Thursday, February 12, 2009

Episode 33 Darwin Day featuring Ed Brayton and Ken Miller

To celebrate the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin Ed Brayton, author of ScienceBlogs popular blog Dispatches from the Culture Wars, joins us to talk about his new radio show and podcast Declaring Independence. He shares with us a fascinating interview with Ken Miller, critic of Intelligent Design and author of the new book Only a Theory. Miller explains the findings of a paper that was devastating to the notion of irreducible complexity, a paper written by none other than Intelligent Design advocate Michael Behe.

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8 comments:

Unknown said...

I was listening to your show and you mentioned about the support for evolution in the UK.

You quoted a report which states half of British people don't believe in evolution.

I'm not sure if you're aware, but the poll is flawed.

Jeremy said...

Oh Shit, it appears that you are correct (which I guess is a good thing, just kind of embarrassing for us). D, thank you very much for the link. We will do a correction on our next episode.

Unknown said...

No worries.

I'm always happy to spread the word of rational thought! :-)

Anonymous said...

Hey all...Not much to say, really, except a few compliments.
This show was another masterpiece and I really liked the review of the Dover trial...I actually heard some new info on this episode, and I thought I had heard it all (except of course I never read Judge Jones' actual decision...too long, and I read very slowly thanks to the damn ADD)
Until now I had only heard people refer to Ken Miller...the big names in evolutionary science talk about him quite highly, and constantly, too. I just never bothered to check him out, but I am so glad you broadcast this interview and introduced me to him.
Declaring Independence sounds like something I might even listen to in-between the full schedule of podcasts to which I already subscribe.
Thanks.

Unknown said...

Jeremy

I've just listened to the new episode and you don't appear to give a correction...

I still enjoyed the new episode. It's always a good sign when shows deal with listeners' feedback.

Fletcher said...

D-Notice,

That's just because we recorded this week's episode at the same time as the previous one. Next week's episode (35) will have a correction. Thanks for keeping us honest.

Anonymous said...

I am really puzzled by Ken Miller's comments about religion. In your podcast, he mentions numerous erroneous beleifs that were long held by religions (the origins of weather, the age of the earth etc.) that have been explained by science and then poses a question to the effect, "Does this cause religious people to lose their faith?" and answers his own question with, "of course not." I wish someone had thought to ask him, a scientist, why the introduction of new data does not cause him to change his opinion, or as he described it, his "Faith". In point of fact, it is just such debunking of myths that has caused many, many people to lose their religious faith. He mentions that he drags his kids to church and says grace as evidence that he is a real Christian, but one has to wonder what part of Catholicism he actually believes.

Anonymous said...

Another article on the Theos website:

http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/What_is_Darwin%27s_legacy.aspx?ArticleID=2908&PageID=11&RefPageID=5