Ken Miller was asked a question about the origin of life and whether a scenario that is built around self-organization looks like design. Miller replied that it does.

He explains:

any person who sees meaning and purpose and order to the universe — and I certainly do — in a sense believes in a kind of “design,” that things sort of make sense. Einstein told us that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it seems to be comprehensible, and that’s an extraordinary statement to make. So that’s a kind of “design.”

Miller then attempts to distance himself from Intelligent Design and adds,

I, and I think all other evolutionists, would point to the fact that the capacity for life is inherent in matter. Matter is…. Life is a chemical and physical phenomenon. I think that the universe does have a “design,” and that the design is so grand that it makes the evolution of life not only possible but almost inevitable.

It sounds to me that Miller is arguing that the universe itself was front-loaded (”a kind of design”) to spawn life. In other words, he sounds like a version of an ID proponent who is close to Michael Denton’s position as outlined in Natures Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe, a book that is considered among those “Supporting Intelligent Design” at the Intelligent Design Bookstore.

At this point, Miller goes on to explain why his ID views are better than mainstream ID views:

The ironic thing is that the proponents of intelligent design actually don’t think that. Because they don’t think that the universe is well enough designed to make the evolution of life inevitable. They think constant intervention on the part of the creator is required to bring about the first life, the first living cell, the first chordate, the first insect, the first bird. In other words, the designer or the creator had to keep tinkering with it. So, in away, In think most biologists look at the universe and have a grander appreciation for the orderliness of the universe based on what many of us regard as the almost inevitability of the evolution of living things.

Miller seems to be espousing a position that is reminiscent of Ernst Haeckel, who likewise argued, “I leave it to each one of my readers to choose between this idea and the hypothesis of spontaneous generation. To me the idea that the Creator should have in this one point arbitrarily interfered with the regular process of development of matter, which in all other cases proceeds entirely without his interposition, seems to be just as unsatisfactory to a believing mind as to a scientific mind.” Yet let us consider the arguments.

they don’t think that the universe is well enough designed to make the evolution of life inevitable.

Whether or not something is “well designed enough” depends on the objective of the design. If the universe was designed to make the evolution of life inevitable (I am assuming Miller means the origin of life), and life was indeed spawned from geochemical processes, then yes, it looks like the universe was well designed enough. But hold on.

Inevitable is not the same as ubiquitous. What if life was spawned only on Earth? What if the evolution of life depends on enough contingency that a very large sample of planets and stars are needed to make the evolution of life inevitable? Someone could argue that the universe was not well designed enough to make the evolution of life common. So as you can see, whether or not something is “well designed enough” depends on the objective of the design.

This leads to the possibility that the design of the universe has nothing to do with making the evolution of life inevitable or common, but in setting the stage whereby the design of life could flourish. After all, let’s return to Miller’s justifications for the inevitability of the “evolution of life.”

I, and I think all other evolutionists, would point to the fact that the capacity for life is inherent in matter. Matter is…. Life is a chemical and physical phenomenon. I think that the universe does have a “design,” and that the design is so grand that it makes the evolution of life not only possible but almost inevitable.

The capacity for a Ford Mustang is also inherent in matter. The Ford Mustang is a chemical and physical phenomenon. But if we take human design out of the picture, in what way is the Ford Mustang (or any other human artifact) rendered inevitable by the design of the universe?

Furthermore, if the evolution of life is inevitable, why is it that life is not deeply polyphyletic? Where are the dozens of Super Domains that use different genetic codes, different materials, and different strategies for propagation? The evidence on this planet is consistent with a one-time happening of “the evolution of life” that occurred about the same time the Earth was ready to harbor life.

The bottom line is that there is no science that mandates Miller’s views about the inevitability of the evolution of life. It is simply one ID hypothesis that exists as a consequence of situating the design at the origin of the universe.
Miller’s other objection has to do with the frequency of intelligent design interventions:

They think constant intervention on the part of the creator is required to bring about the first life, the first living cell, the first chordate, the first insect, the first bird. In other words, the designer or the creator had to keep tinkering with it.

Constant intervention? One possibility is that we make only the most modest addendum to Miller’s ID views, namely, that one further design intervention occurred with the “evolution of life,” the most significant and fundamental discontinuity within the universe. How one instance of a further design intervention (a rate of 1 event per 14 billion years) becomes “constant intervention” is beyond me.

Of course, Miller has in mind the more conventional ID views that sometimes seem to blur into creationism - the origin of the first chordate, the first insect, the first bird and so on. Yet even here it is clear that “constant intervention” and “keep tinkering with it” are expressions of hyperbole. Let’s use his examples. The universe was designed about 14 billion years ago. Then, roughly 10.5 billion years later, an intervention event occurred to form life. Then, roughly 2.9 billion years later, an intervention event occurred to form chordates. The roughly, 200 million years later, an intervention event occurred to form insects. Then roughly 250 million years later, an intervention event occurred to form birds. Again, it is hard to see how intervention events separated by billions or hundreds of millions of years constitute constant intervention and tinkering. After all, if Miller is a traditional Christian who believes Jesus was born of a virgin and resurrected from the dead, he already believes in a God who can intervene at least twice every 30 years.

Finally, his argument for design then takes on a theological dimension:

In think most biologists look at the universe and have a grander appreciation for the orderliness of the universe based on what many of us regard as the almost inevitability of the evolution of living things.

This “grander appreciation” for orderliness seems to be flirting with determinism. To escape such determinism, Miller would have to argue that the evolution of the first chordates, insects, and birds were not specifically designed into the universe, but that these creatures merely represent some of the myriad of life forms that could have appeared as a consequence of the order imposed on the universe. Yet in that case, the orderliness Miller perceives is a little mushy and goes no further than ’some imperfectly replicating entities that compete with each other.’ It’s not clear that there is any “grander appreciation” here even when compared to his notion of “constant intervention.” In the latter case, what we could have is a universe whose orderliness and contingency is nicely balanced, such that occasional interventions impose an order that does not disrupt the significance of contingency (freedom). This might be a “grander appreciation” for the orderliness as part of a dance with contingency.

In summary, Miller does come across as a type of ID proponent who restricts his design inference to the origin of the universe. His belief that the evolution of life was inevitable draws heavily from his theology/metaphysics and not science. He ignores the possibility that one additional design event may have been expressed in the origin of life, the most fundamental discontinuity in the universe, and such a view hardly qualifies as one of “constant intervention.” In fact, his characterization of more conventional ID views as “constant intervention” is a straw man argument, as design events stretched out across deep time hardly amount to constant intervention. Finally, his judgment about a “grander appreciation” is ultimately a subjective judgment call and it is not clear that any “grander appreciation” truly exists.