Scientist puts faith in evolution debate

Professor in Kansas resists 'design' idea

By Nina J. Easton, Globe Staff  |  May 8, 2005

TOPEKA, Kan. -- As scientists who advocate the new ''intelligent design" theory stepped to the microphone at an auditorium here last week to argue that schools should teach doubts about evolution, a 49-year-old geologist sporting Birkenstock sandals and an early-Beatles haircut sat quietly in an aisle seat in the back row.

The man is an evangelical Christian who says he was ''called by God to be a geologist." But Keith B. Miller, a Kansas State University professor, is also an ardent defender of evolution -- and thus one of established science's most effective weapons in the battle to keep intelligent design, creationism, and other attacks on evolution out of the nation's public schools.

As the theory of evolution pioneered by Charles Darwin comes under assault in communities from Kansas to Pennsylvania to Georgia, Miller carries a message that plays especially well here: Faith, even fundamental Christian faith, is not at odds with Darwin.

''I say I believe God [created life], and I want to find out how," Miller said. ''They say, 'God did it; end of discussion.'"

The Kansas state school board has been ground zero for the evolution debate since 1999, when religious conservatives first drew international attention by having evolution downplayed in the school curriculum. Last week, the antievolution forces were back, arguing in hearings concluding this week that doubts about Darwin be inserted into school standards.

This time, Darwin's critics insist they are not religiously motivated creationists, but are scientists who believe that certain things in the universe, including human life, are too complex to be explained by natural causes and must be the product of an intelligent creator.

They call this theory ''intelligent design," and while they resist publicly declaring that a Christian God's hand is at work, they also suggest that proponents of a key tenet of evolutionary theory -- that changes over time can result in new species -- are atheists or secular humanists.

Stung by these charges, scientists who support evolution are trying to demonstrate that faith and science can exist side by side. ''I want to dispel their extreme worldview that there is any warfare between science and the Christian faith," Miller said.

But Darwin's advocates weren't the only ones attuned to image and public relations. Last week, while Miller advertised his faith and Kansas citizens fretted about their national image, intelligent-design advocates used the hearings to establish their scientific credentials.

The courtroom-style hearings feature 23 speakers, mostly scientists whose specialties range from biochemistry to molecular biology. Nearly 400 scientists have signed a statement taking issue with Darwinian evolution.

John H. Calvert, the lawyer who runs the Intelligent Design Network and opened the questioning of witnesses, dwelled on the scientific background of each. ''Have you published peer-reviewed papers?" he asked his first witness, biochemist and medical professor William S. Harris.

Calvert established that Harris had conducted groundbreaking research and ran a lab that received a multimillion-dollar NIH grant.

Calvert also tried to show that Harris did not fit stereotypes of evangelical Christians, asking the witness whether it was true that he was the ''lead guitarist and singer in a rock band?" With a sheepish smile, Harris affirmed that he was.

Still, in this battle for the public's hearts and minds, Darwin's fans were determined to deny the intelligent-design proponents the scientific stamp of approval they craved. They boycotted the Kansas Board of Education hearings, refusing to send witnesses. ''We are calling on scientists to quit playing their game," said Harry McDonald, president of Kansas Citizens for Science.

The direct combatants in this dispute over school standards are not the only ones concerned about image. So are Kansas citizens, still reeling from the negative worldwide publicity the state received in the 1999 hearings on evolution.

Bill Graves, a Republican who was then the governor, called the episode ''tragic." A moderate Republican candidate for Congress ran television ads asserting that Kansas had been embarrassed in the eyes of the world.

In 2000, Kansas voters turned the state school board back over to moderates.

Last week, some locals worried that scientists might reconsider their plans to move to the state, while Governor Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat, warned the school board not to do anything to harm the competitive chances of the state's schoolchildren.

Kansas, the center of the nation, is what author John Gunther called a ''kind of common denominator for the entire continent." But its flat horizons have also been a seeding ground for tornado-style uprisings, from Prohibition and the Christian right to socialism and militant populism on the left.

Thomas Frank, a native and author of ''What's the Matter With Kansas," calls the state an ''early adopter," where ''various ideological nostrums . . . were embraced quickly and ardently."

But those ideological nostrums have also been countered by an all-American pride. Topeka was the defendant in the Supreme Court's famed Brown v. Board of Education less because its schools were segregated -- they were throughout the South in the early 1950s -- than because local lawyers and housewives launched a challenge to the system. Just a mile from this week's school board hearings, a two-story brick schoolhouse, one of four ''colored-only" schools in the city, stands as a memorial to that landmark 1954 decision.

In the fight over evolution in the public schools, McDonald argues that Kansas became a high-profile battleground in 1999 because teachers and scientists like him fought back; elsewhere, the antievolution forces crept in quietly.

''The fight didn't start in Kansas," said McDonald, a retired biology teacher. ''We made it the biggest public issue."

Still, the political winds have shifted to the right in Kansas. The state has a long tradition of moderate, economic-driven Republicanism. Now, religious conservatives are on the rise in the GOP.

That's where Miller, the evangelical geologist, comes in. If the intelligent-design advocates who testified last week downplayed their faith, Miller stressed his in order to demonstrate that orthodox religion is not in conflict with modern science.

A 15-year Kansas resident, Miller has edited a science book, ''Perspectives on an Evolving Creation," in which he and other evangelical Christians challenge intelligent design.

But because the scientific community opted to boycott the school board hearings, anyone interested in Miller's views last week had to travel to an aging Ramada Inn across town. On Wednesday night, about 100 people did.

Advocates of intelligent design contend that evolutionary theory takes God out of the equation by concluding that all species change is random, unguided, and explained by natural causes.

''Every other code we know came from a mind," said Harris, the medical professor arguing in favor of intelligent design. ''To deduce that DNA codes came from a mind is not irresponsible."

But Miller insists that ''science does not affirm or deny the existence of a creator. It is simply silent on the existence or action of God." He accused proponents of intelligent design of resorting to a ''God of the gaps," whose hand is only visible when science can't solve life's riddles. 

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