Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul | 
 enlarge | Author: Kenneth R. Miller
Publisher: Viking Adult
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Pages: 256
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ISBN: 067001883X
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EAN: 9780670018833
Publication Date: June 12, 2008
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Product Description
A leading scientist examines the battle between evolution and Intelligent Design in America
At the dawn of the twenty- first century, the debate over Darwin s theory of evolution is nearly as contentious as it was in the notorious Scopes trial a century ago. Today, however, people who believe that evolution is only a theory have put their hopes in a concept known as Intelligent Design.
In Only a Theory, Kenneth Miller dissects the claims of the ID movement in the same incisive style that marked his testimony as an expert witness in Pennsylvania s landmark 2005 Dover evolution trial.
Unlike other books on the subject, Only a Theory s critique of ID goes far beyond the scientific claims of the movement. To Miller, America s soul its place as the world s leading scientific nation is at risk because of this struggle. As he explains, the tactics of this new assault on science mimic earlier efforts of the academic left to remake science as a relativistic, culturally determined enterprise, rather than a rational search for truth about the natural world. Such marginalization, he argues, would effectively destroy American science.
Despite this analysis, Miller refuses to play the role of pessimist. He sees this as a teachable opportunity, a moment at which public understanding and support for science can be redeemed, and offers nothing less than a prescription for how America can save its scientific soul.
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 A Magisterial Refutation of Intelligent Design and the Danger It Poses to America's Future June 12, 2008
John Kwok (New York, NY USA)
291 out of 322 found this review helpful
"Only A Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul" is all we have come to expect from noted Brown University cell biologist Kenneth R. Miller in the course of his many public debates against creationists; a sterling blend of ample wit and elegant prose coupled with his passionate sincerity in defending genuine science's methodology and data from those intellectual Vandals seeking to replace it with their delusional notion of pseudoscientific mendacious intellectual pornography known as Intelligent Design. Here, in this succinctly-worded, quite magnificent, book, Miller has rendered an elegantly stated, magisterial refutation not only of Intelligent Design's pathetic pretense of being genuine science, but of its ongoing - and regrettably still successful - effort to claim America's "scientific soul" as he has defined it, and thus, to pose a dire threat to American scientific and technological supremacy. Fanatical skeptics like Discovery Institute mendacious intellectual pornographers ("Fellows" and "Senior Fellows") Michael Behe, William Dembski, David Klinghoffer, Paul Nelson, and Jonathan Wells, among others, will scoff at Ken Miller's assertions, and accuse him of being "possessed" or "enslaved" by his "atheistic, liberal Darwinist" agenda. However, unlike them, Miller has consistently staked out views recognizing that science and religion must remain separated - despite his own devoutly held Roman Catholic religious convictions - and indeed, his cogent remarks are rather quite persuasive, and, happily, harbor the glimmerings of some hope despite their dire alarmist nature. Without question "Only A Theory" ought to serve as a clarion call to those willing to be persuaded by Miller's arguments, because the emotional, intellectual and political stakes for America's future are quite high, and among these include the survival of a vibrant, American science as a rational enterprise totally devoid of supernatural considerations (For these reasons alone, "Only A Theory" demands a wide readership, extending well beyond the battle lines of contested school districts like Dover, Pennsylvania's to the very halls of Congress, even if there are many, in Washington, D. C., unlikely to listen to Miller's warning.). Not only evolutionary biology, but geology, chemistry, and physics too would be twisted beyond recognition by the Discovery Institute's zealous band of mendacious intellectual pornographers seeking a more expansive "definition" of science that allows "research" into supernatural phenomena; a nonsensical definition endorsed by Behe, having admitted under oath at the 2005 Kitzmiller vs. Dover trial, that astrology could be accepted as science.
What is America's "scientific soul" and why its survival remains in jeopardy from Intelligent Design's ongoing, vigorous - or perhaps more accurately, fanatical - assault, are among the most important, most compelling, themes examined by Miller in his elegant, terse tome. As Miller eloquently notes in the opening chapter, his recognition of a "battle for America's scientific soul" is one he has discerned only recently, in the aftermath of recent legal battles against Intelligent Design and other creationist foes. And, regrettably, it is a battle that goes well beyond shaping the future course of American secondary school science education. Miller passionately believes that our "scientific soul" is exactly the very essence that makes us Americans; a healthy disdain for authority, but one which does respect pragmatism, and demands results, in short, the very cultural environment that has been embraced, and sustained by mainstream science for centuries. A cultural environment whose revolutionary nature arose in little more than a decade during the American Revolution, according to Miller's distinguished Brown University colleague, eminent American historian Gordon Wood, when Americans transformed their society from "one little different from the hierarchal societies of European monarchies to one that took up the truly radical notion that individuals were both the source of a government's legitimacy and its greatest hope for progress."
In many respects, not only is Intelligent Design an idea that is "un-American", since its very principles are antithetical to America's defining cultural values of practicality, pragmatism and disrespect of authority, but, in its key objective of "overthrowing methodological naturalism", Intelligent Design, argues Miller, is a far more serious and dangerous threat to mainstream science than traditional creationism, since it is a revolutionary assault against the very fabric of scientific methodology ("methodological naturalism", or rather, what is commonly recognized as the scientific method comprised of hypothesis generation and testing) employed by science for centuries, transforming science into an unrecognizable entity that is as rife with relativism as the leftist-leaning social sciences criticized by philosopher Allan Bloom in his landmark tome, "The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Impoverished America's Young and Failed Its Students". Indeed Miller observes astutely that Bloom's analysis was not a conservative-leaning attack on leftist Academia, but instead, one warning how a relativistic "openness" - an uncritical embrace of all ideas - was detrimental to the survival of rational thought on college and university campuses, and, not surprisingly, Bloom contended that the sciences were the only realm of Academia unaffected by the politics of openness. However, if Intelligent Design successfully gains further acceptance amongst a sympathetic American populace, then, Miller warns, American science would be susceptible too to the same political plagues affecting the arts, humanities and social sciences (Ironically the same plagues that have been the subjects of ample discourse, mostly hysterical ridicule, from leading Intelligent Design advocates like Philip Johnson, David Klinghoffer, and Ann Coulter.). This is a warning which should be heeded by anyone who reads or hears of Miller's message, since the very essence, the very future, of American science is at stake.
If Intelligent Design is "un-American" in both its tone and temperment, then why is it gaining wider acceptance among Americans? Miller concludes one of his early chapters noting how biologists have failed to persuade the public of "the imperfections of biological design", implying that such imperfections are not, in of themselves, "proof" of evolution; an observation which Intelligent Design advocates have been quite persuasive. Moreover, by emphasizing the existence of biological design to the general public so they can ask "How come?" and noting the other "weaknesses" of evolutionary theory, Intelligent Design advocates are winning the public relations battle and, so far, the battle for America's scientific soul.
"Only A Theory" should not be viewed only as a concise, well-reasoned polemic on behalf of rational thought, and America's scientific future. It is as I have noted earlier, an elegant refutation of the mendacious intellectual pornography that is Intelligent Design. However, instead of simply refuting it, Miller examines it, asking us to look into the possibility that Intelligent Design is credible science, and therefore, a viable, truly better, alternative to contemporary evolutionary theory in explaining the structure and history of Planet Earth's biodiversity (In fairness to Miller, however, the very brevity of this book means that "Only A Theory" does not include ample discussion of issues ranging from understanding the tempo and mode of evolution, the relationship of sociobiology to contemporary theory, and the importance, if any, of neutral models of evolution; all of which have been cited by Intelligent Design advocates and creationists as solid "evidence" that evolutionary theory is an outmoded theory in "crisis", on an intellectual "death watch", awaiting its replacement by Intelligent Design. Of course, despite such delusional assertions, evolutionary theory remains a vigorous, unifying scientific theory of biology; a point Miller emphasizes in the book's conclusion.). Miller devotes much of Chapters Two and Three in reviewing the history of Intelligent Design, beginning with William Paley's work, and in explaining Behe's concept of Irreducible Complexity and Dembski's "mathematical" notion of Complex Specified Information. In evoking once more Behe's favorite mechanical mousetrap analogue as an "example" of Irreducibly Complex, Miller offers his most concise, but extensive, explanation why the mousetrap isn't, offering instead, some sly, and humorous, analogues of exaptation at work (While Miller doesn't refer specifically to the term exaptation as such - one that has gained widespread currency since the publication of a classic early 1980s paper co-authored by paleontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Elisabeth Vrba - anyone familiar with it should recognize the mousetrap as a mechanical analogue comparable to the evolution of feathers in theropod dinosaurs originally for thermoregulation, before assuming prominent roles in powered flight in avian dinosaurs and their closely related kin.). He follows up his elegant discussion of the mousetrap with one of a real biological exaptation, the evolution of a "poison pump" in some bacteria from the bacterial flagellum (Behe's real-life favorite example -which he asserts still - of Irreducible Complexity.).
If we were "Embracing Design" (Chapter Three), then how would Intelligent Design explain the history of Earth's biodiversity? Using as an elegant example, the evolutionary history of horses, Miller shows why Intelligent Design does a poor job of it, observing that an Intelligent Designer's only consistent pattern would be the constant replacement of "designed" species due to their extinctions (Unless, of course as Miller notes, that was indeed the "design" of the Intelligent Designer after all.). On the other hand, Miller notes how evolutionary theory explains the history of Earth's biodiversity in the succeeding two chapters, noting the so-called Cambrian "Explosion" (which, he reminds us, was instead a gradual diversification of marine metazoan taxa over the span of tens of millions of years) and human evolution. Moreover, he explains how evolutionary developmental biology (`evo devo") is yielding fascinating new insights from genomic data that confirm the robustness of Darwin's ideas on "descent with modification" at the molecular level; overwhelming data denying the implications of an "Intelligent Designer" "predicted" by William Dembski in his mathematically flawed conceptions of Complex Specified Information and his so-called "Law of Conservation of Information". And last, but not least, Miller explains why evolution is not a "random" process in "The World That Knew We Were Coming" (Chapter Seven), reminding us of the importance of convergence and contingency in influencing the history of life on Planet Earth.
Other books have emphasized the danger posed by Intelligent Design to America's scientific and technological future, most notably, Niles Eldredge's "The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism", and Donald Prothero's "Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters". However, none have been as eloquent or as extensive in pointing out this danger as Miller has through his compelling and persuasive reasoning. Few have devoted as much space as Miller's admirable effort in "Only A Theory" in taking seriously the "scientific" claims posed by Intelligent Design advocates, if only to demonstrate why these are not merely "bad" science - or rather mendacious intellectual pornography as I would prefer to describe them - but how they would "impoverish" the very nature of science if they were ever recognized as science. While Miller closes "Only A Theory" on a potentially optimistic note, relying on his personal anecdotal evidence drawn from giving lectures around the United States to demonstrate Americans' keen current interest in science - even if they object strongly to contemporary evolutionary theory - he recognizes that the ongoing battle for America's scientific soul will be long and arduous. Recent interest in so-called "Academic Freedom" bills promoted by the Discovery Institute in several state legislatures and the Texas State Board of Education's sympathy towards emphasizing the "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific theories like contemporary evolutionary theory merely demonstrate just how difficult a struggle this battle shall be.
A former evangelical's review. July 17, 2008
Erik Olson (Ridgefield, WA United States)
29 out of 35 found this review helpful
Last year I left evangelicalism in favor of agnosticism. A major reason for my departure was twenty-four years of negative experiences within the Church. However, another important impetus was an exposure to deeper levels of science and rationality through the works of Hitchens, Dawkins, Stenger, and others. I had become tired of living with the tension between various conflicting ideas that Christianity requires of a believer, and these authors suggested a more rational alternative. One area of tension in particular was the dissonance between evolution and intelligent design (ID). "Only A Theory" addresses this battle, and it's one of the best and most tactful books I've read on the subject. Indeed, it should act as the obsolescence notice that ID has needed for a long time.
"Only A Theory" focuses on the American battlefront concerning evolution and ID. The two foes recently went head-to-head in Pennsylvania, where both camps were put on trial as a result of the Dover Board of Education's desire to add ID instruction in public school. After hearing testimony from both sides (including the author and ID proponent Michael Behe) and examining the evidence, the court ruled that ID was another name for religious creationism, and it was thrown out of the academic setting. Mr. Miller was encouraged by science's courtroom triumph, but given the strength and righteous indignation of the ID movement, he fears for the future of evolution and the scientific method. The title of this book reflects that concern, since one of ID's biggest catchphrases is that evolution is "only a theory," and therefore other competing "theories" like ID deserve equal hearing.
The author has reason to be afraid. As a former evangelical Christian and seminary graduate, I can affirm that ID is a user-friendly term for a faith-based system of thought that stands at odds with rational science. I've seen "Darwinism" portrayed by the Church as a subtle tool of satanic forces arrayed against God's faithful. Rationalism is considered a slippery slope to atheism and moral relativism, as exemplified by Nietzsche, Nazism, and Communism. To counter this darkness, believers such as Henry Morris responded with scientific creationism. However, that term sounded too religious, so the name was changed to the more palatable "intelligent design." ID star Michael Behe wrote books advocating ID-centric ideas like "irreducible complexity" (IC) to show that gradual evolution could not have produced complex biological organs or processes. Do the proponents of ID have a point, or are they simply in over their heads?
The author argues the latter. He categorically rejects the idea that ID has any scientific merit, and correctly labels it as a philosophical branch of evangelical Christianity. However, far from the polemic statements made by Dawkins and Hitchens, Mr. Miller presents the facts underlying modern science and evolution in a non-inflammatory way. Although he acknowledges that individuals can be biased, he casts science as a non-ideological truth-seeking discipline because of its reliance on natural laws, provable facts, and repeatable results that are independent of political leaning. With that in mind, he's not afraid of demolishing irreducible complexity by citing recent scientific discoveries about its favorite examples, such as the eye, blood clotting, and bacterial flagellum.
But the author is most concerned with ID's dual fatal flaws, two gaping logical holes that would damage American leadership in science and rational progress if ID supplanted evolution as a basis of life's origin. First he shows that ID is really just a fancy term for creationism by quoting ID documents and statements made by its proponents. Bottom line, ID ultimately relies on untestable and unrepeatable supernatural influence vs. testable and repeatable processes based on natural laws. Second, Mr. Miller is convinced that ID encourages laziness of thought, as demonstrated by irreducible complexity. IC makes it easy to view an evolutionary difficulty not as a knowledge barrier to overcome, but as a demonstration of God's creative ability that might as well be left unchallenged. That's a dangerous attitude because it discourages rigorous scientific investigation, ironically by introducing a relativist religious bent based on one faith's concept of God.
This approach was exemplified by my last Christian mentor, who sternly told me that I should simply have faith and accept the writings of Josh McDowell and C. S. Lewis - or face God's corrective "2x4 and lightning bolts." Needless to say, I was not impressed with his line of "reasoning." This "don't ask questions" attitude permeates ID (not to mention church dogma), and flies in the face of rational thought and proven scientific methods. If science merely accepted past findings and failed to innovate, we'd still be riding horse and buggy and living without electricity (much as the Amish faithful do today). I couldn't live with checking my brain at the church door, so I parted ways with my teacher and my faith.
My above experience enables me to identify with the author's fears for the future of science and rationalism, especially due to the rise of conservative evangelicalism in America. As a former evangelical, I know how tenaciously Christians cleave to their belief system. Even thoughtful and well-meaning believers tend to ask safe questions and avoid confronting the holes in ID and church dogma because they fear God's wrath or loss of Christian fellowship. But as in the movie "300," I hope that the advocates of rationality will triumph over the forces of mysticism. Well-written and thoughtful books like "Only a Theory" will certainly help, and it has my highest recommendation. Other good books that deal with science and faith are "Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design," by Michael Shermer; "God: The Failed Hypothesis," by Victor J. Stenger; and "The Reluctant Mr. Darwin" by David Quammen.
The newest virus June 12, 2008
Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada)
67 out of 89 found this review helpful
According to Kenneth Miller, science in his country is in trouble. He's not alone in that. It's a rare book on science today that doesn't set aside paragraphs or pages to discuss the issue. Once the threat was confined to books on biology as "creationists" sought to dismantle Charles Darwin's dangerous idea of life's workings - evolution by natural selection. The menace, according to the author, has now expanded into many realms, going beyond biology alone. The challenge today deals with how science works. With so many other disciplines supporting the premise that life changes over time, "anti-Darwinism" in the US has morphed into a more encompassing anti-science outlook. The title, "Only A Theory" addresses the common lack of understanding of how science actually works. In this excellent overview, Miller shows how many US traditions helped construct a negative view of science - in a nation leading the world in Nobel Awards.
"Creationists" are a sad lot, hardly an example to hold up to our young people. Its (you talk about creationists - so it should be "their or you have to repeat creationism) tactics shift and vary as its challenges change, yet it remains dangerous. Beginning early in the last century, legislation in various states blocked the teaching of evolution. A string of court cases identified the laws as supportive of religion, which contravenes the famous "Establishment" clause of the US Constitution. In their effort to overcome this obstacle, the "creationists" redefined their approach by manipulating or fabricating information that would seem to provide their campaign with a scientific basis. Ironically, the creationists used the foundation of natural selection - adaptation - in response to a limiting environment of law to become a new social life form. Creationism added "scientific" to its appellation to grant itself new credibility and to appear to fit in to a wider social mainstream. It smacks of a "virus of the mind" - in Richard Dawkins' terms, retaining basic features while modifying its visible exterior to seem different. Now, having been forced to drop the deity as the underlying force behind life, they have substituted a "designer" and re-entered the lists. It is this latest speciation event that Ken Miller addresses in this book - the "Intelligent Design" scenario.
Miller, who's a scientist and no doctrinaire, describes the fallacious ideas of the new movement with consummate skill. He examines closely both the assertions and the tactics to forward them. Today's ID falls back on what its proponent Michael Behe deems "irreducible complexity" - aspects of life, such as the bacterial flagella, must be "designed" [by something that remains unidentified]. If one part of the system is lost, the entire structure breaks down. At Dover, Pennsylvania, this concept was aired and Miller recounts how he was able to quietly and effectively demolish it. He explained how the flagella has too many forms to be "irreducibly complex" and provided an evolutionary pathway for its development. The trial should have been the extinction event of this dangerous infestation.
Miller, however, is fully aware that the ID virus remains alive and well. Worse, it has a once healthy body to continue to infect - the North American public. He asks why a nation that leads the world in Nobel laureates should be developing an anti-science stance. To the author, this is a revolutionary movement challenging the heritage built up over two centuries. He reminds readers that it is success in science which allowed his nation to take a leading position in the world. The science foundation on which the US rests has extensive roots - its loss to a devious group promoting an insubstantial concept must necessarily be a catastrophe. It must be brought to a halt, and quickly. His aim with this book is to awaken North Americans to the threat and meet it head-on. Scientists who have considered ID to be a noisy and empty-headed mob of fanatics must be brought into the fray. And the rest of us must support them in every way possible. Few nations have had the strength to keep religion out of the classroom. Any erosion of that example is a danger to us all. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
science and theistic science June 17, 2008
David W. Straight (knoxville, tennessee United States)
20 out of 27 found this review helpful
This is a well-written, thoughtful and insightful book. There are two primary ideas presented here: first is the ongoing battle to define, for Americans, just what science is. Miller, one of the witnesses at the Dover trial, likens that battle to Gettysburg: heavyweights piling up in a small town in Pennsylvania for a critical fight. Second, can Intelligent Design present a viable alternative to evolutionary processes? I will not phrase this as a "compelling alternative", since the word "compelling" depends too much on an individual's beliefs: what is compelling for one person may be far from compelling for another. One of the problems that Miller faces is that ID presents a much easier explanation for man and nature than does most of science, and people tend to prefer simpler explanations ("they hate us because we're free", etc).
Miller talks at length about the ID concept of "irreducible complexity" as supposedly exhibited in mousetraps, flagella, blood clotting, and the like. For the mousetrap, the idea that all pieces must be present for it to work is indeed compelling (just like the argument for the bombardier beetle, which Miller doesn't touch on here). The steps that go into the clotting of human blood are another example--it sounds compelling. But Miller shows that the puffer fish lacks three of the "essential steps", and its blood still clots. As for the mousetrap, it's really only "irreducibly complex" if you insist it only function as a mousetrap, and not a spitball thrower or tie clasp, as Miller relates. The components of a mousetrap all have other uses, other functions--do you think that springs were invented to power mousetraps?
You'll find a wealth of other interesting discussions and ideas in the book. One concept I find rather startling occurred with Miller's section on the evolution (or not) of horses. ID, rejecting evolution, insists that there was no evolution--as one design became extinct, the Designer created a new version, and this happened again and again and again over vast periods of time. Miller also speaks at length about DNA. The ideas are complex (almost irreducibly complex?) for the average person: God created man in His own image is much easier and simpler to understand. But the DNA evidence--in Miller's book and others--is very powerful indeed.
ID sees the battle as one to divorce science from materialism and secularism and marry it to Christian theological beliefs: science must conform to Christian thought. This kind of idea has been very popular throughout the ages: Hitler promoted "German" science, Stalin "Soviet" science, etc. "Soviet" science resulted in Lysenkoism: geneticists were taken to the cellars and shot or sent to death camps. Lysenko, Stalin's pride and joy, set back Russian biology and genetics by decades. Could the same thing happen in the US? When science must conform to political or theological beliefs, the outlook is indeed bleak. Miller's book is a heartfelt and passionate plea for the integrity of science: let's hope he never has to say "eppur si muove".
Evolution, Science, and America's Scientific Soul July 17, 2008
Kevin S Currie (Reisterstown, MD United States)
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
"Science has prospered in this country because to a great degree its character matches the American character. In short, America as a scientific soul. We are practical, pragmatic, demanding. We want to see the evidence, and because we tend not to rely on authority, we want to see it for ourselves.... We serve as an incubator of ideas, an engine of scientific creativity that has lifted the condition of mankind everywhere and opened new horizons of ndersatnding from which the rest of the world can draw." Miller, Only a Theory, p. 15)
That, of course, is one view of America. One might sardonically say, using Miller's words, that it is "only a theory." A chart presented on page 214 of the book presents another: according to the 2005 survey presented therein, the US scored in 33rd place in its citizens' acceptance of evolutionary theory. We are one place ahead of Turkey, one palce behind Cyprus and a chief economic rival - Japan - is 29 places above us at number 5.
Ken Miller writes Only a Theory out of concern that the intelligent design movement threatens to compromise the state of America's barely-surviving scientific preeminence. To borrow his words, ID threatens to gut America of its "scientific soul." It does this by changing what it means to do science: if science can be theistic, then why even bother looking for natural explanations to things? If you can't get enough real evidence for your claim, set up a court hearing and let judges decide. Can't get published in journals? Write a books for the popular press, do some op-eds for a newspaper, and get political support. If intelligent design succeeds in its current missions, all of these methods will be validated and, in turn, nations that actually do science will become the scientific leaders in the world.
Of course, before we can ask what will happen if people actually believe that stuff, we have to demonstrate why believing that stuff is sloppy thinking and bad science. Miller does and does and does. His method is to take ID at its word: does it offer a solid research program? No. Has it ever? No. Is the fossil evidence more consistent with design than evolution? Very much no. (Miller points out that if design were true, that would mean that the designer would have had to keep on designing new forms as the previous ones die out, all of which slightly resemble their predecessors to the point of plagarism. Or is it more likely that they evolved?)
Miller offers countless examples to show evolution much more likely and sensical than ID. If ID were true, how would it account for the idea that apes, chimps and humans - no other animals - have 23, rather than 24, pairs of chromosomes, and that ONLY these three species have a chromosome two that consists of two fused-together chromosomes? If evolution is used, the explanation is simply that our common ancestor carried this genetic "misstep" and, as descendents of "it," we also inherited this. ID has no great answer. Genetics also shows that several benign copying errors are found on many related species while not found on other species. Time after time after time Miller presents us with evidences that fit completely well into an evolutionary scheme, but would appear convoluted and nonsensical under a scheme which denied macroevolution. True to our American love for pragmatism, Miller shows that evolution makes sense of the disperate data and is corroborated time after time. ID, on the other hand, is as useless in its ability to make prediction, to generate ANY line of independent research (as the only place for it to go is into theology), and to fit the known facts. (No, I do not pretend that Miller's evidence against ID will be strong enough to convince its proponents, but I don't think much will.)
After Miller shows why it is foolish to believe intelligent design, he goes on to show why it might be dangerous to science in the long run. First, he shows that ID is "irreducible theology" in that it seeks to redefine sciecne to allow supernatural theories to qualify as scientific. Of course, doing that is simply death to science. Why try and find out any more about HIV, if we can just scientifically posit that God did it to punish us for our sins? Why bother to discover how DNA began, if we can just posit that an invisible "designing fairy" did it? In short, Miller rightly worries that if supernaturalism is allowed to be scientific, we can just stop the whole discipline right there, as we could "theologize" explanations for any- and everyhing. (Miller even shows us a great example where Behe advocated that research into a certain area was hopeless, only to find out how wrong he was. Thank goodness Behe's supernaturalism didn't win the day.)
Lastly, Miller sets out a case that, were ID to win the day, it would succumb science to the type of relativism (all claims are on equal footing), politicization (let the courts and Rick Santorum deicde) and rhetoricization that has chewed apart so many humanities and social science fields. Using Allan Bloom convservative "Closing of the American Mind," Miller argues that the very thins Bloom could railed against in academia are now being used by the ID crowd to rip science apart.
As Richard Dawkins (among others) have remarked, "there is a thing called being so open-minded that your brains fall out." This is largely the case made in Miller's book. Science may be hospitable to the American character of questioning authority, but it is not the democracy that ID would make it into. All claims are not created equal. Evolution has shown itself to be the clear winner amongst the sciences. ID has shown itself to be the clear winner amongs Evangelical churches, one think tank in Seattle, and public opinion polls. MIller's argument may sound undemocratic, but it is quite valid: science is what science does, and science does evolution.
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