SpringfieldNewsSun.com

Springfield, Ohio — The battle over evolution isn't finished, evolutionary biologist Ken Miller told a crowd of more than 350 people at Wittenberg University.

The author and scientist spoke about evolution and intelligent design Monday night, Oct. 13, at the Bayley Auditorium, as part of the university's 2008-09 Witt Series, and far more people turned out for the lecture than could fit in the small auditorium. Students sat on steps, on the floor and in the aisles. Others crowded the entranceways.

"This battle is really the result of a continuing attack, not just against evolution, but against scientific reason in general," Miller said.

A professor of biology at Brown University, Miller is a vocal opponent of teaching intelligent design in classrooms. He is perhaps best-known as the leading witness in two federal court cases on the issue.

In one, Selman v. Cobb County, a federal judge ruled that stickers calling evolution a theory, not a fact, that the county school board had ordered be placed on a science textbook written by Miller were unconstitutional.

"Of course evolution is a theory," Miller said about the stickers. "But when you say it's a theory, not a fact ... it makes it sounds like theories and facts are opposite things. Theories are built on facts."

In his Wittenberg presentation, titled "Finding Darwin's God," Miller said the scientific case for intelligent design, which he called a "purely religious doctrine masquerading as science," has collapsed.

"Even the most fervent advocates of intelligent design admit that it's a scientific failure," he said.

Miller nonetheless called intelligent design a public relations success. He cited as evidence the Republican presidential candidate debate in June in which three of the candidates professed they did not believe in evolution.

He went on to recount his experiences as a witness in another intelligent design case in which a group of parents in Dover, Pa., took a school board to court in 2005 for requiring high school biology teachers to read a statement to students that cast doubt on the theory of evolution.

But throughout his remarks, Miller tried to emphasize his point that science and religious faith are not mutually exclusive, in spite of what prominent atheist scientists like Richard Dawkins, author of "The God Delusion," may assert.

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0367 or ecavallaro@coxohio.com.