Casey Luskin

On today’s ID the Future, astrobiologist Guillermo Gonzalez, co-author of The Privileged Planet, provides a rapid survey of some of the growing evidence that Earth is finely tuned in numerous ways to allow for life. He draws a helpful distinction between local fine tuning and universal fine tuning. And he tells us about the many extra-solar planets astronomers have discovered in recent years and how all that new data continues to undermine the misguided assumption (encouraged by the misnamed “Copernican Principle”) that Earth is just a humdrum planet. Far from it, Gonzalez argues. The conversation is occasioned by Gonzalez’s essay in a newly released anthology, Science and Faith in Dialogue.

On today’s ID the Future, Casey Luskin rebuts the oft-repeated claim that the human and chimp genomes are 98-99% similar and therefore surely resulted from Darwinian common descent. Luskin cites an article in the journal Science which describes the 98-99% claim as a myth. The original figure was derived from a single protein-to-protein comparison, but once you compare the entire genomes, and use more rigorous methods, the similarity drops several percentage points, and on one account, down into the mid-80s. Additionally, the chimp genomes used in the original comparison studies borrowed the human genome for scaffolding, thus artificially boosting the degree of similarity. What about supposed junk DNA similarities between human and chimp? Why would an intelligent designer put the Read More ›

On this ID the Future, distinguished German paleontologist Günter Bechly continues unpacking his new argument against modern evolutionary theory. According to Bechly, contemporary species pairs diverge hardly at all over millions of years, even when isolated from each other, and yet we’re supposed to believe that the evolutionary process built dramatically distinct body plans in similar time frames at various other times in the history of life. Why believe that? He suggests this pattern of relative stasis among species pairs strikes a significant and damaging blow to Darwinian theory. In this Part 2 episode, Bechly and host Casey Luskin discuss mice/rat pairs, cattle and bison, horses and donkeys, Asian and African elephants, the Asian black bear and the South American Read More ›