Intelligent Design The Future artwork

Intelligent Design The Future

151 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★ - 508 ratings

The ID The Future (IDTF) podcast carries on Discovery Institute's mission of exploring the issues central to evolution and intelligent design. IDTF is a short podcast providing you with the most current news and views on evolution and ID. IDTF delivers brief interviews with key scientists and scholars developing the theory of ID, as well as insightful commentary from Discovery Institute senior fellows and staff on the scientific, educational and legal aspects of the debate.

Science biology controversy creationism csc culture darwin
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Episodes

Alfred Russel Wallace and His Friendly Battle with Darwin

October 21, 2020 00:00 - 11 minutes - 7.95 MB

On this ID the Future, science historian Michael Flannery continues discussing his newly updated Intelligent Evolution: How Alfred Russel Wallace’s World of Life Challenged Darwin. Wallace was co-founder with Charles Darwin of the theory of evolution by random variation and natural selection, but unlike Darwin he saw teleology or purpose as essential to life’s history, and a teleological view as essential to the life sciences. According to Flannery, Wallace’s views on the nature of the cell,...

Michael Denton’s Epiphany about Nature’s Fitness for Life

October 19, 2020 00:00 - 18 minutes - 13 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, biochemist and author Michael Denton tells host Eric Anderson more about his new book The Miracle of the Cell, and about his epiphany when he recognized the many remarkable ways that nature’s chemistry is fine-tuned for life. The focus in this conversation is on carbon chemistry and its “goldilocks zone” ability to form stable bonds but let loose of them when needed.

Dr. Michael Denton: Paradigm Shifts

October 16, 2020 00:00 - 13 minutes - 9.52 MB

On this episode of ID the Future from the vault, Australian biochemist and geneticist Michael Denton discusses paradigm shifts in science. Dr. Denton reflects on paradigm shifts that he’s witnessed in his lifetime, how his own thinking has changed over the years, and how these shifts challenge Darwinian evolution in new ways. Denton is author of the new book The Miracle of the Cell (https://discoveryinstitutepress.com/book/the-miracle-of-the-cell/).

Michael Flannery on the Origin of Darwin’s Worldview

October 14, 2020 00:00 - 15 minutes - 10.8 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, science historian and host Michael Keas talks with fellow science historian Michael Flannery about the newly updated book Intelligent Evolution: How Alfred Russell Wallace’s World of Life Challenged Darwin. Flannery tells of Darwin’s involvement in the Plinian Society, a “freethinkers” group at Edinburgh University where he studied medicine as a teenager. It was there that he first encountered radical philosophical materialism, the worldview that laid the ph...

Michael Denton Discusses The Miracle of the Cell

October 12, 2020 00:00 - 18 minutes - 12.6 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, Eric Anderson speaks with biochemist Michael Denton about Denton’s new book The Miracle of the Cell, part of his continuing Privileged Species series exploring nature’s fine tuning for life. New research keeps unveiling ever more ways in which this fine tuning exists, from the cosmos to the atoms of the periodic table, even to the subatomic level of quantum tunneling. As for the cell itself, It is as if scientists are discovering a “third infinity,” says Den...

Michael Denton: Remarkable Coincidences in Photosynthesis

October 09, 2020 00:00 - 15 minutes - 10.7 MB

On this episode of ID the Future from the vault, we listen in on a few minutes from a lecture given by Australian biochemist Michael Denton, author of the brand new book The Miracle of the Cell. In this segment, Denton explains the “remarkable set of coincidences” that makes the creation of oxygen through photosynthesis possible. From the specific energy of visible light to the unique properties of water, this degree of fine tuning for life shouts intelligent design.

Dr. Michael Denton on Evidence of Fine-Tuning in the Universe

October 07, 2020 23:25 - 25 minutes - 35 MB

On this year 2012 episode of ID the Future from the vault, Australian biochemist Michael Denton discusses various ways the universe is uniquely fit for carbon-based life, and perhaps even human life. Denton argues that when it comes to evidence of fine-tuning in the universe, the more you look, the more you find. Tune in to discover what he has found that has led him to the inference that our world is intelligently designed. Denton is author of the new book The Miracle of the Cell, where he ...

The Demise of the Artifact Hypothesis

October 05, 2020 00:00 - 16 minutes - 11.6 MB

Darwinian gradualism predicts biological forms evolving gradually from one to another, but it is widely acknowledged that this is not what the fossil record shows. Darwinists have long suggested that this fossil record pattern of major discontinuities is merely an artifact of the fossil record being incomplete. But on this episode of ID the Future, paleoentomologist Günter Bechly makes the case that recent findings have put the nails in the coffin of this “artifact hypothesis.” He goes on to...

Scott Turner on Purpose in Nature, Part 2

October 02, 2020 00:00 - 22 minutes - 15.7 MB

On this episode of ID the Future from the vault, Rob Crowther continues his conversation with J. Scott Turner, biologist at the State University of New York (SUNY), visiting scholar at Cambridge University, and author of the new book Purpose and Desire: What Makes Something “Alive” and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It. Turner critiques evolutionary biology’s bias toward mechanistic and gene-centric thinking, and contemporary biology’s failure to come to grips with the evidence o...

A Reading from Michael Denton’s New Book, The Miracle of the Cell

September 30, 2020 00:00 - 12 minutes - 8.91 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid reads an excerpt from the new book The Miracle of the Cell by Michael Denton. Denton, a biochemist from Perth, Australia, and senior fellow of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, introduces the wonders of the cell as “the universal constructor set of life.” The diversity of cells — their variety of form, function, and locomotion — is beyond describing, with some cells almost seeming sentient, even ingenious. As Denton notes,...

New Book on Thomas Reid’s Common Sense Design Philosophy

September 28, 2020 00:00 - 21 minutes - 14.5 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, Jay Richards speaks with James Barham, who’s just edited a new edition of Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Thomas Reid (1710-1796), Lectures on Natural Theology. One of the most readable of all philosophers, Reid is well known for his “common-sense philosophy.” Were he living today, says Barham, he would have certainly been part of the intelligent design movement. Though it’s commonly thought that David Hume refuted Reid’s design arguments, Reid actually pr...

Scott Turner on Purpose in Nature, Part 1

September 25, 2020 00:00 - 26 minutes - 18.4 MB

Scott Turner is a biologist and physiologist, a professor at State University of New York College of Environmental Sciences and Forestry and visiting professor at Cambridge. In this episode from the vault, Rob Crowther interviews him about his book Purpose and Desire: What Makes Something Alive and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed To Explain It. Turner argues that modern Darwinism has reached a scientific dead end, unable to tell us what life is, treats many of its features — including purpose...

Richard Weikart on Darwinian Racism, Eugenics, and Slavery

September 23, 2020 00:00 - 17 minutes - 12 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, historian Richard Weikart continues his conversation with host Michael Keas about “scientific” racism. The evil of racism was nothing new when Darwin and his evolutionary theory came on the scene, but according to Weikart, racist thinking, increased “by orders of magnitude” under the influence of Darwinism and evolutionary thinking, and became mainstream science. The idea of a Malthusian “struggle for existence” meant there must be winners and losers in the f...

Richard Weikart on How Darwinism Fueled Scientific Racism

September 21, 2020 00:00 - 13 minutes - 9.2 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, historian and Cal State Stanislaus emeritus professor Richard Weikart speaks with host Michael Keas about the dark history of “scientific” racism. Racism, of course, long pre-dated Darwinism, but as Weikart argues, Darwin and Darwinian evolutionary theory greatly fueled racist thinking in the late nineteenth century and even down to the present. Weikart notes that Darwin himself was “intensely racist,” writing (The Descent of Man, 1871) that “at some time the...

James Tour and Stephen Meyer on the Origin of Life, Pt. 3

September 18, 2020 00:00 - 20 minutes - 14.4 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, Rice University synthetic organic chemist and inventor James M. Tour continues his conversation with Stephen C. Meyer, director of the Center for Science and Culture. In this third of three episodes featuring the two researchers, Tour draws from questions sent in by listeners of his own podcast. These include questions about the multiverse, quantum cosmology, the possibility — and theological implications — of life on other planets, the Big Bang, and what int...

James Tour and Stephen Meyer on the Origin of Life, Pt. 2

September 16, 2020 00:00 - 16 minutes - 11.2 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, James M. Tour, Rice University professor of chemistry, materials science and nanoengineering, and a recipient of multiple scientific awards, continues a conversation with Signature in the Cell author Stephen C. Meyer about research into the origin of life. In this second of three parts, Tour insists that the scientific community remains clueless as to how life could have arisen naturalistically, and that all the public spin to the contrary is only so much sto...

James Tour and Stephen Meyer on the Origin of Life, Pt. 1

September 14, 2020 18:40 - 17 minutes - 11.9 MB

On this episode of ID the Future,  James M. Tour and Stephen C. Meyer begin a discussion about the hard problems facing researchers trying to discover how the first life could have come about naturalistically. Meyer is the director of the Center for Science and Culture; Tour is a world-renowned synthetic organic chemist with over 700 research publications and multiple major recognitions, including TheBestSchools.org naming him one of the 50 most influential scientists in the world today. Tho...

Carbon Valley Trumps Silicon Valley

September 11, 2020 00:00 - 11 minutes - 8.15 MB

On this episode of ID the Future from the vault, we hear from two contributors to the Crossway anthology, Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique, Molecular biologist Douglas Axe and philosopher of science Stephen Meyer explain how Carbon Valley Trumps Silicon Valley, and shouts intelligent design. They compare some of today’s technological marvels to living technology, and show how even “simple cells” far exceed even the best silicon valley has to offer.

Intelligent Design: The Canary in the Cancel Culture Coal Mine

September 09, 2020 00:00 - 15 minutes - 10.6 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, Rob Crowther speaks with David Klinghoffer, editor of Evolution News and Science Today, about contemporary “cancel culture” that’s attempting to push disfavored ideas and people out of the public square, and how the cancel-culture phenomenon struck intelligent design long before cancel culture was a household term. The term — and the movie title — more commonly used in ID circles has been “expelled.” It’s happened to Richard Sternberg, Günter Bechly, Douglas ...

Omega-3 Nutrition Pioneer Tells How He Saw Irreducible Complexity in Cells 40 Years Ago

September 04, 2020 00:00 - 10 minutes - 14.4 MB

On this episode of ID the Future from the vault, Jorn Dyerberg, the Danish biologist and co-discoverer of the role of omega-3 fatty acids in human health and nutrition, talks with Brian Miller about finding irreducible complexity in cells 40 years ago.

New Origin-of-Life Proposal Revivifies a Hopeful Monster

September 02, 2020 00:00 - 25 minutes - 34.7 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, host Eric Anderson talks with scientist and fellow engineer Rob Stadler about a recent origin-of-life paper and how the authors paint themselves into a corner. The context for the paper is this: Decades of research have undermined the three great hopes for a purely naturalistic origin of life — scenarios starting with some sort of metabolism, scenarios starting with some kind of membrane, and scenarios starting with RNA. All three are necessary for cellular ...

Dembski’s ID Filter--the Sea His Critics Swim In

August 31, 2020 00:00 - 17 minutes - 24.6 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, Robert Crowther interviews Eric Holloway, Associate Fellow at the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence, about Holloway’s recent article answering a common criticism of intelligent design theory. The criticism centers on William Dembski’s explanatory filter for detecting design, especially Dembski’s crucial innovation, which was to include specification as the filter’s final step. Critics say specification is an ad hoc addition, conju...

A Doc Talks Human Blood Flow and Exquisitely Intelligent Design

August 28, 2020 00:00 - 20 minutes - 28 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, physician Howard Glicksman explains the hugely complex blood flow systems required to keep us clear-headed and alive even while doing everything from gymnastics to simply getting up in the morning. There are various methods the heart and blood vessels use to keep the body properly supplied. It’s also about hormones and nervous-system signaling. Does Darwinism provide a satisfactory explanation for such an intricately coordinated system? Dr. Glicksman argues ...

The Magician's Twin: C.S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism, Pt. 2

August 26, 2020 00:00 - 16 minutes - 22.9 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, we bring you the second half of John West's documentary The Magician's Twin: C. S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism. Lewis wrote with great concern about scientism’s totalitarian potential, but never more prophetically than in That Hideous Strength, published 75 years ago this month, in which scientists forget the limits of their discipline, cast off ethical restraints, and assume control of public policy. According to Lewis, science steps dangerously ou...

The Magician's Twin: C. S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism, Pt. 1

August 24, 2020 00:00 - 15 minutes - 21.6 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, we recognize the 75th anniversary this month of the publication of C. S. Lewis's prophetic science fiction novel That Hideous Strength, with the first slightly abridged part of John West's documentary The Magician's Twin: C. S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism. Several scholars were interviewed for the film, including Jay Richards, Angus Menuge, Victor Reppert, John West, and Michael Aeschliman. Scientism is the idea that science is the ultimate path to ...

The Designed Body: Our Irreducibly Complex Blood Pressure Control System

August 21, 2020 00:00 - 20 minutes - 28.8 MB

Dr. Howard Glicksman, author of an extended series at Evolution News on “The Designed Body,” is interviewed today by Ray Bohlin on glucose, glycogen, glucogon, insulin — all part of an extended multi-step series essential for life — an irreducibly complex series. “If students only knew how life worked,” says Dr. Glicksman,” … they’d quickly come to realize that when it comes to figuring out where it all came from, common sense tells us it was intelligent design, and it’s the Darwinists who...

The Origin of Life and the Materialism of the Gaps

August 19, 2020 00:00 - 17 minutes - 24.5 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, host Eric Anderson speaks again with medical engineer Rob Stadler, co-author with molecular biologist Change Laura Tan of the new book Stairway to Life: An Origin of Life Reality Check. Here in Part 2 of their conversation, Stadler says that following the Miller-Urey experiments in the mid-twentieth century, researchers were optimistic that a purely naturalistic explanation for the origin of the first life was just around the corner, but since then the field...

New Book: The Stairway to Life Is Really a Cliff

August 17, 2020 00:00 - 17 minutes - 23.9 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, guest host Eric Anderson speaks with medical engineer Rob Stadler, co-author with molecular biologist Change Laura Tan of the new book Stairway to Life: An Origin of Life Reality Check. Stadler explains that it’s a “reality check” because many of the “stairway steps” that have to be mounted for chemistry to become biology must, very inconveniently, happen all at once. DNA can’t survive without repair enzymes, for example, but those enzymes are able to exist ...

A Doc Looks at Why Water is Important for Human Life

August 15, 2020 00:00 - 17 minutes - 23.8 MB

On this episode of ID the Future from the vault, we bring you a conversation between Ray Bohlin and Howard Glicksman on the body’s wondrous control systems for using water. Dr. Glicksman is a medical doctor and author of an extended series of posts at Evolution News & Science Today, "The Designed Body."

The Schizophrenic Mythology of Cosmos: Possible Worlds

August 12, 2020 00:00 - 18 minutes - 25.4 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, host Jay Richards concludes his multi-episode conversation with science historian Michael Keas about the 2020 National Geographic series Cosmos: Possible Worlds. The two discuss a schizophrenia at the heart of the series--dour atheistic materialism one moment and gauzy, feel-good pantheism the next. Richards and Keas agree that if there’s one good thing to come of the series’ final episode,it’s that it brings the pantheistic religious mythology of the Cosmos...

ID and the CSC Summer Seminar: Transformative

August 10, 2020 00:00 - 16 minutes - 23.2 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, host Emily Kurlinski interviews “Mary,” a PhD biochemistry student who tells about her experiences at the annual Center for Science and Culture’s summer seminar program in Seattle, and how her relationships there developed into a community of friendship, professional connection, and support. What about the charge that ID is a “curiosity killer,” tempting scientists to answer every natural mystery with a shrug and a “God did it”? Mary says ID had just the opp...

A Doctor Examines How the Body Meets Its Need for Oxygen

August 07, 2020 00:00 - 17 minutes - 23.8 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, Ray Bohlin interviews physician Howard Glicksman about hemoglobin and the body’s need to have enough of it to transport sufficient oxygen to the tissues. Finely-tuned and exquisitely engineered, this system gave our ancestors enough oxygen to not only stay alive but thrive in the face of hostile challenges. Dr. Glicksman is author of an extended series of posts at Evolution News & Science Today, “The Designed Body.”

Michael Behe Answers Your Questions

August 05, 2020 00:00 - 15 minutes - 20.9 MB

This episode of ID the Future features Darwin Devolves author Michael Behe. The Lehigh University biologist and Discovery Institute senior fellow sat down to answer some of the most common questions put to him about evolution and intelligent design, and here we collect his answers to three of those questions: (1) What are some new examples of irreducibly complex systems? (2) What are some objections to ID from well-known critics? And (3) Why aren’t you convinced by theistic evolution argumen...

Fine Tuning in a Nutshell: No Problem

August 03, 2020 00:00 - 18 minutes - 25.5 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid interviews Robert Alston, Ph.D electrical engineer working at Picatinny Arsenal and co-author of the new book Evolution and Intelligent Design in a Nutshell. The two discuss the origin of the Nutshell book and the origin and fine tuning of the universe. Though cosmic fine tuning is often referred to as “the fine tuning problem,” Alston says it’s really no problem at all — not unless you’re trying to shoehorn it into the box of philosophical ...

A Doctor Examines Some Intricate Control Systems Sustaining Your Life Right Now

July 31, 2020 00:00 - 15 minutes - 21.7 MB

On this episode of ID the Future from the vault, Ray Bohlin interviews physician Howard Glicksman about a common cause of death, cardio-pulmonary arrest, using the subject as a doorway to explore some intricate, interdependent control systems that sustains life. Dr. Glicksman is a medical doctor and author of an extended series of posts at Evolution News & Science Today, “The Designed Body.”

John Lennox Talks AI, SciFi, Transhumanism and the Image of God

July 29, 2020 00:00 - 21 minutes - 29.1 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, host Robert Marks continues his conversation with Oxford University mathematician John Lennox about Lennox’s new book 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity. Lennox reviews mythology and science fiction writing stretching from the ancient poet Hesiod to the novelist Dan Brown and MIT physicist Max Tegmark. He says that artificial intelligence (AI) predictions down through the ages are all heavily dependent on theological and philosophical p...

John Lennox on What (Not) to Expect of AI in 2084

July 27, 2020 00:00 - 18 minutes - 25.3 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, host Robert Marks interviews Oxford University mathematician John Lennox on Lennox’s new book 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity. It’s a wide-ranging discussion about AI’s advantages already being realized, in medicine, for example; AI’s supposed potential to achieve human-like consciousness; ethical issues that AI programmers will have to grapple with; effects that AI will have on the economy and individual workers; and the risks assoc...

Our Irreducibly Complex Calcium Control System

July 24, 2020 00:00 - 24 minutes - 33.1 MB

On this episode of ID: The Future from the vault, Dr. Ray Bohlin interviews Dr. Howard Glicksman about the irreducible complexity of the human calcium control system. Glicksman is a medical doctor and author of an extended series of posts at Evolution News & Science Today called The Designed Body.

Bits and Bytes at the Bottom

July 22, 2020 00:00 - 12 minutes - 17.2 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid reads a recent article from Salvo magazine, “Bits and Bytes at the Bottom.” In the essay, systems engineer Ken Pedersen and Discovery Institute senior fellow Jonathan Witt begin by noting that scientific materialism sees reality as the result of accidental collisions and combinations of elementary particles--a worldview devoid of ultimate meaning and purpose. Many scientific materialists expressed confidence that any shortcomings in their pa...

NCSE Pushes Unscientific Pro-Darwin Survey

July 20, 2020 00:00 - 14 minutes - 19.2 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, Robert Crowther interviews Sarah Chaffee, Education and Public Policy Program Officer for the Center for Science and Culture, on a recent survey conducted by the dogmatically pro-Darwin National Center for Science Education (NCSE), and published in Nature. The NCSE claims that the survey shows that science teachers “advocate evolution” even more now than in 2007. But as Crowther and Chaffee’s discussion suggests, the survey appears gamed to produce a pro-Dar...

DNA as Clue: How Intelligence Detects Information, and Creates It

July 17, 2020 00:00 - 14 minutes - 20.3 MB

On this episode of ID the Future from the vault, attorney and engineer Eric Anderson continues his discussion hosted by Mike Keas on what it means that there’s information in DNA, and how this distinguishes it from most other physical objects. He talks about what intelligence really is and does — and why we know it’s involved in creating the unique information in DNA. And he recommends an answer we can give to those who “dig their heels in” and disagree on what information is about.

Cosmos: Possible Worlds and the Copernican Demotion Myth

July 15, 2020 00:00 - 17 minutes - 23.4 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, host Jay Richards interviews historian of science Michael Keas about a new documentary claiming that Copernicus’s heliocentric model of the solar system “demoted” humans from the place of honor at the center of everything. Neil deGrasse Tyson champions this persistent myth in episode 8 of the new National Geographic series Cosmos: Possible Worlds. The reality is quite different. As Keas explains, in Copernicus’s day, the Earth was thought to be at the bottom ...

C. S. Lewis and Intelligent Design

July 13, 2020 00:00 - 16 minutes - 22.4 MB

On the episode of ID the Future we bring you a production by Discovery Institute about C.S. Lewis and Intelligent Design. With contributions by Discovery Institute’s John West and philosophers Victor Reppert and Angus Menuge, we hear about Lewis’s early doubts about God based in part on an argument from undesign or “bad design” in nature, and how he moved from this position to developing multiple arguments for intelligent design. Another contribution he made to the intelligent design project...

Answering Our ID Critics: Distinguish Information In from Information About

July 10, 2020 00:00 - 14 minutes - 19.9 MB

In this episode of ID the Future from the vault, Mike Keas interviews attorney and engineer Eric Anderson about the first of two mistakes ID antagonists often make regarding information in nature. There is information to be gained about natural phenomena, like Saturn’s rings for example, but is there information actually in Saturn’s rings, or is that information produced by intelligent agents studying Saturn’s rings? The answer to that question should be clear — and it makes a huge differenc...

Intricate Optimized Insect Designs -- via Evolution?

July 08, 2020 00:00 - 12 minutes - 16.9 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, host Andrew McDiarmid draws on an essay at Evolution News & Science Today to explore some intricate optimized insect designs that are inspiring human engineers and raise the question, could evolution have done that? Cicadas and dragonflies use an exquisitely engineered "bed of nails" on their wings to disarm and neutralize bacteria. Butterflies and bird feathers also use this trick. There are fruit flies that have multiple navigation systems, complete with e...

In a Nutshell: Three Great Problems for Evolution

July 06, 2020 00:00 - 16 minutes - 23.1 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid continues his conversation with Robert Waltzer, chair of the department of biology at Belhaven University and co-author of Evolution and Intelligent Design in a Nutshell, on three big problems faced by naturalistic evolutionary theory. First, it appears that science has turned up several instances of what is known as irreducible complexity, something that Darwin himself said would falsify his theory if ever discovered. Second, various propos...

Michael Behe on E. Coli and a Citrate Death Spiral

July 01, 2020 00:00 - 21 minutes - 28.9 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, biochemist Michael Behe reviews the Long Term Evolution Experiment at Michigan State, where Richard Lenki’s team was initially excited to see what they thought was a new species forming in their flasks of E. coli. As Behe has written at Evolution News, one flask of E. coli in Lenski’s experiment evolved the ability to metabolize (“eat”) citrate in the presence of oxygen. But along with it came multiple mutations breaking genes, degrading genetic information,...

Robert Waltzer on Evolutionary Theory’s Room for Humility

June 29, 2020 00:00 - 18 minutes - 24.9 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, biologist and professor Robert Waltzer talks with host Andrew McDiarmid about Waltzer’s chapter in the new Discovery Institute Press volume Evolution and Intelligent Design in a Nutshell. Waltzer’s chapter covers some key terms in the evolution/ID conversation that are often misunderstood or misused. These include the word “evolution” itself, “change over time,” “common descent,” and “natural selection.” He offers quick definitions and explains some of the c...

Paul Nelson on Listening to Nature for Her Answers

June 26, 2020 00:00 - 19 minutes - 26.6 MB

On this episode of ID the Future, philosopher of science Paul Nelson concludes his talk with host Andrew McDiarmid on what it takes to converse effectively with scientists who are trapped in a naturalistic parabola--that is, researchers who draw their conclusions from naturalism’s authority rather than following the evidence wherever it leads. Nelson urges us to keep the third party in the conversation: Nature herself. We listen to nature through experiment, he says, and warns against the me...

Weikart on Racism, Darwinism and Christianity

June 24, 2020 00:00 - 14 minutes - 19.3 MB

On this episode of ID the Future from the vault, Cal State history professor Richard Weikart, author of The Death of Humanity and the Case for Life, talks racism past and present, in both Christian and “scientific” secular history. Racism can be found in both arenas, Weikart notes, but Charles Darwin made racial variation — and the claim that certain races were inferior — a key plank in his case for evolution by random variation and natural selection. Weikart goes on to suggest that materia...

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