ID the Future Intelligent Design, Evolution, and Science Podcast
Topic

consciousness

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3d rendering of pink jellyfish floating in the dark blue ocean background with sunlight.
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Date
November 9, 2020
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The Evolution (or not) of Consciousness

November 9, 2020

On this ID the Future neurosurgeon Michael Egnor interviews Bernardo Kastrup, a philosopher with a background in computer engineering, about consciousness, evolution, and intelligent design. Did consciousness evolve? What does the evidence suggest? And how do materialists deal with the seemingly immaterial reality that is consciousness? This is a guest episode borrowed with permission from Mind Matters, a podcast of Discovery Institute’s Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.

flying flock Common Crane, Hortobagy Hungary
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Author
Scott Turner
Date
October 2, 2020
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Scott Turner on Purpose in Nature, Part 2

Scott Turner
October 2, 2020

On this episode of ID the Future from the vault, Rob Crowther continues his conversation with J. Scott Turner, biologist at the State University of New York (SUNY), visiting scholar at Cambridge University, and author of the new book Purpose and Desire: What Makes Something “Alive” and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It. Turner critiques evolutionary biology’s bias toward mechanistic and gene-centric thinking, and contemporary biology’s failure to come to grips with the evidence of purpose and intentionality at many levels of biology. Viewing the brain as a computer, for example, obscures many things about the brain and the mind that exceed computers, both quantitatively and qualitatively.

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Big data and artificial intelligence concept. Machine learning and circuit board. Deep learning
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Author
John Lennox
Date
July 27, 2020
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John Lennox on What (Not) to Expect of AI in 2084

John Lennox
July 27, 2020

On this episode of ID the Future, host Robert Marks interviews Oxford University mathematician John Lennox on Lennox’s new book 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity. It’s a wide-ranging discussion about AI’s advantages already being realized, in medicine, for example; AI’s supposed potential to achieve human-like consciousness; ethical issues that AI programmers will have to grapple with; effects that AI will have on the economy and individual workers; and the risks associated with living in an AI world where every movement is tracked. A key question as we move toward this future, says Lennox, is what does it mean to be human?

Photo by Bret Kavanaugh
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Author
Geoffrey Simmons
Date
January 13, 2020
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Can Evolution Create Mind? Can We?

Geoffrey Simmons
January 13, 2020

On this episode of ID the Future, host Andrew McDiarmid and physician and Discovery Institute fellow Dr. Geoffrey Simmons concludes their three-part conversation about Simmons’ new book Are We Here to Recreate Ourselves? The Convergence of Designs. Our own arrival is impossible to explain through evolution, he says, in view of the incredible complexity of our neurological system, and all that had to develop simultaneously with it. Read More ›

Photo by Chris Leipelt
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Author
Geoffrey Simmons
Date
January 8, 2020
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Dr. Geoffrey Simmons On Human Design — and Re-Creating It in Robots

Geoffrey Simmons
January 8, 2020

On this episode of ID the Future, author and physician Geoffrey Simmons joins host Andrew McDiarmid in a wide-ranging discussion of his new book, Are We Here to Re-Create Ourselves: The Convergence of Designs. From the foresight needed in the design of eyes, to our stereoscopic and redundant hearing systems, to the mysteries of design in the nervous and circulatory systems, signs of engineered design are everywhere in the human body.

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Jay Richards Interviewing Gale Pooley at COSM 2019
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Author
Jay Richards
Date
October 29, 2019
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Jay Richards at COSM Talks Kurzweil and Strong AI

Jay Richards
October 29, 2019

On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid catches up with philosopher Jay Richards at the recent COSM conference in greater Seattle. The two discuss the history of George Gilder’s Telecosm conferences and how the first one gave birth to a book Richards edited and contributed to 18 years ago, Are We Spiritual Machines? Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong A.I. Is the “singularity” coming, as Kurzweil argues there and elsewhere, when machines equal and then quickly surpass human intelligence? Does “machine learning” really mean learning? Will “Skynet” wake up? Jay describes Kurzweil’s sunny version of strong AI and the dystopian version. Then he argues the other side, namely that human beings possess something beyond the purely material, Read More ›

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Video still from Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson
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Author
David Gelernter
Date
October 7, 2019
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Gelernter, Meyer, Berlinski Deny Darwinism, Pt. 3

David Gelernter
October 7, 2019

On this episode of  ID the Future we hear the final portion of a three-part series featuring Discovery Institute’s Stephen Meyer and David Berlinski along with distinguished Yale computer science professor David Gelernter, who recently gave up Darwinism thanks in part to their books. Led by Uncommon Knowledge host Peter Robinson, they discuss the hard problem of consciousness, how Darwinism functions as a religious dogma that punishers dissenters, and whether biology can ever “get over Darwin and move on.” This interview is presented here courtesy of Peter Robinson and the Hoover Institution.

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Author
William A. Dembski
Date
August 29, 2018
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Bill Dembski on the AI Boogeyman, and the Real AI Danger

William A. Dembski
August 29, 2018

On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid reads an excerpt from a speech prepared by philosopher, mathematician, and trailblazing design theorist William Dembski for the launch of the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence. Dr. Dembski asks whether we need worry about an AI takeover, and says no, there’s no evidence that artificial intelligence (AI) could reach that level, or achieve consciousness, and there’s mounting evidence from both philosophy and the field of artificial intelligence technology that it cannot and will not. “The real worry,” Dembski says, “isn’t that we’ll raise machines to our level, but that we’ll lower humanity to the level of machines.”

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Author
Michael Flannery
Date
July 16, 2018
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A Critique of Evolutionist Kenneth Miller’s New Book The Human Instinct

Michael Flannery
July 16, 2018

On this episode of ID the Future, host Mike Keas interviews Professor Emeritus Michael Flannery (U of Alabama-Birmingham) on evolutionist Kenneth Miller’s new book The Human Instinct: How We Evolved to Have Reason, Consciousness, and Free Will. Miller is prominent as a science educator and supporter of Neo-Darwinian theistic evolution. Flannery, a historian of science, argues that Miller’s attempt to defend human exceptionalism on Neo-Darwinian grounds runs into fatal difficulties, as have similar attempts before. Please consider donating to support the IDTF Podcast.

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Jay Richards
Date
June 6, 2018
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Kissinger and AI, Pt. 2: Jay Richards Presses Pause on the Robot Apocalypse

Jay Richards
June 6, 2018

On this episode of ID the Future, philosopher Jay Richards continues his conversation with host and historian of science Mike Keas about Henry Kissinger’s recent Atlantic article on “The End of the Enlightenment.” In the piece, Kissinger sounds an alarm over artificial intelligence, and raises questions about machine ethics and the possibility that humans may learn we’re not so special after all. Richards, author of the new book The Human Advantage: The Future of American Work In an Age of Smart Machines, pushes back, explaining how we can continue to use artificial intelligence to our advantage, prudently but without fear of the robot apocalypse or of computers becoming conscious and free. No, Richards argues, those qualities cannot be programmed. They are, and will remain, the human advantage.

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