The Miracle of Man: Reflections on The Westminster Conference
Is mankind an error-prone accident of nature or a masterpiece of engineering and intention? On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid invites physicist Brian Miller to discuss highlights of the 2023 Westminster Conference on Science & Faith. If you didn’t get to attend this year’s event in person or via live-stream, Dr. Miller’s got you covered! The theme was The Miracle of Man, and speakers explored the uniqueness of human beings in the fields of physiology, biology, paleontology, and genetics, as well as theology and philosophy.
Dr. Miller starts off by giving a brief summary of his own talk on the fine-tuning of human vision. We’ll be doing a full episode with Dr. Miller on human vision soon, but here, he merely whets our appetites. He compares the design of the eye to the design of a digital camera and discusses similar design features like adjusting light exposure and performing pre-processing in the retina. Dr. Miller also summarizes other key talks for us, including Michael Denton on the fitness of the planet for human life and Michael Egnor on the experimental evidence showing our minds are different than our brains. Miller also recaps the different breakout sessions offered at Westminster this year, including talks from biologist Emily Reeves, physician Howard Glicksman, engineer Steve Laufman, and theologian Mark Garcia. He concludes by reminding us of the benefits of in-person events like the Westminster conference. “The presentations spark ideas and present new evidence,” says Miller. “Then people will take that and talk about it over dinner, over lunch, or over coffee. And it’s just a beautiful time to make new connections.”
DIG DEEPER
Did you miss this year’s conference? Not to worry! Next year’s Westminster conference details have already been announced. Mark your calendar!
We’ll be releasing a selection of videos from this year’s conference soon. In the meantime, enjoy videos from the 2022 conference, like this talk from one of Britain’s top mechanical engineers on the intelligent design of human skeletal joints: