Re: Paul Nelson comments

Keith, this is simply not on. It is this type of thing which gives me a moral reason for not being YEC or ID - though of course there are no intellectual arguments for being either.

I am very concerned what he said about Arthur Peacocke, "Arthur Peacock I'm not sure would call himself a Christian, he has a rather heterodox theology, " Arthur most definitely calls himself a Christian and IS IS IS IS. He is a devout person and I have a lot of respect for him. Of course, he is a liberal Catholic of the Anglican sort and all that entails and over the last 25 years we have had many disagreements and discussions, but then he thinks me too biblicist and evangelical!!
He is also wrong what he says about Terry and John Polkinghorne, and this shows how they make strawmen out of those whom they disagree with..
This type of super-spirituality and associated disparaging of others offends me to the core.
I hope he sees fit to apologise .

Michael

----- Original Message -----
  From: Keith Miller
  To: American Scientific Affiliation
  Sent: Friday, May 26, 2006 8:09 PM
  Subject: 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 15:53:19 2006