On this classic ID The Future, biologist Michael Denton discusses the implications of recurring animal body plans, arguing that they are predetermined types undergirding less fundamental “adaptive masks.” Denton questions the ability of a Darwinian process to account for these high-level patterns found in living systems, such as the recurring body plan of insects. Denton suggests instead that these recurrent forms extend from original “primal patterns,” much as argued by such nineteenth-century opponents of Darwinism as Richard Owen and Louis Agassiz. Denton says their arguments were brushed aside by those fixated on a Darwinian/adaptationist model, but never effectively answered. Dr. Denton is author, most recently, of the capstone work in his Privileged Species series, The Miracle of Man: The Fine Read More ›

On today’s ID the Future, radio host Michael Medved sits down with bestselling science author Stephen Meyer to discuss the Marvel movie Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Medved isn’t wild about the film, but he uses it as a springboard to dive into what he calls “the madness of the multiverse”—namely, the proposals in physics and cosmology for the idea that our universe is just one of many universes. Meyer explains some of the early motivations among twentieth-century physicists and cosmologists for proposing a multiverse. Then he turns to what he says is the main driver for interest in the multiverse in our day—a desire to explain away something that is deeply puzzling on the grounds of atheism, Read More ›

On today’s ID the Future Return of the God Hypothesis author Stephen Meyer and radio host Michael Medved discuss some hit videos featuring Meyer that explore the increasingly strong scientific case for intelligent design and for the idea that the universe is the product of a transcendent mind. In their discussion, Meyer and Medved focus on how evidence of a cosmic beginning supports Judeo-Christian theism, and how the Judeo-Christian faith undergirded the birth of science. The Stephen Meyer videos that Medved spotlights now have more than 10 million views altogether. You can find them all here.

On this ID the Future from the vault, host Sarah Chaffee talks with Center for Science and Culture Research Coordinator Brian Miller about the growing ID underground. Miller says that as many as one-quarter of Harvard post-docs in relevant fields privately express sympathy for intelligent design. And more and more scientists who don’t agree with ID are at least standing up against common sound-bite misrepresentations. In their conversation Miller also reviews what he describes as three “major pillars” of evolutionary theory that in recent years have been “dramatically shaken.” The conversation cues off of Miller’s Evolution News article on the subject.

On today’s ID the Future, Miracle of Man author and biologist Michael Denton continues his conversation with host Eric Anderson. Here Denton does a rapid flyover of several more anthropic “coincidences” in chemistry, biochemistry, and Earth science that are fine tuned to allow air-breathing, bipedal, technology-developing terrestrial creatures like ourselves to exist and thrive. The fine tuning, what Denton calls anthropic prior fitness, would seem to require foresight and planning on literally a cosmic scale. The wide-ranging conversation, the final one in a four-part series, gives a flavor for the breadth—if not the depth and richness—of Denton’s new book from Discovery Institute Press, available here.

On today’s ID the Future, distinguished British physician and author David Galloway explains why he’s convinced that the human fetal circulatory system is irreducibly complex and therefore beyond the reach of blind gradualistic evolution to have built. In his conversation with host and fellow physician Geoffrey Simmons, Galloway also mentions some molecular machines that he’s convinced are irreducibly complex and shout intelligent design. The occasion for the conversation is Galloway’s new book, Design Dissected.

On this ID the Future from the vault, geneticist Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, former research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, talks with host Casey Luskin about Gregor Mendel’s laws of inheritance, how they clashed with the thinking of Charles Darwin, and how acceptance of Darwinism greatly hindered acceptance of Mendel’s great insights. Listen in as Dr. Lönnig explains Mendel’s laws and why they’re still relevant for biology, and particularly genetics.

In Part 3 of The Miracle of Man interview with author Michael Denton, the Australian biologist and MD explores with host Eric Anderson some of the bioengineering marvels of the human lung and, more fundamentally, some of the many things about chemistry, the sun, and planet Earth that had to be just so to allow our respiratory and circulatory systems to work—not merely as well as they do but at all. It’s fine tuning for creatures very much like ourselves, what Denton terms The Miracle of Man. “Denton provides the a scientific underpinning for a theistic real humanism far beyond the nihilistic implications of so-called secular humanism,” writes German paleontologist Günter Bechly. “The book deserves to become a game changer Read More ›

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.

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 ›