ID the Future Intelligent Design, Evolution, and Science Podcast
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intelligent evolution

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Michael Flannery on the Origin of Darwin’s Worldview

On this episode of ID the Future, science historian and host Michael Keas talks with fellow science historian Michael Flannery about the newly updated book Intelligent Evolution: How Alfred Russell Wallace’s World of Life Challenged Darwin. Flannery tells of Darwin’s involvement in the Plinian Society, a “freethinkers” group at Edinburgh University where he studied medicine as a teenager. It was there that he first encountered radical philosophical materialism, the worldview that laid the philosophical foundation for his work in evolution. Flannery also speaks of Alfred Russel Wallace’s “intelligent evolution” and how it differs from Darwinism and from today’s theistic evolution — what Flannery prefers to call “Darwinian theism.”

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Nature’s Prophet, Pt. 1: How Alfred Russel Wallace Embraced Intelligent Design

On this episode of ID the Future, historian Michael Flannery discusses his just-released book Nature’s Prophet: Alfred Russel Wallace and His Evolution from Natural Selection to Natural Theology. It’s the intellectual history of Wallace, who is credited with independently propounding the the theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin insisted on a purely materialistic version of the theory, but as Wallace studied the evidence, he grew convinced that intelligent design also played a role in the history of life, particularly in the origin of humans. Though not a religious person, he broke with the rising scientism of his day to argue that there must be some “overruling intelligence” behind nature.

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Humpback whales - Reunion island 2014.

Intelligent Evolution and Darwin’s Rival

On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin talks with historian Michael Flannery for the third installment of this series on Alfred Russell Wallace and Flannery’s new book, Alfred Russel Wallace’s Theory of Intelligent Evolution: How Wallace’s World of Life Challenged Darwinism. Wallace lived a century ago — how is it fair to call Wallace a seminal figure for intelligent design? Listen in as Michael Flannery explains that while we cannot judge Wallace by the standards of today, we should view him as a man who took the latest ideas of science and drew “one fundamental conclusion: that certain features of the universe and of living thing are best explained by an intelligent cause and that an undirected natural selection was inadequate explanation for many key aspects of biological life.” Flannery also discusses how Wallace most closely resembles ID theorist Michael Behe in his acceptance of common descent and skepticism that the Darwinian mechanisms of chance and utility are capable of explaining everything in nature. Michael Flannery is Professor and Associate Director for Historical Collections at the Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has previously published on Alfred Russel Wallace in Forbes Magazine online, and his book is published by Erasmus Press. Click on the links below if you missed the first installments of this series:Part OnePart Two