas, including positing God’s direct intrustion into evolution (in Finding Darwin’s God), and suggesting that the laws of physics were devised by God (in Only A Theory). Miller has also said he is a theist, so that God intrudes directly in the real world.

This time he used a different angle, saying that there was indeed design in nature, but it was not the same kind of God-mandated design proposed by ID-creationists. Rather, it was “design” wrought by natural selection. He hammered home this idea again and again, and I began to realize that a kind of subliminal inculcation of the audience was going on. After all, natural selection does not produce “design”—it produces apparent design. Why not just say that? It was the use of the un-adjectivized “design” that seemed to be sneaking God’s hand into Miller’s view. (He also stated unequivocally his certainty that evolution would yield creatures with high, human-like intelligence if the process were to begin all over again, a view that I criticize in “Seeing and Believing.”)

It seemed to me, and several others with whom I spoke, that Miller was trying to get some teleology into nature by using the term “design”. My friend Rick Grosberg opined that the term “design” was a semantic “wedge” that Miller was using to make biologists more open to the idea that God might have played a role in evolution. Regardless, this part of the talk made me quite uncomfortable. I actually Googled “design” during this part of the talk and found the following definition in Merriam-Webster’s website:

¹de·sign

1 a: a particular purpose held in view by an individual or group : he has ambitious designs for his son b: deliberate purposive planning <more by accident than design 2: a mental project or scheme in which means to an end are laid down. 3 a: a deliberate undercover project or scheme : plot b plural : aggressive or evil intent —used with on or against he has designs on the money. 4: a preliminary sketch or outline showing the main features of something to be executed the design for the new stadium. 5 a: an underlying scheme that governs functioning, developing, or unfolding : pattern , motif the general design of the epic. b: a plan or protocol for carrying out or accomplishing something (as a scientific experiment) ; also : the process of preparing this6: the arrangement of elements or details in a product or work of art 7: a decorative pattern a floral design.

All of these definitions have one thing in common: purpose and intent. To say that natural selection produces “design” is in effect saying that it yields something that is planned: that there is some foresight in the process. Why would anybody use such a word? I’ve heard evolutionists use “apparent design” or “the appearance of design” as results of selection, but never “design” by itself. If this is not intentional teleology, I’d urge Miller to stop saying this, as it clearly plays into peoples’ idea that there is some intentional design in evolution.

At any rate, after dinner I met Ken and we chatted about things. The first thing he said to me was that one of his friends advised him to break a beer bottle over my head, which was more than a little intimidating when imparted to me by a guy well over six feet tall looking down on my puny five-foot-eight self! But we discussed our differences, tried to iron out misunderstandings on both of our parts, and amiably shook hands. We will never agree on the science-versus-faith thing, but on most issues we are on the same side, and I admire him in many ways. I was glad that we met.