RE: Paul Nelson comments

As Keith mentions, I participated in this debate at Rolling Hills
Covenant Church on May 21. When Paul Nelson made the comments Keith
quotes, I felt sure that Keith would never simply explain the
complicated event in question by saying that "a natural regularity
occurred". His views are well known to most of us and he has published
them extensively. Nevertheless, I think it is safe to say that the vast
majority of those in the audience were not familiar with Keith's
position. To blatantly distort a man's carefully thought out position
for the sake of scoring cheap rhetorical debate points and misdirecting
attention from the point at issue strikes me as unconscionable. I have
no respect for anyone who stoops to this sort of behavior.

I am glad that Keith has set the record straight but it is still very
unfortunate that such a travesty of his position was given to the
hundreds of people who were in the audience that night.

Jim Hofmann

California State University Fullerton

________________________________

From: Keith Miller [mailto:kbmill@ksu.edu]
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2006 12:09 PM
To: American Scientific Affiliation
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 18:48:39 2006