ID the Future

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

Bob Marks on Why AI Won’t Destroy the World, or Save It

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Robert J. Marks
January 19, 2022}

Today’s ID the Future dives into the controversial realm of artificial intelligence (AI). Will robots or other computers ever become so fast and powerful that they become conscious, creative, and free? Will they reach a point where they can create faster and better AI, which will create faster and better AI, and quickly leave humanity in the dust? To shed light on these and other questions swirling around the exciting field of AI, host Casey Luskin interviews computer engineering professor Robert J. Marks, head of the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence. In the course of the fast-paced interview, Marks touches on dystopian AI and the limits of computer algorithms (they can never do anything that is inherently Read More ›

Latest Episodes

Emily Reeves Previews Dallas Science/Faith Conference 2022

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Emily Reeves
January 17, 2022}

On this ID the Future, host Andrew McDiarmid sits down with Emily Reeves, one of the speakers for the January 22, 2022, Dallas Science and Faith Conference. The two walk through the lineup of speakers for the conference (Stephen Meyer, Brian Miller, Casey Luskin, Ray Bohlin, and others), tease some of the talks, and discuss how to join the one-day event live, either in person in the Dallas area or online. For more about the conference, slated for this Saturday, and to sign up, go here.

Eric Anderson: Probability and Intelligent Design

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Eric H. Anderson
January 14, 2022}

On this ID the Future from the vault, Eric Anderson makes his first appearance on ID the Future, in an interview with host Casey Luskin. By this point Anderson had been involved in the intelligent design debate for over a decade, and at that stage his primary focus was on analyzing the logical and rhetorical bases of arguments to help people understand strengths, weaknesses, and underlying assumptions of arguments made in the ID and evolution debate. He later used those skills in helping assemble a team of contributors for an excellent recent ID book Evolution and Intelligent Design in a Nutshell (Discovery Institute Press), to which he also contributes. There he taps another area of his expertise, the ongoing efforts Read More ›

Casey Luskin: Biogeography Is No Friend of Common Descent

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Casey Luskin
January 12, 2022}

On this ID the Future, geologist Casey Luskin discusses biogeography and the problems it poses for the idea of universal common descent. To make it work, evolutionists have to propose, for instance, that old world monkeys rafted across the Atlantic from Africa to South America on a natural raft. Really? That’s some raft. And how did the monkeys not starve to death? Or die of thirst? They couldn’t drink salty ocean water, after all. And talk about a genetic bottleneck! That’s just one of several problems Luskin raises with the idea that all species gradually evolved from a universal common ancestor. In his conversation with host Emily Reeves, he also touches on the problem of convergence, as when two creatures Read More ›

Engineers Crash the Evolution Party, Rethink Biological Variation

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Brian Miller
January 10, 2022}

On today’s ID the Future, physicist and engineer Brian Miller sits down with host Casey Luskin to survey exciting developments in intelligent design research that are driven by an engineering model for understanding and studying variations in species. ID researchers are pushing this work, but so too are systems biology researchers outside the intelligent design community. Tune in to hear Miller and Luskin discuss everything from fruit flies, finch beaks, and stickleback fish to mutational hotspots, phenotypic plasticity, and the gravity well model of biological adaptation.

Michael Denton on Fine Tuning: Wheels within Wheels

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Michael Denton
January 7, 2022}

On this ID the Future from the vault, host Casey Luskin sits down with Michael Denton, a Senior Fellow of the CSC who holds a PhD in Biochemistry. Denton is the author of Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, which has been credited with influencing both Phillip Johnson and Michael Behe. Here they discuss his sequel to that book, Nature’s Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe, which explores various striking ways that Earth and the laws of nature are finely tuned for carbon-based life and, in particular, creatures like ourselves. Denton argues that when it comes to evidence of fine tuning in the universe, the more you look, the more you find. Indeed, he has continued to find Read More ›

A New Flaw in the Miller-Urey Experiment, and a Few Old

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Jonathan Wells
January 5, 2022}

On today’s ID the Future, biologist Jonathan Wells and host Eric Anderson discuss a recently discovered problem with the famous Miller-Urey experiment, long ballyhooed in biology textbooks as dramatic experimental evidence for the naturalistic origin of life. The newly uncovered problem involves the glassware used in the experiment. It is an interesting finding, but as Wells explains, it is far from the first problem discovered with the experiment, nor the most serious one. While biology textbooks often present the 1952 experiment by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey as a key icon of evolution, even those origin-of-life researchers who hope to one day to discover a credible naturalistic scenario for the origin of the first living cell concede that the experiment Read More ›

Wesley J. Smith Sounds the Alarm on Germline Genetic Editing

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Wesley J. Smith
January 3, 2022}

On today’s ID the Future, bioethicist Wesley J. Smith makes the case for passionate opposition to, and stricter bioethical regulations against germline genetic engineering that changes not only the genetics of the subject but also of all that subject’s descendants. He and episode host Casey Luskin discuss germline genetic editing in China, the brouhaha that ensued when the experimental work by He Jiankui came to light, and why Smith is convinced that China’s disapproving response is less than it appears on the surface. He’s convinced, he explains, that the Chinese government wasn’t upset that the Chinese scientist conducted the experiment. They surely knew about his work and allowed it, Smith says. Rather, they and the scientific establishment internationally were upset Read More ›

Animal Algorithms Webinar Pt. 2: Author Q&A

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Eric Cassell
December 22, 2021}

Today’s ID the Future is Part 2 of a recent live webinar with Eric Cassell fielding questions about his new book, Animal Algorithms: Evolution and the Mysterious Origin of Ingenious Instincts. He and host Casey Luskin explore the engineering wonders of web-spinning spiders and their extraordinary silk, and the challenge of transforming solitary insects into social insects (with their complex and interdependent caste systems) via a blind step-by-step evolutionary process, and the many thousands of genetic changes required. What does Cassell consider the best explanation? He invokes design theorist William Dembski’s work with No Free Lunch theorems to argue that blind processes are a no-go for explaining their origin. From there Luskin opens the webinar up to questions from the Read More ›

Animal Algorithms Webinar: Desert Ants and Honey Bees

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Eric Cassell
December 20, 2021}

Today’s ID the Future brings listeners the first half of a recent live webinar featuring author Eric Cassell fielding questions about his intelligent design book, Animal Algorithms: Evolution and the Mysterious Origin of Ingenious Instincts. Center for Science and Culture associate director Casey Luskin hosts. They begin the webinar discussing Cassell’s unique set of qualifications for writing the book, and then they move into a conversation about the amazing desert ant, a master navigator from birth, able to integrate multiple navigation sensors despite having an incredibly tiny brain. Cassell argues that these innate skills point to algorithms programmed into the ant’s brain and genome, and that such programming is far better explained by intelligent design than by any blind evolutionary Read More ›

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