Ken Miller

During the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial three years ago, biologist Kenneth Miller claimed that biochemist Michael Behe’s arguments in Darwin’s Black Box regarding the irreducible complexity of the blood-clotting cascade were false. Miller’s testimony led federal district court judge John Jones to assert in his decision that “scientists in peer-reviewed publications have refuted Professor Behe’s predication about the alleged irreducible complexity of the blood-clotting cascade.” But an analysis of Miller’s arguments demonstrates that he refuted Behe in no way whatsoever, and that in fact it was Behe who refuted Miller at trial, although Judge Jones ignored Behe’s testimony. Miller continues (I am told) to go around lecturing on this topic, claiming that the blood-clotting cascade of lower vertebrates demonstrate that Read More ›

Ken Miller was recently quoted in a campus news article saying, “We have the fossils. … We win.” Professor Miller’s logical fallacy was pointed out years ago by those who attempted to clarify reasoning in paleontology, systematics, and evolutionary biology, and it led some scientists (like Colin Patterson) to the conclusion that a paleontological pattern may support or falsify an evolutionary hypothesis, but it can never absolutely prove one (i.e. fossils can’t make Darwinism positively “win”). As a result, some scientists (e.g., Brower, 2000) proposed a strict separation between paleontology and systematics on the one hand, and evolutionary theory on the other. Unfortunately, this clear-thinking approach has been largely abandoned or ignored by most paleontologists and evolutionary biologists. Those who Read More ›

Last summer I reported how theistic evolutionist and biologist Kenneth Miller gave some inaccurate testimony during the Dover trial when he wrongly claiming that the phrase “[e]volution is random and undirected” exists only in the third edition of his textbook. Miller claimed, “[T]hat statement was not in the first edition the book, it was not in the second edition, it was not in the fourth edition.” The problem is that the phrase “[e]volution is random and undirected” was in the first, second, and fourth editions. As I noted, “The facts are very different from Miller’s testimony. All of the first four editions of his ‘elephant’ Biology textbook contain the phrase ‘[e]volution is random and undirected.’” Now, I have recently discovered Read More ›

Links of Interest:Hoax of Dodos, a response to inaccuracies in Flock of DodosHaeckel’s Bogus Embryo Drawings (Clip on YouTube) Since Randy Olson’s film “Flock of Dodos” was shown on Showtime this week, we thought it worth re-highlighting material discussing Haeckel’s fraudulent embryo drawings. “Flock of Dodos” and Randy Olson’s statements have tried to rewrite history by claiming that Haeckel’s fraudulent embryo drawings have never been used in modern textbooks to promote evolution in the present day. His argument is that either (1) the drawings were never in textbooks, or, when that argument doesn’t work, he falls back on his old claim that (2) the drawings were in textbooks, but they were used only to provide a historical context of evolutionary Read More ›

William Dembski reports that Ken Miller responded to the BBC Documentary and my recent claim that he misrepresented Dembski’s work. In short, Miller now claims he wasn’t talking about Dembski and passes the blame on to the BBC for misleading editing and blames “Discovery Institute” for believing what the documentary plainly said. Most of Miller’s response blames the BBC documentary’s editors for making it appear as if he were talking about Dembski by sandwiching Miller’s comments between narrator’s comments stating Miller is rebutting Dembski, and interspersing Miller’s comments with numerous shots of Dembski. Directly after Miller’s comments, the narrator said, “For Miller, Dembski’s math did not add up.” But does Miller’s explanation of the situation now “add up”? Readers can Read More ›

Last year I wrote about some memory lapses that Brown University biologist and textbook author Ken Miller apparently had while testifying during the Kitzmiller trial regarding his own textbooks. Ken Miller has authored many biology textbooks, and his first textbooks (from the early 1990’s) used Haeckel’s fraudulent embryo drawings and blatantly promoted the idea that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. To his credit, Miller fixed later editions of his textbooks — he took out Haeckel’s drawings and replaced them with real embryo photographs, and he also stopped promoting recapitulation theory. Like many Darwinists, however, Miller then tried to rewrite history and pretend that these mistakes had not been promoted by biologists for many decades. First, read what Miller & Levine’s 1994 version Read More ›

A reporter recently sent me an anti-intelligent design BBC documentary with the outlandish title “A War on Science.” In it, Darwinian biologist Ken Miller is shown purporting to refute irreducible complexity in the bacterial flagellum by citing the type 3 secretory apparatus, giving his usual misrepresentation of irreducible complexity. But it gets incredibly worse. Miller egregiously twists the basic arguments of leading ID theorist, mathematician William Dembski. To paraphrase Miller’s argument (Miller’s exact words are given ***below), when cards are dealt out in a game of poker, the hand you get is unlikely. But obviously that hand wasn’t intelligently designed. Therefore, unlikely and non-designed things happen all the time, so evolution can happen even if it’s unlikely, and we should Read More ›

Ken Miller recently presented at the University of Kansas against intelligent design, discussing Kansas evolution education and promoting theology as he promoted his theistic evolutionist viewpoint. Indeed, P.Z. Myers has been attacking Ken Miller for promoting his theistic evolutionist views during the talk. For another critical view of Miller’s talk, I’d like to share an e-mail recently sent to me by an ID-friendly attendee who saw Miller’s lecture: E-mail report sent to me by a friendly attendee of Miller’s talk: The thing that bothered me the most about Miller’s presentation was that he repeatedly stated that “In ’99, the Kansas Board of Education took evolution out of the standards”. He even said at one point that they were planning to Read More ›

Yesterday, Cornelius Hunter critiqued at IDtheFuture some of Brown University biologist Kenneth R. Miller’s theologically-charged arguments for evolution during the Kitzmiller trial. Miller is a widely promoted theistic evolutionist, and thus served as the plaintiffs leadoff expert witness for biology, evolution, and theistic evolutionism during the Kitzmiller trial. Judge Jones apparently found Miller’s existence so compelling that the Judge ruled that evolution and “belief in the existence of a supreme being” are compatible, and ruled that any belief otherwise is “utterly false.” Yet significant portions of Miller’s testimony about the anti-religious descriptions of evolution contained in his textbooks were factually challenged (i.e. wrong). On the second day of the Kitzmiller trial, Miller was confronted about theologically charged statements about evolution Read More ›

(Part II, Version 1.0)By Casey LuskinCopyright © 2006 Casey Luskin. All Rights Reserved. The entire article can be read here …Yesterday, I posted Part I of this response. To reiterate, there are three primary problems with Judge Jones’s ruling that Ken Miller refuted Michael Behe’s arguments that the bacterial flagellum is irreducible complex: Yesterday I posted sections addressing parts (A) and (B). Today I will continue with the response, expanding on Part (C): (C) Miller’s Incorrect Characterization of Irreducible Complexity To repeat Miller’s assertion, he testified that irreducible complexity is refuted if one sub-system can perform some other function in the cell: “Dr. Behe’s prediction is that the parts of any irreducibly complex system should have no useful function. Therefore, Read More ›