Science v Intelligent Design: Miller v Behe

On Amazon Behe admits that Intelligent Design is nothing more than a code word for Christian faith.

Behe wrote:

Miller wrote:

Behe happily notes, as I would, that we live in a universe whose fundamental physical constants are remarkably hospitable to life. To me, and apparently to Behe, these constants may well reflect the will of a creator we would both identify as the God of Abraham.

So let me emphasize: Kenneth Miller is an intelligent design proponent. He believes that the laws of the universe were purposely set up to permit life to develop. Miller thinks that, to accomplish the goal of life, the universe had to be designed to the depth of its fundamental physical constants. I agree with him as far as he goes, but, on the other hand, as I write in The Edge of Evolution, I think design extends further into the universe, past physical constants, past anthropic coincidences, and well into biology. Yet, with respect to design, he and I differ only on degree, not on principle.

Well, there we have it, Intelligent Design is nothing more than Christian Theology. But Behe is equivocating on the meaning of the term “Intelligent Design”. Miller does not appeal to science being able to detect Intelligent Design via a flawed explanatory filter, or via the even more flawed concept of Irreducible Complexity. Miller has accepted on faith that God created the universe.

In that context, yes, both Miller and Behe are ‘creationists’ who believe that the world was created by a supernatural entity. But unlike Miller, Behe sees examples of continued creation in such details as the bacterial flagella or the malaria parasite.

Miller’s review is well worth a more in depth discussion and I hope to provide a more detailed overview of Miller’s claims. Needless to say Miller was not impressed

And now evolution has given us a book that accepts nearly every Darwinian principle, including common descent, disparaging only the adequacy of “random” mutation to produce the variation needed tor natural selection to work. Regrettably, on this point, Behe’s numbers are wrong, his arguments contrived, and his logic flawed.

The Edge is a work that will generate no scientific tests, no experiments, and no discoveries, yet it will certainly become a standard-issue weapon in the wars against scientific reason that will continue to sweep across our land in the years ahead. We are at a critical point in the struggle for scientific understanding in this country and this badly flawed book seeks to move us in exactly the wrong direction.