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

Prometheus

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Taking Leave of Darwin’s Warm Little Pond

Today’s ID the Future offers a sneak peek at the new book Taking Leave of Darwin: A Longtime Agnostic Discovers the Case for Design by Neil Thomas (Discovery Institute Press). Here Scotsman Andrew McDiarmid reads from a Chapter 2 segment titled “The Elusive First Step.” Much of the book is a critical examination of Darwin’s theory of biological evolution, in its original and updated forms; but here Thomas takes up Darwin’s proposal for the unguided origin of the first living cell. Thomas, like others before, points up the persistent and growing problems with a designer-free origin of life, but here he also explores some of the cultural influences that primed society to view the leap from non-life to life as easily made. Frankenstein’s monster makes an appearance, but tune in to see how the behavior of some actual investigators grew almost stranger than fiction. And to learn how some of the beliefs undergirding the pseudoscience of re-animation persist today in reincarnated form (in the field of abiogenesis), pick up a copy of Thomas’s Taking Leave of Darwin: A Longtime Agnostic Discovers the Case for Design.

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Face made of shiny metal cubes with clouds in background.3d render

John Lennox Talks AI, SciFi, Transhumanism and the Image of God

On this episode of ID the Future, host Robert Marks continues his conversation with Oxford University mathematician John Lennox about Lennox’s new book 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity. Lennox reviews mythology and science fiction writing stretching from the ancient poet Hesiod to the novelist Dan Brown and MIT physicist Max Tegmark. He says that artificial intelligence (AI) predictions down through the ages are all heavily dependent on theological and philosophical presuppositions. He and Marks also discuss AI’s cousin, transhumanism, its surprising history, and its potentially very dark future, including the risk of what C.S. Lewis called “the abolition of man.”

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Map of Universe from Prometheus film

Intelligent Design in Prometheus

On this episode of ID the Future, David Boze discusses the intelligent design undertones in Prometheus that have many critics riled up. Prometheus, the long-awaited prequel to the classic sci-fi horror film Alien, entertains the idea of the creation of life by questioning the origin of complex information. While the film primarily aims to provide horror thrills and rushes of adrenaline, Prometheus also raises important philosophical and scientific questions about who we are and why we’re here. Warning: this podcast contains a few spoilers, but nothing you couldn’t have gathered from the trailers, clips, and commercials about the film.