Paul Nelson has left a comment on the previous post that detailed his misrepresentation of the views of Keith Miller during an email exchange. He asked Miller for the full exchange and has now pasted in part of that exchange that, apparently, he believes vindicates his representation of Miller's views as accurate. Unfortunately for him, it does no such thing. Below the fold, I'll post the full comment from Nelson and then explain why he has done nothing to free himself from the charge of dishonesty.

Keith Miller kindly provided me with the remainder of our ASA correspondence about inferring intelligent causes. As I suspected, the exchange I recounted at the Palos Verdes debate occurred later in our email discussion than the passage Keith quoted above.

I was trying to establish (i.e., get Keith to accept) that science could infer that an intelligence had acted to cause some particular pattern or event. Keith had already agreed that my car theft thought experiment showed that inferring intelligent causation -- some agent deliberately breaking a window and removing valuable objects, in this instance -- was reasonable. I wanted to take that agreement as a point of commonality for the remainder of our discussion.

But Keith disagreed, strongly. He argued that the thief was a "natural physical regularity."

And I would say that this is still a misrepresentation of MIller's views. The distinction that he was making was between human intelligence, which exists within the natural world and is bound by the natural laws and about which we absolutely can make valid inferences in science, and a disembodied, superntural intelligence, about which science cannot make any valid inferences because there is no way to test them or falsify them. Miller says so quite clearly in the response that I quoted. I'll repeat it here:

Such analogies are completely inappropriate. The thief is a natural causal agent. Humans are part of nature - in fact a part of nature that we know a considerable amount about. As a paleontologist I can similarly infer the action of long extinct animals. We can study the patterns of breakage on shells or bones to infer the likely predator. We can infer much about the interactions of organisms from the fossil record - that is in fact one of my research interests. But you are proposing that science can infer the action of a cause external to the physical universe. Can science verify a divine miracle (in the sense of breaking causal chains)? Only in the sense of concluding that there is no presently known cause-and effect explanation.

So the fact is that Miller agreed with Nelson's first premise, that science can legitimately infer human intelligence, but he explicitly denied the analogy between human intelligence and supernatural, disembodied intelligence. And Miller further argued that human intelligence was well within the category of "natural regularity" because humans exist within nature and are bound by its laws (which is exactly why the analogy to disembodied intelligence is invalid). Now here is the passage from their exchange that Nelson thinks rescues him from the charge of misrepresentation:

PN: I just want to make sure we agree on this point. Let's not move too quickly to other issues. Let me state the point again so it's clear:

Science can legitimately infer that an intelligence has acted to cause a pattern or event in nature.

Do you agree, Keith?

KM: No, I cannot! I thought I made that clear. The thief is an available natural physical regularity within the known universe.

But remember the context. In the earlier passage, Keith explicitly agreed that science can legitimately infer that human and/or animal intelligence has acted in nature. In fact, he lists examples of such inferences in paleontology and is well aware of inferences of human intelligent action in archaeology. No one in their right mind disputes that science can infer the action of willful human action, or that scientists do so every day. But again, let's go back to Nelson's characterization of what Miller said:

Now what would you infer from that pattern, I put the question to Keith. And rather than do what everyone in this room would do, namely get out your cell phone and dial 911 and infer that someone had broken into his car, rather than say that event, that intelligently cause event had happened, Keith said a natural regularity occurred.

It is Nelson, not Miller, who makes a distinction between human intelligence and "natural regularity". Nelson is clearly claiming that Miller denied that a human thief had stolen the items and instead had argued for a "natural regularity". But this is obviously a misrepresentation of Miller's position. Miller not only did not deny that a thief had stolen the items, as Nelson claims he did, he explicitly agrees that it could only be a human thief. But he then argued, additionally, that a human thief is within the natural world and subject to natural laws and therefore, A) is a natural regularity and B) is not analogous to the attempt to infer a disembodied, supernatural intelligence allegedly acting in the natural world.

There is no way to get out of this, Dr. Nelson. When you said that Miller had denied that a human thief was responsible for the missing items in your hypothetical, you lied. He absolutely did not deny that, he in fact agreed with it. His disagreement with you is on the analogy you make between human intelligence and disembodied intelligence, not over whether science can infer the action of human intelligence.

In light however of Keith's unhappiness with how I recounted our exchange, I will post an expanded apology and clarification later today at the blog ID the Future (www.idthefuture.com).

So let me get this straight - despite the evidence, you continue to deny that you misrepresented Miller's position; you've already passed up the chance to apologize for it; you've now attempted twice to explain away the misrepresentation; but still, since no one seems to be accepting those rationalizations, including Miller, you'll post an insincere apology and claim to be sorry for what you've spent the last two days insisting was nothing to feel sorry about? And you think this is going to help your case here?