ID the Future Intelligent Design, Evolution, and Science Podcast
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Phillip Johnson

Hubble Goes High Def to Revisit the Iconic 'Pillars of Creation'

Astrophysicist Bijan Nemati on Why Intelligent Design Matters

On today’s ID the Future, astrophysicist and intelligent design proponent Bijan Nemati shares the first part of his story of science and faith. Those who follow Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture may know Nemati from his appearance in the popular ID documentary The Privileged Planet. Born and raised in Iran, he moved to the United States shortly before the Iranian revolution, became an atheist in college, but eventually found his way to a strong religious faith, in part through his exposure to the scientific evidence for intelligent design, first in biology and then in cosmology. Along the way he landed a high-level job with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and became a leading expert in space interferometer telescopes and the science and technology of detecting earth-like planets. Tune in as he shares with host Eric Anderson his journey of discovery.

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Tropical fishes on the coral reef

Ann Gauger: A Scientist’s Journey into the Intelligent Design Movement

On today’s ID the Future, biologist and intelligent design researcher Ann Gauger tells host Eric Anderson the rest of her story about how she was drawn into the intelligent design movement. The two discuss everything from the challenges she faced making it in a male-dominated field to the evidential power of beauty in the natural world. But how did she end up in the ID movement? After stepping out of a promising career as a research scientist to focus on her family and meeting the needs of an autistic child, she assumed that her life as a scientist was behind her. But then several years later she began reading the work of Darwin skeptics and intelligent design trailblazers—Phillip Johnson, Jonathan Wells, Michael Behe, and others—and then she realized they were all associated with a think tank, Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, just down the street from where she lived. She eventually signed DI’s Dissent from Darwin list, then a year or so after that she signed up for a regular ID newsletter, Nota Bene, signing her name “Ann Gauger, PhD.” She got a phone call from someone at Discovery Institute twenty minutes later. The rest of the story is by turns comical, inspiring, and touching. Before wrapping up her story she urges young women scientists to not let themselves get pressured out of contributing just because STEM fields tend to be male dominated. And she shares a story of being accused at a public university event of lying and suppressing research evidence that supposedly supported evolutionary theory. Not true, she explains.

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Bill Dembski Teases the 2021 Dallas ID Conference

On this ID the Future, intelligent design pioneer William Dembski talks with host Robert Crowther about his return to the intelligent design arena and what he’s been up to during his time away from the front lines of the ID movement. He also gives a sneak preview of the talk he plans to give at this Saturday’s Dallas Conference on Science and Faith. The February 20 conference is open to both in-person and live online attendance. To learn more about this exciting event, and to register, go here. 

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A Mousetrap for Darwin: The Interview, Pt. 1

On this ID the Future, Eric Anderson interviews Michael Behe about Behe’s new book, A Mousetrap for Darwin. In this episode, Behe explains that he was spurred to build this collection of essays by a review in the journal Science claiming he had never answered his critics on key points. That annoyed Behe, because he had, multiple times. A Mousetrap for Darwin compiles more than a hundred of his responses, some of them from difficult-to-access places. The book also contains fresh material from Dr. Behe, including some lively behind-the-scenes details about his interactions with colleagues and critics. In this episode, the Lehigh University biochemist answers misconceptions about irreducible complexity, responds to the claim that “molecular machines” is a misnomer, relates the surprising confessions some of his fellow biologists have made outside the spotlight about evolutionary theory, and offers his appraisal of why scientists in general don’t know what’s going on with studies in evolution or intelligent design. Behe remains optimistic, though. “You can’t deny the data forever,” he says.

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Honoring Phillip Johnson Pt. 6: Emily Johnson, Stephen Meyer

On this episode of ID the Future, we present two final, moving talks in a series honoring the late Phillip E. Johnson, author of the hit book Darwin on Trial and affectionately known as the godfather of the intelligent design movement. These two eulogies were given at his memorial service in November. The first speaker is Emily Johnson, Phillip Johnson’s daughter. The second is Stephen Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture.

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Honoring Phillip Johnson Pt. 5: John Mark Reynolds

On this episode of ID the Future we hear John Mark Reynolds’ concluding comments at the November 2019 symposium in honor of the late Phillip E. Johnson. Reynolds is a Fellow with the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, president of the Constantine School in Houston, and a long-time friend of Phillip Johnson. Reynolds says he saw in Johnson a mind constant and relentless in the pursuit of truth, a man who refused to distort the truth to fit it into a materialist paradigm, and who passed along that mindset to as many as he could, for he knew there is no success without successors.

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ripples in the sand

Michael Behe on the Design Idea That Won’t Go Away (and Shouldn’t)

On this episode of ID the Future, Jonathan Witt caught up with Darwin’s Black Box author and biochemist Michael Behe at the 2020 Dallas Science and Faith conference, where the two discuss an idea that many wish would just go away, but hasn’t. Charles Darwin himself told us how his evolutionary theory could be overturned: identify a biological system that couldn’t possibly have evolved by “numerous success successive slight modifications.” It’s to Darwin’s credit that he put his theory in “empirical harm’s way,” to quote philosopher Del Ratzsch, but as Witt and Behe note, Darwin also cleverly placed the burden of proof on his opponents, an arguably dubious maneuver given that his proposed evolutionary mechanism has never once been observed to generate a fundamentally new biological form or molecular machine. Still, Behe has taken up the challenge. Listen in as he discusses how his “irreducible complexity” arguments against Darwinism have fared, and for a teaser about an upcoming anthology where Behe directly engages his critics.

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Honoring Phillip Johnson, Pt. 2: Jonathan Wells and Paul Nelson

Today’s episode of ID the Future comes from a Berkeley, California symposium honoring the recently deceased Phillip Johnson. Biologist Jonathan Wells recalls how he met Johnson and the huge influence he had on Wells’ own research and writing. Then philosopher of biology Paul Nelson reminisces on Johnson’s keen intellect, his eye for hidden assumptions, his awareness that “we are not of our own devising,” and on the mountain range of new knowledge opening up to us in biology, one that scientists knew little about even 30 years ago and that Nelson says points strongly away from Darwin’s idea of common descent.

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Who Question with Copyspace, Chinese Language

David Berlinski Pays Tribute to Phillip Johnson

On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid reads from David Berlinski’s new book Human Nature. The excerpt is a tribute to Phillip Johnson and his 1991 book Darwin on Trial. Berlinski calls the work a “Majestic Ascent.” Johnson, he writes, not only brought evolution into question logically and scientifically; he brought the case where it belongs, before “the considered reflection of the human race.” Berlinski himself reflects on various empty attempts to build a scientific theory on prior commitments to materialism. “Darwin’s theories,” he says, “are correspondingly less important for what they explain, which is very little, and more important for what they deny, which is roughly the plain evidence of our senses.”

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Stephen Meyer on Phillip Johnson’s Courage

On this episode of ID The Future, Stephen Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, honors Phillip Johnson, the U.C. Berkeley law professor who helped ignite the modern intelligent design movement with the publication of his highly successful book Darwin on Trial.

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