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

paleoanthropology

Heavenly Light

Not Enough Evidence: Casey Luskin on Recent Homo Naledi Claims

A recent ABC News article says the latest research about the hominid species Homo naledi "erases the idea of human exceptionalism." A new Netflix documentary suggests that humans are not that special after all. Should we believe the media hype? Or is there more to the story? On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid speaks with Dr. Casey Luskin to get an update on the Homo naledi controversy. In this episode, Dr. Luskin reviews each of the three main claims about Homo naledi made by Dr. Lee Berger and his team and gives us a summary of the strongest counter-arguments. He also gives his thoughts on the recent Netflix film. "It's very important to communicate scientific ideas to the public," says Luskin. "And I think it's great when scientists do that, when they do it carefully and responsibly and they're making sure that the evidence has been thoroughly worked out...in this case, there was a sense that they had sort of put the cart before the horse." Read More ›
cradle of humankind
Lighted caves of Cradle of Humankind, a World Heritage Site in Gauteng Province, South Africa, the site of 2.8 million year old early hominid fossil and Mrs. Ples

New South Africa Book Explores Evidence of Design

Today’s ID the Future spotlights a new free online ID book from South Africa, Science and Faith in Dialogue, with contributions from Stephen Meyer, Hugh Ross, Guillermo Gonzalez, James Tour, Fazale Rana, Marcos Eberlin, and others. Geologist Casey Luskin joins host Eric Anderson to tell how the new peer-reviewed book came together and to describe the chapter he contributed, “Evolutionary Models of Palaeoanthropology, Genetics, and Psychology Fail to Account for Human Origins: A Review.” Luskin did his PhD in South Africa and had many opportunities to study various hominid fossils. Here he explains why he is convinced that intelligent design far better explains the fossil evidence than does Darwinian evolution.

Casey Luskin’s South Africa Adventures

On this ID the Future, Rob Crowther interviews geologist Casey Luskin, recently back from getting his PhD in geology at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. Luskin, who formerly worked for Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, and has just now rejoined the CSC, tells about his adventures doing field research in Africa, his side interest in human origins, his cross-cultural experiences, the amazing game parks, museums, and fossil sites he visited, and a little bit about his PhD, including some evidence suggesting that parts of Africa and Western Australia used to be connected.

Günter Bechly: Human Evolution’s Once ‘Indisputable Facts’ Now “Dead Theory”

On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid interviews paleoentomologist Günter Bechly about human evolution, and how the story keeps getting rewritten. The “out of Africa” story was once “indisputable,” but recent evidence has overturned it; it’s now “dead.” The human phylogenetic tree is riddled with question marks. An original human pair is no longer out of the question. So much weakly founded evidence has been oversold in the past, says Bechly, it’s still wise to apply a healthy dose of skepticism toward today’s “indisputable facts” of human evolution. Please consider donating to support the IDTF Podcast.