Re: Miller Misrepresented was Re: Panda's from 1995

Thanks Rich. The full testimony makes the point even more clearly. Miller unequivocally says he disagrees with the statement that evolution is undirected even though this is fundamental to the theory and he promotes this elsewhere in his writings.

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Rich Blinne
  To: Pim van Meurs
  Cc: Cornelius Hunter ; Terry M. Gray ; asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Friday, November 11, 2005 9:40 AM
  Subject: Miller Misrepresented was Re: Panda's from 1995

  On 11/11/05, Pim van Meurs <pimvanmeurs@yahoo.com> wrote:
    Cornelius Hunter wrote:

> The phrase wasn't removed because the phrase is part of evolutionary
> theory. Indeed, in Miller's own writings, more recent than the
> textbook (ie, *Finding Darwin's God*) he hammers this point home
> repeatedly. Now, on the hotseat he plays dumb.

    The issue of "purpose" and "direction" is not really part of
    evolutionary theory, although a naive reading may give that impression.

  In Emily Litella's voice: Nevermind.

  I should have never trusted the mainstream media or the ID blogosphere to tell the whole story. Here's Miller's testimony in full:

  Q. My question is why is it in this edition?

  3 A. I'm trying to set the context so I can give

  4 a full and complete answer to your question. So

  5 the interesting thing is that this is the only

  6 edition of any of the books that we have

  7 published, and probably eleven different

  8 editions, that contains that statement, and

  9 the reason for that quite simply is that I work

  10 with a co-author whose name is Joseph Levine,

  11 and Joe and I work together on many of the

  12 chapters in the book, but many of them we write

  13 separately and individually, and this was a

  14 statement that Joe inserted when we did a

  15 rewrite of many sections of this book for the

  16 third edition.

  17 I have to say that I missed the statement

  18 as I was going through Joe's chapters, and I

  19 feel very badly about that. When this was first

  20 pointed out to me, the third edition of this

  21 book was in print, I immediately went to Joe, I

  22 said Joe, I think this is a bad idea, I said I

  23 think this is a non-scientific statement, I

  24 think it will mislead students. Joe agreed.

  25 We immediately took it out of the book, and

  7

  1 that's why I emphasized that it did not appear

  2 in subsequent editions. So what you're looking

  3 at, sir, is a mistake.

  12 4 Q. Isn't it true that he put that in there

  5 because he was influenced by the writings of

  6 Steven J. Gould?

  7 A. We had a conversation about that, and among

  8 the reasons that Joe cited was that he had read

  9 one of Steve Gould's books called "Wonderful

  10 Life" in which Gould emphasized what Gould

  11 regarded as the indeterminate character of

  12 evolution, and from that I think Joe made what

  13 I still think is a misinterpretation of Gould's

  14 central idea in "Wonderful Life," which is to

  15 say the indeterminate or the unpredictable

  16 nature of evolution Joe misinterpreted to say

  17 random and undirected, and I think Joe agreed

  18 that he had made a mistake, and that's one of

  19 the reasons why we changed it in the next

  20 edition, sir.
Received on Fri Nov 11 13:33:48 2005