A PhD Evolutionary Biologist on Why He Embraces Intelligent Design
Jonathan McLatchie on Classic Examples of Irreducibly Complex Systems
Is a New Design-Based Paradigm of Biology Emerging?
Rescuing Evolutionary Theory from Darwinian Mythology
How a Teacher Wrecked Biology for Me, and How I Got Past It
On today’s ID the Future, Tom Gilson, a writer and editor for The Stream, shares his experiences in high school biology. Important mysteries (i.e., major problems) with evolutionary theory were hurried past and papered over, and yet his biology teacher could take an entire class period to tell Charles Darwin’s life story, and then repeat the same class, virtually verbatim, five more times that same semester. Tune in to hear how the class put Tom Gilson off of biology, but how he now finds the subject fascinating, thanks to the work of intelligent design researchers and the larger community of life scientists. Gilson’s commentary is taken from, and builds on, a recent essay of his, available at Evolution News.
Ann Gauger: A Scientist’s Circuitous Journey to Faith
On this ID the Future, host Eric Anderson sits down with biologist and intelligent design proponent Ann Gauger to hear her story of how she got into the intelligent design movement and how the evidence for design has shaped her life. It begins with a lonely girl on a Kansas military base who at one point loses her Christian faith but also discovers the wonders of nature, and friendship, when she is given a horse and begins taking it for long rides in the countryside. Her intellectual journey takes her to MIT, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the University of Washington, and eventually into the Catholic church, where she explores becoming a nun until a conversation with echoes from the Sound of Music leads her in a different direction. Tune into hear the first part of Gauger’s moving story, and come back for the second half of her conversation with host Eric Anderson. Today’s episode is the first in an occasional series, Why It Matters, spotlighting leading intelligent design researchers and hearing from them about how they got into intelligent design, why they believe ID matters to our culture, and why it matters to them personally.
Life: Fearfully and Wonderfully Fine Tuned
Today’s ID the Future spotlights the incredible fine tuning of life. Robert J. Marks hosts Stockholm University professor of mathematical statistics Ola Hössjer and University of Miami population geneticist Daniel Díaz. The three discuss strategies for extending the concept of fine tuning to biological systems, and along the way touch on population genetics, entropy, and probability theory. At the center of the discussion are three technical papers—here, here, and here—each co-authored by one or more of the three members of today’s podcast discussion. This episode is reposted with permission from Mind Matters News, a website of Discovery Institute’s Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence. Head over to their podcast site to find the other episodes in this interview series.
An Engineer Talks ID, Biomimicry, and Hacking the Cosmos
On today’s ID the Future, host Casey Luskin sits down with Dominic Halsmer, a Senior Professor of Engineering at Oral Roberts University, to discuss Halsmer’s recent book, Hacking the Cosmos: How Reverse Engineering Uncovers Organization, Ingenuity and the Care of a Maker. Dr. Halsmer draws on the engineering concept of affordances to explore how Earth and the universe show evidence of having been intelligently engineered to afford the possibility of life, and even for humans to discover evidence of a grand designer. Also in the conversation, the implications of biologists using reverse engineering to better understand biological systems, and of engineers studying clever designs in the biological realm to make engineering breakthroughs, a creative strategy known as biomimicry.
Michael Medved Spotlights Michael Behe and His New Book
Today’s ID the Future features an excerpt from the Michael Medved Show spotlighting intelligent design proponent Michael Behe. The two Michaels do a quick flyover of Behe’s hard-hitting new book, A Mousetrap for Darwin: Michael Behe Answers His Critics. Along the way they discuss some random mutations often touted as proof of evolution’s power, including some found in dogs. On closer inspection, this dog of an argument for evolution won’t hunt. Tune in to hear Behe’s lucid explanation.