CULTURE WARS Brown prof disabuses supporters of ‘intelligent design’ BY JOHN ZORABEDIAN

Brown University biology professor Kenneth Miller is at the nexus of America’s culture war over evolution, where science and religion meet.

Miller’s fame and infamy reached a new high two weeks ago, when he testified in a trial to determine the constitutionality of a school board requirement in Dover, Pennsylvania, that biology teachers tell students about "intelligent design." As an expert for the plaintiffs, 11 parents suing the school district, Miller debunked intelligent design, or ID, as unfounded science.

Speaking last week to a University of Rhode Island audience, Miller demonstrated why ID is a false alternative to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, and referred to intelligent design as a front for creationism — the notion that God created all creatures at the beginning of time. ID is "really nothing more than the latest version of creationism, sanitized to get the word ‘create’ out of there and make it appear scientific, and make it sound non-religious," Miller told a packed lecture hall. ID proposes that "irreducibly complex" biology could not have developed by evolution.

Its main ideological proponent is the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based nonprofit. The group has launched a grassroots PR effort, the "Free Speech on Evolution Campaign." The institute portrays ID proponents as victims of "Darwinian fundamentalism," according to its Web site, http://www.evolutionnews.org/, and urges educators to "teach the controversy."

Yet scientists are predominantly of one mind: Darwin’s theory of evolution is correct, with more than a century of scientific testing to back it up. The controversy is not scientific, but cultural and political, which is why Miller continues to engage evolution opponents in debate, he says. "Of course, most scientists regard [evolution] as a question that has been resolved. So do I," Miller says via e-mail. "But to be silent on such issues in America today is to leave the field to those who would distort and misrepresent science."

Attempts by religious activists to sow doubt about evolution are not new to Miller. As a co-author of a popular biology textbook used in many public schools, he is involved in another court battle over evolution. The trial involves a school district in Cobb County, Georgia, where evolution opponents fought to have the book labeled with a warning sticker declaring that evolution is a "theory, not a fact," of which students should be skeptical.

Miller counters this by offering his own, tongue-in-cheek labels, such as one signifying that gravity is also a theory, not a fact.

Although he is a biologist and stalwart defender of evolution, the professor is also a practicing Roman Catholic who believes religion is compatible with evolution. His book, Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution (Harper Perennial, 2000), attempts to bridge the gap between theology and biology. One evolution defender proposed that Miller’s faith lends him "great propaganda value" in the culture war, an idea that Miller himself rejects. As he puts it, "I see myself simply as a scientist interested in making science clear and understandable to the public."