ID the Future

ID the Future _{Intelligent Design, Evolution, and Science Podcast}

Unbelievable: Galileo Proved the Church’s Irrational Opposition to Science

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Michael Newton Keas
May 27, 2022}

On this ID the Future from the vault, host Andrew McDiarmid interviews science historian and author Michael Keas about Keas’ ISI book Unbelievable: 7 Myths About the History and Future of Science and Religion. The myth they tackle on this episode is the notion that the Catholic Church willfully ignored incontrovertible scientific evidence against geocentrism and tortured the astronomer Galileo for promoting a sun-centered model of the solar system, and that they opposed him on purely religious grounds. As Keas explains, in fact Galileo had found support for heliocentrism but hadn’t proved it scientifically; there were scientists and theologians both against him and for him; and he wasn’t tortured anyway.

Latest Episodes

Michael Denton: The Miracle of Man Rests on a Primal Blueprint

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Michael Denton
May 25, 2022}

This ID the Future continues Miracle of Man author Michael Denton’s conversation with host Eric Anderson about his latest book. The focus of this capstone work in his Privileged Species series is, as the subtitle explains, The Fine-Tuning of Nature for Human Existence. Here Denton and Anderson dive deeper into the book’s argument that science has uncovered multiple ensembles of fitness for creatures much like ourselves—land-going, airbreathing, intelligent bipeds capable of controlling fire and developing new technologies. In other words, it’s not just a handful of things about nature that appear fine tuned for our existence. It’s a long list of things, and indeed, a long list of interdependent ensembles of prior fitness—what Denton sometimes refers to as a “primal Read More ›

Distinguished Glasgow Surgeon David Galloway Dissects Darwinism

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David Galloway
May 23, 2022}

Today’s ID the Future brings onto the show Scottish physician David Galloway, author of the recent book Design Dissected and former president of Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. In his conversation with guest host and fellow physician/author Geoffrey Simmons, Galloway describes how he found himself in the evolution/design controversy and eventually presented his doubts about Darwin to the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. In this first half of a two-part conversation, Galloway and Simmons briefly summarize the content of Design Dissected, and Galloway homes in on one section in particular where he tells the tragic story of Ignaz Semmelweis, a nineteenth-century Hungarian physician who pioneered life-saving antiseptic procedures in hospitals, but whose ideas were Read More ›

Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards on Recent Discoveries Supporting The Privileged Planet

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Guillermo Gonzalez
May 20, 2022}

On this ID the Future from the vault, Jay Richards and astrobiologist Guillermo Gonzalez discuss several discoveries made since 2004 supporting the conclusions of their 2004 book The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery.Gonzalez and Richards show how the book’s thesis — that conditions for life and scientific discovery meet on Earth to a fine-tuned degree that strongly points toward design — has been confirmed multiple times.

Michael Denton: The Miracle of Man Interview

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Michael Denton
May 18, 2022}

On today’s ID the Future, host Eric Anderson sits down with Australian biologist and MD Michael Denton to discuss his new book, The Miracle of Man: The Fine Tuning of Nature for Human Existence. As Denton notes, throughout the Middle Ages, humans were viewed as central to the cosmic scheme of things, but this anthropocentric view began to fall out of favor in the sixteenth century, and few if any scientific discoveries in the subsequent two centuries offered any apparent aid or comfort to the view. That, however, isn’t the end of the story. According to Denton, even as Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution by natural selection seemed to be draining from the idea what little life remained Read More ›

Origin-of-Life Mystery at the University of Tokyo, Pt. 2

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Brian Miller
May 16, 2022}

Today’s ID the Future is Part 2 of physicist Brian Miller exploring a recent report from the University of Tokyo claiming a big breakthrough in origin-of-life research. As Miller and host Eric Anderson make clear, the university’s laboratory work on RNA, detailed in a recent Nature Communications article, involved the intelligent interference of the lab scientists and, despite this intelligent interference, the devolution of RNA rather than the evolution of increasing RNA sophistication. Miller says that it’s ironic that Steven Novella, a scientist committed to puncturing science hype, seems to have fallen for the hype surrounding this laboratory work. Miller and Anderson go on to discuss critiques of origin-of-life tall-tale claims, critiques coming Robert Shapiro, James Tour, and others. Life, Read More ›

Biologist Michael Denton: Paradigm Shifts

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Michael Denton
May 13, 2022}

On this classic ID the Future from the vault, biologist Michael Denton reflects on paradigm shifts in science he’s witnessed in his lifetime and how his own thinking has changed. He also looks at how these shifts challenge Darwinian evolution in new ways. Denton is the author of the new book The Miracle of Man: The Fine Tuning of Nature for Human Existence. Get a copy today.

Michael Denton Reads from His New Book, The Miracle of Man

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Michael Denton
May 11, 2022}

Today’s ID the Future spotlights the groundbreaking new book The Miracle of Man: The Fine Tuning of Nature for Human Existence, with author and biologist Michael Denton reading excerpts from the work. Here Denton, who is also an MD, marvels at the engineering sophistication of the human heart and hands. Then he dives into the heart of his new book, teasing just a small sampling of the many ways nature appears fine tuned for bipedal, intelligent, technology-developing creatures such as ourselves. One or two such examples are interesting. But where the argument gains dramatic force is in the accumulation of many examples, stretching from physics and the characteristics of our sun to chemistry and the ensemble of unique characteristics of Read More ›

Did U of Tokyo Just Solve the Mystery of Life’s Origin?

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Brian Miller
May 9, 2022}

On this ID the Future, Brian Miller, research coordinator for the Center for Science & Culture, reports on laboratory research recently presented in Nature Communications and in a University of Tokyo press release— research that supposedly provides dramatic “new insights into the possible origin of life,” and specifically “the molecular evolution of RNA.” The popular press picked up on these claims and ran with them, including in this May 5 Quanta article that breathlessly reported, “When researchers gave a genetic molecule the ability to replicate, it evolved over time into a complex network of ‘hosts’ and ‘parasites’ that both competed and cooperated to survive.” Miller says nothing remotely this dramatic occurred in the experiment. He insists there were no great Read More ›

Guillermo Gonzalez on What’s Changed Since The Privileged Planet

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Guillermo Gonzalez
May 6, 2022}

On this ID the Future from the vault, host Jay Richards and astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, authors of The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery, discuss what’s changed in the years since the book first appeared. One big change: the number of exo-planets discovered has exploded from 200 or so to several thousand. Gonzalez walks through this and other exciting recent advances in astronomy, and the two discuss how these new discoveries bear on the predictions and arguments they advanced in their book. Also in the discussion, Gonzalez speculates about what the James Webb space telescope may uncover after it comes online.

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