Paul Nelson comments

Sunday a week or so ago, there was a debate about Intelligent Design
at a church in Rolling Hills Estates, CA. Paul Nelson and John Mark
Reynolds were the ID advocates, and James Hofman and Craig Nelson
were the critics. That debate was digitally recorded by one of the
attendees who subsequently contacted me to inquire about the accuracy
of a claim about me made by Paul Nelson.

During that debate James Hofman listed on a slide a number of
scientists who are also theists and feel that God could have used
evolution as part of his creative process (the list included myself,
Howard Van Till, Ken Miller, Terry Gray, John Polkinghorn, and Arthur
Peacock).

Paul then told an anecdote about me based on an extended series of
private e-mail posts from an ASA working group that was involved in
writing the ASA "Statement on Creation."

The following is a transcript of Paul Nelson's comments taken from
the digital audio recording of the event:

________________________________________________________________________
_______

Nelson: Ah, I would like to begin by actually responding to this
slide from
Jim. Ah, it's true that of these scientists named here, ah, are
theists I
think, Arthur Peacock I'm not sure would call himself a Christian, he
has a
rather heterodox theology, but they are all theists of one strip or
another.

Here's the problem though. All of them accept a philosophy of science
that
excludes intelligent causation by definition. Ah, for instance, ah,
Keith
Miller and I served on a panel that the, ah, American Scientific
Affiliation
assembled a few years ago to write a statement on creation, with a
variety
of viewpoints. Keith was defending theistic evolution I was arguing for
intelligent design.

And we had an e-mail, ah, exchange that was quite extensive, and I
said to
Keith, your philosophy of science excludes intelligent design by
definition.
He would say that if you're a scientist you have to look for a
natural cause
for any event or patter, and keep looking whether you find one or not,
because that's what it means to be a scientist.

So I posed him a thought experiment. I said suppose you went to a
movie and
when you came out and you discovered the driver side window of you
car was
broken, and there was glass everywhere. And you looked inside the
vehicle
ah, and ah, the McDonalds bag was still there, and the road atlas was
still
there, the tattered road atlas of Kansas where he lives, but your
digital
camera was gone and your CD player was gone.

Now what would you infer from that pattern, I put the question to
Keith. And
rather than do what everyone in this room would do, namely get out
your cell
phone and dial 911 and infer that someone had broken into his car,
rather
than say that event, that intelligently cause event had happened,
Keith said
a natural regularity occurred.

[Light laughter]

Now at that point our dialog broke down.

[Heavy laughter]

Because for Keith, who I have great respect for, he's an evangelical
Christian with a strong faith commitment, he's very up front about it in
everything he does in his professional life, but his philosophy of
science
is non-negotiable on this, on this point.

So the reason I think I would disagree with these guy is not, not
that God
couldn't use evolution, God, the absolute sovereignty of God is
something
that I hold very dear, as a faith commitment because it comes right
out of
scripture. God can do whatever He wants. The question is what does the
evidence indicate.

[Reynolds: "Yes"]

If evolutionary theory is not well supported by the evidence I don't
want to
say that God used a theory that is not well supported by the
evidence. God
can do whatever he, whatever he, he, pleases. So my disagreement with
these
guys has relatively little to do with evolution and a great deal to
do with
what kind of philosophy of science we're going to adopt. Are we going to
allow for the possibility of intelligent causation when all of us
know that
could have happened? That's what science should do. Science should be
free
to follow the evidence where it leads.

[Reynolds: "Hear, hear."]

________________________________________________________________

Paul must have known that this is a great misrepresentation of my
views and of the points that I was trying to communicate in that e-
mail discussion. I am most displeased with both this
misrepresentation of my views, and particularly with the public use
of a private
e-mail discussion. The lack of a public record prevents people from
being able to confirm his account and interpretation of my remarks --
unless they take the effort to contact me directly. The other
panelists could also not rebut his statements for the same reason. I
consider it a breach of ethics to base public comments on private
communications. I have written publicly on the issues Paul was
arguing, and yet he did not refer to any of these published
statements, rather he chose to mention a private e-mail
correspondence. This is a violation of confidentiality.

Above Paul states -- "... rather than say that event, that
intelligently cause event had happened, Keith said
a natural regularity occurred." That completely misrepresents my
point which was that humans are nature agents who are part of the
natural world, just like other biological entities are natural causal
agents. Thus humans and their actions are the proper subject of
scientific investigation. However, divine action is not, because God
is not a natural agent and is unconstrained as a causal agent. But I
guess that saying that would not have had the rhetorical effect that
Paul wanted.

Paul goes on to say -- "Now at that point our dialog broke down."
This implies that I was the cause for a breakdown in communication.
In reality this particular e-mail conversation continued for quite a
while. Furthermore, despite repeated efforts I was not able to get
any substantial discussion of theological issues. That was and
remains the primary basis for our disagreements and yet I was
consistently rebuffed in my attempts to get a theological discussion
of Paul's views.

Because Paul has already broken the confidentiality of the private e-
mails, and has publically misrepresented my views, I will make
available to anyone interested the text of the relevant part of the e-
mail correspondence. I do not want to post them to the list, because
they are relatively long. Just e-mail me and I will send you an
attachment.

Keith

Keith B. Miller
Research Assistant Professor
Dept of Geology, Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506-3201
785-532-2250
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/
Received on Fri May 26 15:14:42 2006