ID the Future

ID the Future _{Podcasting on Intelligent Design and Evolution}

Jay Richards Talks Paley, Hume, and Natural Theology

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Jay Richards
February 26, 2021}

In this classic ID The Future, CSC’s Logan Gage interviews philosopher Jay Richards about William Paley, David Hume, and contemporary arguments for intelligent design. Richards begins with a description of William Paley’s 1802 book Natural Theology, in which the author infers from the natural world that there must be some intelligent agent (God) responsible for its design. This includes Paley’s famous watch analogy, which Richards also summarizes. Richards then addresses David Hume’s critique of analogical arguments like those used by Paley. Richards closes by differentiating between analogical arguments and arguments for intelligent design.

Latest Episodes

Rhetorical Advice for Opponents of Intelligent Design

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Tom Gilson
February 24, 2021}

On this ID the Future author and blogger Tom Gilson offers advice to ID opponents on how to improve their persuasive strategy. Getting ID theory right instead of criticizing a made-up straw man would be a good start, he says. He then offers several additional suggestions, all of which have the incidental effect of highlighting the many suspect rhetorical strategies commonly employed by prominent opponents of ID. Gilson is the author of six books on faith, culture, and philosophy, and has a background in organizational strategy and organizational psychology. He is a blogger, a senior editor at The Stream, and the sound editor of this podcast.

Botany Journal Revisits Darwin’s “Abominable Mystery”

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Günter Bechly
February 22, 2021}

On today’s ID the Future, German paleontologist Günter Bechly unpacks what Charles Darwin referred to as an “abominable mystery,” the sudden appearance in the fossil record of a certain group of flowering plants. It was a mystery to Darwin because according to his theory, there should have been a long succession of precursors gradually evolving toward the flowering plants of the Cretaceous. Bechly and host Eric Anderson focus their conversation around a recent paper by Richard Buggs in the American Journal of Botany showing that the problem for evolutionary theory has actually grown more acute since Darwin’s time. What about a recent article claiming to have found evidence of flowering plants in the Jurassic? Bechly says that the “evidence” amounts Read More ›

The Making of a Darwin- Dissenting Doctor

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Geoffrey Simmons
February 19, 2021}

On this ID The Future from the vault, Casey Luskin interviews CSC fellow and physician Geoffrey Simmons on what led him from card-carrying Darwinist to Darwin skeptic. Simmons has a BS in biology; coursework completed for an MS in microbiology, University of Illinois; an M.D., University of Illinois Medical School; Internship and Residency in Internal Medicine, LAC-USC Medical Center; Boarded in Internal Medicine since 1974. He is the author of several books, including What Darwin Didn’t Know (2004), Billions of Missing Links (2007), and Are We Here to Re-Create Ourselves?: The Convergence of Designs (2019).

Is ID Bad Theology? No, but the Objection Is

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Jay Richards
February 17, 2021}

On this ID the Future philosopher Jay Richards responds to Mark Vernon’s charge that intelligent design is bad theology. No, Richards says, the charge itself is based on bad theology, bad reasoning, and a faulty understanding of both intelligent design theory and theism. First, the theory of intelligent design doesn’t specify the identify of a designer or the specific means of causation. It merely makes an argument to intelligent design as the best explanation for certain features of the natural world. Second, even if it did involve arguing that the designer was God and that God had intervened at particular points in the history of the cosmos, such as in the origin of life or the emergence of human beings, Read More ›

Bill Dembski Teases the 2021 Dallas ID Conference

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Bill Dembski
February 15, 2021}

On this ID the Future, intelligent design pioneer William Dembski talks with host Robert Crowther about his return to the intelligent design arena and what he’s been up to during his time away from the front lines of the ID movement. He also gives a sneak preview of the talk he plans to give at this Saturday’s Dallas Conference on Science and Faith. The February 20 conference is open to both in-person and live online attendance. To learn more about this exciting event, and to register, go here.

Darwin Day Meets Black History Month–Sparks Fly

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Michael Flannery
February 12, 2021}

As a nod to Darwin Day and Black History Month, today’s ID the Future spotlights the racist thinking of Charles Darwin and the scientific racism fueled by Darwinism and Darwinists. As guest and historian Michael Flannery notes, Darwin’s followers, including Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, took ideas found in Darwin’s work and used them to vigorously press the case for eugenics, a movement that came to have a horrifying impact for American blacks in the twentieth century, including for thousands who were subjected to forced sterilizations. Was Darwin’s racism purely a function of his time and place, Victorian England? Flannery says no, and on two counts. First, he says that the co-discoverer of the theory of evolution by natural selection, Alfred Read More ›

Jonathan Wells Talks Scientific Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions

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Jonathan Wells
February 10, 2021}

On this ID The Future from the vault, Casey Luskin interviews biologist Jonathan Wells about evolution, intelligent design, scientific revolutions and historian of science Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn argued from the history of science that reigning scientific paradigms do not give way gently and rationally before new and conflicting evidence; instead, the proponents of the old paradigm tend to dig in their heels and resist till the bitter end. Wells sees this dynamic at work with the reigning paradigm in origins biology, the modern theory of evolution, now challenged by the theory of intelligent design. Wells describes examples of how the current conversation among scientists about evolution and intelligent design matches many of the key characteristics of earlier paradigm shifts outlined in Kuhn’s Read More ›

RNA World in a World of Hurt

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Cornelius G. Hunter
February 8, 2021}

On this ID the Future, biophysicist Cornelius Hunter and host Eric Anderson discuss the RNA World hypothesis, an explanation for how the first self-reproducing organism might have arisen via mindless chemical processes. Hunter and Anderson have each written on the topic, and together they unpack some of the many and growing problems with this RNA-first explanation for the origin of life. They also spotlight some recent admissions in mainstream scientific publications that it’s time to move on from the cherished but embattled RNA World. The conversation pivots off of a recent essay by Hunter at Evolution News, “RNA World: Repeated Downfalls, Repeated Resurrections.” For more on the challenges of creating the first self-reproducing biological entity, see Eric Anderson’s Chapter 3 Read More ›

William Dembski on ID, Church Fathers, and a Problem for Atheists

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Bill Dembski
February 5, 2021}

On this ID the Future, we pull a classic from the vault to celebrate the return of Casey Luskin and William Dembski to the intelligent design sphere. Both will be speaking at the upcoming Dallas Conference on Science and Faith, open this year to in-person and online participation. In today’s conversation Dembski offers advice to those who want to get involved in the intelligent design movement. One piece of advice he offers the academically inclined: go get your PhD. Interestingly, that’s exactly what Luskin did, and is just back from the University of Johannesburg to resume work with the Center for Science and Culture, now with a PhD in geology. Dembski and Luskin also discuss three books that at the time Read More ›

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