A MUST See Video
On January 3rd, Brown University biologist Ken Miller gave a presentation at Case Western University titled The Collapse of Intelligent Design
… Will the next monkey trial be in Ohio? On January 18th, Ocellated finally found time to watch it.
Readers of this blog know that I’m a fan of Dr. Miller’s for a couple of reasons. He’s a prominent and well-credentialed scientist who has frequently criticized efforts to undermine science education, and he’s co-authored the biology textbook used by about half the students in the U.S. He’s also a Christian (Roman Catholic) and author of the book, Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution.
His discussion at Case Western is something everybody, with even a small interest in this issue should watch. Dr. Miller is very funny and personable, but more importantly, he’s very clear with the science he discusses and convincing in his arguments. If you’ve read anything I’ve written here at Ocellated about the larger debate on intelligent design and what we teach our kids in school, do yourself a favor and watch this video. I must admit it’s better than anything I’ve written on the subject.
As good or better than his actual presentation are the audience questions afterwards. They’re interesting because you can watch people with differing takes (both politically and religiously) on this issue ask questions and hear Dr. Miller’s feedback. I think these questions really made for an interesting reflection on the discussion.
There a couple of places you can go to watch this video. The first is the official page from Case Western. The disadvantage of this link is that the video is in streaming format. People have complained about the video pausing and doing all the other bad things videos do when streamed.
Like good nerds do when presented with a technology problem, someone took the time to capture the stream and turned the talk into a downloadable file that can be saved to your computer. You can get the file in 3 different formats. I recommend downloading the highest quality video (if you’ve got a reasonably fast connection). I wouldn’t listen to just the audio since he uses visual aids in the presentation.
The video’s a little long. It’s just at 2 hours after adding in the questions at the end, but if you’re a reader of this blog, you’ve probably wasted more time than that already. If you’re still wondering what intelligent design is all about, and if any of it’s arguments really hold up, have an open mind and watch this discussion. If you already understand these issues well, watch the video anyway. I bet you’ll learn some new stuff about science that you’ll find really cool.
It’s great stuff.