I was listening to the Mike Rosen Show yesterday. Rosen was interviewing Dr. Henry I. Miller, of the Hoover Institution, about the spread of the avian flu. During the course of the interview, Rosen asked Dr. Miller about virus mutations and what it says about intelligent design versus evolution. Miller said he thought ID requires a leap of faith. He admitted that someone could say the same for evolution, but(unlike intelligent design) he could see the effects of evolution all around him. His dog, you see, was bred to kill rats. Dogs are probably descended from a common ancestral wolf. So, evolution is not the leap of faith that intelligent design is. (Mike Rosen Show, KOA-AM Radio, 20 October 2005, 3d hour.)

1. To me this is just further evidence of the fact that evolutionists just are not listening to ID people. Dr. Miller can only make such remarks by insisting on using Intelligent Design as a synonymn for Creationism. ID adherents do not deny any and all evolution. Some deny macro-evolution, but not micro-evolution. Some deny neither micro- nor macro-evolution. Unike creationists, some ID adherents are not truly theists. They are deists; as such they deny special (biblical) creation.

2. Notice that he can only see the effects of evolution if, in fact, evolution has taken place. It's unbelievable: he denies that accepting evolution over Intelligent Design is a leap of faith, but in making his case he argues in a circle. Evolution, he says, is not a leap of faith because there is evidence for it. And this evidence for evolution is precisely that we can see the evidence of evolution. (Consider this: if a theist claimed that his belief in God was not a leap of faith because he can see the evidence of God all around him we would have to admit that he, too, was arguing in a circle--or at least begging the question. And I suspect that Mike Rosen would take great joy in pointing that out to our hypothetical theist.)

3. Even if I wanted to grant that his circular argument could count as a refutation of the assertion that evolution requires a leap of faith, I cannot accept his rat-killing dog as evidence of evolution. He says that his dog is evidence of evolution because he was bred to kill rats. But that is artificial selection, not natural selection. When we talk about evolution we normally use it as a short hand for natural selection, which Darwin distinguished from artificial selection. Indeed, artificial selection made natural selection seem stronger. Darwin believed that the fact that men could select for certain traits when breeding animals ought to induce in us the belief that nature, being superior to men, could do an even better job. So artificial selection cannot be treated as synonymous with natural selection. (Yes, as a matter of fact, I have read the Origin of Species.)

So let's take stock of the logical fallacies Dr. Miller employed here: (1) circular reasoning (i.e., the effects of evolution constitute evidence for it); (2) question begging (i.e., there is evidence for evolution in the effects of it, so evolution is not a leap of faith like ID); (3) persuasive definition (i.e., "intelligent design" is "biblical creationsism").

What galls me most about dogmatic evolutionists is not so much that they don't "buy" intelligent design. What bothers me is that they won't be honest about what ID asserts and what it does not assert. What also bothers me is that while they deny ID because of it's inability to be tested, they pretend that natural selection is testable. By definition, natural selection cannot be testable--not even in principle. It isn't even falsifiable in principle. And asserting that it is so, is to engage in philosophy anyway, not science. And enaging in philosophy rather than science is what evolutionists say that ID adherents do.