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Review Summary: 5 stars for sheer poetry |
Date: 2008-06-23 |
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Details: Just finished reading Prof. Miller's book. Totally agree with the first chapters but I am disappointed with the last few chapters where he tried to explain the nature of the Deity that he believes in. Do not mistake me, the last few chapters are poetry in motion, like sacred arias sung by a contralto, like a muezzin's call to prayer but it is in this last few chapters that he seems most unsure about himself. In this last chapters Prof. Mller was like a mystic, explaining everything and nothing. He touched briefly on the commonality of the God of the Abrahamic faiths,highlighting the "good" aspects. But offered not much explanation to the "negative" aspects of this Deity, at times bending backwards to accomodate the problem of evil within the theist concept
Okay Prof. Miller has convinced me SCIENTIFICALLY that there is a Prime Mover. But he is evasive when he talks about the nature of this Prime Mover. If you turn to the sacred texts for an answer, the big problem of different interpretation and exegesis arise. How can one evaluate 2 opposing interpretions of a sacred verse and say which is right or wrong? to be totally fair to both parties if you have all the facts in front of you?Therefor Prof. Miller has not convinced me that what is not material is not worth discussing. Atheists do not reject God's love irrationally, it is just that His love(if it even exists) is so confusing and conflicting in BOTH Prof Miller's science and religion. |
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Review Summary: The science was good, the theology only ok |
Date: 2008-06-16 |
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Details: Ken Miller is famous for a couple of things, one being the nearly iconic video against intelligent design on youtube [...]. He has also written a biology textbook that is used in many high school biology classes in the US. He is an excellent speaker and as it turns out, is an excellent writer too.
Something else that Miller is unusual for is being a practicing Christian AND a biologists who supports evolution. I'm sure there are lots of other Christian evolutionists out there, but not many are as eloquent or as willing to speak out as Miller is.
To the contents of the book:
The first half of the book are direct discussions of creationist and intelligent design arguments and step by step addressing of each of them. He explains things like how the age of the earth is calculated, how we know what we know about the evolution of species and gives real world examples of evolution in action. They are all very well described in a clear language and in a step by step way that any interested person can understand.
The second half of the book is about Miller's theology, that is, where does God fit into all of this? How does he reconcile his knowledge of the world with his belief in God? I found that in this part of the book, you can tell that he departs from his real expertise to something that is less firm in his mind. He dabbles in free will and quantum physics (calling us quantum amplifiers, which we are), but seems to misunderstand parts of it. He also seems to be going out of his way to address all the objections that may arise, but seems to do it in an apologetic, and quite weak manner.
The best point in the theology section was that God often hid in the shadows, i.e. people justified the belief in God by looking at gaps in our knowledge and putting God there. Miller claimed, and this is why I feel good about people like Ken Miller, that God exists in the knowledge that we discover with our science and our research, that God doesn't hide in the shadows and gaps at all.
This is a healthy way forward. I would say that any religion embracing knowledge and truth is a healthy one. I would say that any religion adopting Miller's idea that God is in the knowledge and the search, would probably be a step ahead of most religions today. |
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Review Summary: Excellent and informative |
Date: 2008-06-09 |
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Details: Miller gives creationist's a reason not to dispair: science and religion are not in conflict. Top notch and logical writing. I wasn't aware that we can actually observe evolution in action. |
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Review Summary: Absolutely the best book on evolution ever |
Date: 2008-06-05 |
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Details: This is just a terrific, informative book. The author has presented the material in such a way that both sides of the ideological aisle can really learn something. I was, however, puzzled by his omission of a bit of crucial philosophy in his final and more speculative thoughts about finding Darwin's God.Aristotle posed a relatively simple solution that can be employed to satisfy both open-minded creationists and evolutionists alike with his Four Causes. It is quite clear from Miller's discussion, and if we employ Aristotle's perspective, that the material, and efficient causes of evolution are clearly demonstrable as being directly traceable to mutation and natural selection. The Final Cause--the cause for which these processes might have been emplaced and coordinated in a meta sense is usually what most proponents of creation science are unwittingly advocating and groping towards in their vociferous opposition to a description of reality that seeks to strip God of any causal majesty. (Formal and final causality involves hylomorphism and involves a far greater metaphysical discussion than is required here. There are a lot of goodies in the metaphysical bag of tricks that can be used to clarify what has become an abominably partisan and thick-headed discussion of evolution and creation.)
I am convinced that while some might dismiss Aristotle's Final Causality as being scientifically un-demonstrable, it is quite clear, even from the author's evaluation of the history of evolution science, that the entirely accidental cosmos proposed by the likes of Richard Dawkins is simply unsatisfying to both reason and spirit. (Some might say it is repugnant to reason.) Indeed, recent speculation on the nature of cosmology via string theory indicates that Final Causality may yet have the last laugh. Many materialists hate string theory and, in my opinion, not just because it can not yet be demonstrated scientifically but because they "smell" God in the details. As Miller recollected his childhood religious instruction in Finding Darwin's God, the Baltimore Catechism said that we were here to know, love and serve God. That is a very good example of a final cause and one that I believe involves a trans-dimensional interface that string theory may be brushing up against.
I attempted to outline some very preliminary working concepts in regards this interface with the concept of dimensionally interactive cyber-kinesis presented in the book, How to Manage Your Dimensionally Interactive Cyber Kinetics--How to Manage Your D.I.C.K for short. It is my belief that that cyber-kinesis or the kinetic energy of the soul, or life-force, imparted by higher dimensional sources will be discovered in this century. A little reflection on death is sufficient to remind most of us that something seems to leave animated matter at a precise moment and that this "something" is not simply or only the cessation of function (it is that too) but the cessation of another order of involvement with matter unknown, as of yet, to science. It is also my belief that these same cyber-kinetic forces exert some sort of evolutionary pressure via the higher dimensional processes of Final Causality.
. Quotations from Physics II.3, 194b24 ff:
Material cause: "that from which, present in it, a thing comes to be ... e.g., the bronze and silver, and their genera, are causes of the statue and the bowl."
Formal cause: "the form, i.e., the pattern ... the form is the account of the essence ... and the parts of the account."
Efficient cause: "the source of the primary principle of change or stability," e.g., the man who gives advice, the father (of the child). "The producer is a cause of the product, and the initiator of the change is a cause of what is changed."
Final cause: "something's end (telos)--i.e., what it is for--is its cause, as health is of walking."
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Review Summary: Great Book on Evolution, Design, and Real Faith! |
Date: 2008-06-04 |
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Details: On the one side, we have intelligent design. On the other side, we have
atheistic evolution. Right? Wrong. Ever since the theory of evolution was first
postulated, there have been quite a number of thinkers who accepted theistic
evolution; even the "co-author" of the theory of evolution - Alfred Russell
Wallace - embraced the notion that accepting evolution is compatible with
accepting God.
Enter Kenneth Miller, who is both a committed Catholic and committed
evolutionist. And, not suprisingly, he has a bone to pick with folks from
opposing "camps" (one might say "extremes".) First, he has a serious bone to
pick with those who champion the theory of intelligent design, which suggests
that evolution is a flawed theory, and that a designer is the only thing capable
of explaining evidence of design in nature. On the other side, Miller is
dissatisfied with those who too often equate evolution with atheism and too
often conflate METHODOLOGICAL naturalism with naturalism AS A WAY OF LIFE.
The first half of the book endeavors to show the first group - ID - wrong. And a masterful job Miller does. In fact, Miller's explanations of evolution and the evidence found for it in nature is so sparkling and lively that it parallels two contemporaries: Dawkins and Gould. Againts the charge that evolution is not borne out in the fossil record, Miller brilliantly paints pictures of transitional forms found in the last 50 years. Against charges that evolution cannot add productive changes to the genome, Miller reminds us that we see it
every day in that most unfortunate of viruses - HIV (among other, more cheery, examples.) And Miller tears up irreducible complexity, demonstrating where Behe
has been proved wrong over and over and over.
But does Miller's denial of creationism mean that he must reject his Catholic faith? Miller does not see it that way. Here, he is on more philosophical territory, and it is here that I find his arguments a bit less convincing (but certainly plausible). Miller, for instance, is quite taken with the "fine tuning" or, antrhopic, argument, suggesting that it is either a too remarkable coincidence or a deliberate set-up by a creator. ,Of course, as Daniel Dennett (quoted in this book) says, anyone who buys a lottery ticket is convinced that it was fate, destiny, or meant-to-be, rather than random "luck." This is not an iron-clad retort to Miller's postulation but it is to say that the his idea doesn't rule out, in any way, the idea that God has nothing to do with it.
More suprising, and perhaps, troubling, is that Miller not only believes in God, but in a very specific Christian God - a God who is actively involved in things, capable of miracles, and has certain...personality traits. It is hard to say on the one hand that God set the world a-turnin' and set evoluiton up and, at the same time, is more than the deistic first cause. Of course, one can say that God steps in and 'steers' evolution, but that leads to the odd "recognition" that, if this be so, around 97% of God's animal creation was not good enough in design (compared with the other 3%, to stick around. In other word, God becomes "the cosmic tinkerer." Not very persuasive, I imagine, to a lot of folks.
One of the most interesting things that Miller subtley points out, however, is the idea that it is precisely those, like Dawkins, who think they are improving public understanding of evolution that may be inadvertently doing it the biggest disservice. As the public is seeing it, evolution is constantly being equated to PHILOSOPHICAL NATURALISM (rather than naturalism in METHODOLOGY), and to atheism. It's loudest champions are advocating equal parts evolution and equal parts atheism. Miller rightly points out that evolultion is certainly compatible with belief in a higher power, and one only wishes - even an atheist like myself - that more people understood that evolution and atheism are not a package deal.
It can also not be stressed enough how good a spokesperson for evolution Miller is. Always respectful, even in disagreement, Miller uses creative analogies, colorful examples, and solid reasoning to systematically work through the arguments of those he disagrees with - particularly champions of intelligent design. I hope that Miller becomes a very visible spokesperson for evolution against creationism in teh same way that Dawkins and Gould have/had.
I reccomend this book without reservation to anyone interested in evolution, religion, and ways to reconcile them genuinely (rather than the namby-pamby approach postulated by Gould.) Also, As a companion, I would also reccomend Michael Ruse's "Can a Darwinian be a Christian."
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out of 127 Reviews
