David Hume argued that the existence of evil refutes design, and likewise Darwin argued that homologies such as the pentadactyl pattern revealed the lack of design. Much of biology was, for Darwin, "utterly inexplicable if species are independent creations." There is, of course, no scientific experiment one could do to gain such knowledge. It is metaphysical.

Obviously Darwin needed a naturalistic explanation for the species—his religious beliefs ruled out design. And likewise for today's evolutionists. According to George Williams, what we find in nature never would have been created by God. [1]

For Williams and the evolutionists, the many evils and inefficiencies in nature mandate evolution. They don't know how life evolved, but they know it must have evolved. Evolution is not a fact because the empirical evidence says so, evolution is a fact because our religious beliefs say so. Fossils that appear abruptly and remain unchanged for eons; unimaginable complexities; massive convergences; nonhomologous development; ORFans; UCEs; and other evidences certainly do not make for the fact of evolution.

Rather, the conviction that evolution is true, as is so often the case with convictions, comes from religion. From a scientific perspective evolution makes little sense. Science does not indicate that complex designs arise from warm little ponds, no matter how much time is available. The DNA code, hemoglobin, vision, consciousness, and a thousand other designs are not explained scientifically by evolution. Yet we are told it is a fact because we cannot accept design. As Ken Miller makes clear:

This designer has been busy! And what a stickler for repetitive work! Although no fossil of the Indian elephant has been found that is older than 1 million years, in just the last 4 million years no fewer than nine members of its genus, Elephas, have come and gone. We are asked to believe that each one of these species bears no relation to the next, except in the mind of that unnamed designer whose motivation and imagination are beyond our ability to fathom. Nonetheless, the first time he designed an organism sufficiently similar to the Indian elephant to be placed in the same genus was just 4 million years ago—Elephas ekorensis. Then, in rapid succession, he designed ten (count’em!) different Elephas species, giving up work only when he had completed Elephas Maximus, the sole surviving species. [2]

Evolutionists cannot accept that the species we find would have been designed. This evolutionary sentiment is no big surprise. It dates back to long before Darwin. It is no surprise that people have strong religious feelings about God and nature. But how has this massive religious movement escaped the watchful eye of American jurisprudence? How could the ruling in last year's trial in Dover, for instance, possibly miss the metaphysical elephant in the room?

The Dover trial itself seemed, at first glance, obvious enough. Miller used a typical example of evolutionary theology—pseudogenes—to make his case. [3] Darwin and later evolutionists are moved by designs that don't seem to work. Ever since Darwin they have held up vestigial organs, junk DNA and any other example of dysteleology as proof for their theory. As with extinctions, do they not defy design? Pseudogenes are a recent addition to this religio-pseudo science.

As Miller had argued prior to the Dover trial, evolution is the obvious explanation for pseudogenes because otherwise pseudogenes reveal a designer who “made serious errors, wasting millions of bases of DNA on a blueprint full of junk and scribbles.” [4]

Pseudogenes fit well into the Darwinian metaphysic. Like those extinct fossils, pseudogenes seem to reveal waste, this time at the genetic level. And furthermore, pseudogenes reveal shared "errors" in different species. These surely would not have been designed, and so our only alternative is evolution (Evolutionists fail to mention that repeated mutations are not unusual, but that's another story).

Intelligent design is careful to avoid such non scientific, metaphysical premises, but evolution thrives on them. How did genes evolve against astronomical odds? Who knows, but they must have, for the pseudogenes decisively disprove design according to evolutionists. Darwin had examples of shared designs that did not make sense to him, and pseudogenes are now a favorite example for evolutionists. What better example for Ken Miller to use in his Dover testimony.

There was only one problem: the deep metaphysics of the "shared error" argument would expose evolution for what it is. One cannot argue that evolution is just science using a metaphysical argument about what the Designer would and would not do.

Miller was attempting the upside down argument that evolution is just science, and that it is a scientific fact. But the arguments for evolution are metaphysical. Hence Miller had a dilemma. He could not argue for the fact of evolution using empirical scientific evidence, for those evidences bear against evolution. On the other hand, he could not use the powerful metaphysical arguments for these would reveal to the court the nature of evolution.

Miller's solution was to use the powerful metaphysical arguments, but with careful wording. Mysteriously, after 150 years of evolutionists boldly pronouncing what God would and would not do, and after countless uses of the pseudogene argument to try to disprove design by evolutionists, Miller strangely made no mention of God or the designer. Consequently Miller's arguments did not make sense, but to those unfamiliar with the technical jargon they sounded convincing coming from the professor. The court was led to believe that evolution was just science and a well established fact.

Miller's misrepresentation of evolution was serious because his testimony influenced the judge, and was cited in the opinion. Evolutionist's arguments entail metaphysical premises, and this is how they can claim their theory is a fact. Without their religious arguments they would be left merely with empirical evidence which fails to support evolution as a fact because there is substantial negative evidence.

Evolution's use of metaphysical premises is well documented. And Miller relies on these heavily in his own writings. But so long as legal testimony represents evolution as just science, courts will continue to miss the elephant in the room.

1. George C. Williams, The Pony Fish's Glow: And Other Clues to Plan and Purpose in Nature (New York: Basic Books, 1997) 153.

2. Kenneth R. Miller, Finding Darwin’s God (New York: Cliff Street Books, 1999) 97.

3. Pseudogenes are genes that appear to be broken and non functional due to mutations.

4. Quoted in Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box (New York: The Free Press, 1996) 225-6.