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

human body

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Fitness man silhouette drinking water from a bottle

Liquid Harmony: How Our Bodies Manage Salt and Water

What does it take to stay alive? On this ID the Future, host Eric Anderson concludes his conversation with physician Howard Glicksman about the remarkable systems in the human body that help control water and sodium to keep us alive. In Part 2, Dr. Glicksman discusses two more innovations that add a "push-pull" effect to the systems discussed in Part 1. First, a sensor in the heart kicks into action when water or sodium levels get too high. Second, an anti-diuretic system in the hypothalamus that detects cell shrinkage and promotes water retention. In true engineering fashion, these systems are interdependent and tightly integrated, working together in unison (along with your own active participation!) to safeguard your body and help you live your best life. This is Part 2 of a two-part conversation. Read More ›
Cell membrane with blue background, 3d rendering.
Image licensed from Adobe Stock

How We Balance Water and Sodium to Maintain Life

On their own, the laws of nature don't tend toward life. To stay alive, living things utilize ingenious solutions. On this ID the Future, host Eric Anderson talks with physician Howard Glicksman about another way that the human body counteracts the natural tendency of the laws of nature to destroy life. Glicksman explains how the body controls water volume and sodium--two aspects that are absolutely critical to keeping us alive. It isn't just a single system. It's an interconnected and interdependent system of systems using a network of sensors, integrators, and effectors to maintain the life-giving balance of water and sodium in our bodies. This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation. Read More ›
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3d rendered medically accurate illustration of a sprinter

The Human Body As a Marvel of Engineering

Is your body engineered? Or did it evolve through impersonal, random processes over millions of years through natural selection? On this ID The Future, host Wesley J. Smith interviews engineer Steve Laufmann and physician Howard Glicksman about their recent book Your Designed Body. In their book, Laufmann and Glicksman evaluate the causal factors of Darwinism - heritability, random mutation, natural selection, and time - and find that they are both inadequate and incapable of producing the interconnected systems of the human body. "The systems that are required to make the human body work," says Laufmann, "are exactly the kinds of things that engineers design and build." Instead, they explain the body through the lens of engineering, showing that design is the most adequate mechanism currently available to explain how the origin of our amazing human bodies. Says Glicksman: "The more we understand how life actually works, the more the neo-Darwinian narrative becomes impossible." This is Part 1 of a two-part interview, originally airing on the Humanize podcast, a production of Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism. Read More ›
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Your Designed Body book cover, YDB

A Physician’s Fantastic Voyage through Your Designed Body

On today’s ID the Future Your Designed Body author and physician Howard Glicksman takes a deep dive with Philosophy for the People podcast host Pat Flynn into Glicksman’s new book, co-authored with systems engineer Steve Laufmann. As Glicksman puts it, he and Laufmann look not just at how the human body looks but at what it actually takes for it to work and not die, and what this implies for evolutionary theory. Begin by piling up the layers of complexity in the human body—the layer upon layer of complex interdependent systems. Then ask hard questions about whether any blind and gradual evolutionary process could have kept our evolutionary ancestors alive at every generational stage as all this was gradually engineered Read More ›

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Your Designed Body book cover, YDB

Your Designed Respiratory System: Causal Circularities and Irreducible Complexities

On this ID the Future, Your Designed Body author and physician Howard Glicksman again sits down with host and professor of neurosurgery Michael Egnor to further explore Glicksman’s new book, co-authored with engineer Steve Laufmann. Here Glicksman gives a quick flyover of what they explore in fascinating depth in the book, namely the irreducible complexity of that extraordinary systems of systems that is the human respiratory system. As Glicksman explains, there are individual systems that are irreducibly complex, and these are joined together into a higher-level system of systems that is also irreducibly complex, marked by causal circularities and coherent interdependencies at every turn. Without all of it guided by various highly precise control mechanisms, no life. Darwinian gradualism is Read More ›

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Your Designed Body book cover, YDB

Your Designed Body: “Irreducible Complexity on Steroids”

On today’s ID the Future, Your Designed Body co-author and physician Howard Glicksman talks with host and neurosurgery professor Michael Egnor about Glicksman’s new book, co-authored with systems engineer Steve Laufmann. Glicksman walks through a series of systems in the human body that are each irreducibly complex, and are each part of larger coherent interdependent systems. As Glicksman puts it, the human body is “irreducible complexity on steroids.” How could blind evolutionary processes, such as neo-Darwinism’s joint mechanism of natural selection working on random genetic mutations, build this bio-engineering marvel? Your Designed Body makes the case that it couldn’t. It’s not even close. What is required instead is foresight, planning, and engineering genius.

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Scientists Discover Nanotech for Body’s Blood Pressure Control, Pt. 1

On this ID the Future, physician and Evolution News writer Howard Glicksman discusses an exciting new discovery by researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, described at Science Daily as uncovering “the location of natural blood-pressure barometers inside our bodies that have eluded scientists for more than 60 years.” As the article reports, “The existence of a pressure sensor inside renin cells was first proposed back in 1957. It made sense: The cells had to know when to release renin, a hormone that helps regulate blood pressure. But even though scientists suspected this cellular barometer had to exist, they couldn’t tell what it was and whether it was located in renin cells or surrounding cells.” Dr. Glicksman and Read More ›