Owens-Fink vs. Kenneth Miller

Last week I announced that Kenneth Miller, Deborah “[The NAS is] a group of so-called scientists” Owens-Fink, and Tom “No, not from Mark Twain” Sawyer were doing a radio debate. ID guy Chris Williams was evidently the anti-Kenneth Miller guest, although for some reason they never realize that Ken Miller knows all their talking points.

Listening to it is like listening to the DI versus PT, actually. Owens-Fink really knows her DI talking points – although according to her, Icons of Evolution is not an ID book, and she thinks that it should have been left in the “critical analysis” lesson plan (the reference, but not the content, was deleted after scientists complained). And she is still defending the “critical analysis” lesson plan and claiming it isn’t creationism or ID. Chris Williams tries to say that evolution equals atheism, citing the recent cover story of Wired – and of course Ken Miller cheerily points out that he himself is a counterexample. For extra fun, board member Martha Wise called in to dispute claims that Owens-Fink made about board procedure. The radio guy’s introduction is pretty good also.

The show is online here (mp3 direct link, 22 MB).

PS: There is also a great bit where Chris Williams claims that evolution held back the discovery of small interfering RNA – and Kenneth Miller replied by pointing out that Craig Mello, who won the Nobel Prize 3 weeks ago for his work on RNA interference, was a student in the first biology class Ken Miller taught. Bam!