Kenneth Miller Critique

Kenneth Miller was the chief witness for the prosecution in the Dover Pennsylvania trial on the teaching of Intelligent Design (ID) in the high school biology curriculum. Miller had many critiques against ID as a scientific explanation. Firstly, evolution binds science together and is a sign of the health of science. Secondly, the source of answers for questions about nature must come from nature itself. Thirdly, for an idea to be considered scientifically correct it has to be peer reviewed, but ID wants to skip the steps of making sure an argument is sound and instead make its idea true through the political system. Fourthly, ID assaults the validity of science and views it as opinions, not facts. The proponents of ID rebut Miller’s criticisms by saying that they just want to return to a traditional view of science. They also believe that science today is not working …show more content…
Although these are both true, the latter has a much heavier weight on human society. The ground rule of science as well as what makes Western science different from other belief systems is that the answers of questions about the natural world must be derived from nature. In Miller’s book Only a Theory he states that “Once the supernatural becomes a valid element in scientific inquiry, science will cease to be an empirical search for the truth of the natural world. Like faith itself, "theistic science" will be a subjective window on the world that reflects the innermost convictions of its adherents and not the outer reality of nature, the stringent standard by which speculation and hypothesis are forged into scientific theory” (197). People believe in the supernatural through faith. Faith is believing in something although you do not have evidence for it. Scientific facts are based on evidence. Therefore faith based notions cannot be viewed as scientifically sound