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

The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith

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ISS043E091794 (04/07/2015) --- Astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station are regular witness to the beauty of our planet Earth from their high vantage point. This image was taken on Apr 7, 2015 by the crew of Expedition 43.

William Dembski: Why Intelligent Design Matters

On this ID the Future intelligent design pioneer William Dembski unpacks one of his chapters in The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions about Life and the Cosmos, which Dembski co-edited with Joseph Holden and episode host Casey Luskin. The chapter, “Why Intelligent Design Matters,” focuses on ID’s cultural implications. Dembski notes that atheists use mindless evolution to provide a God-free explanation for life and the universe. Intelligent design checks that move, showing that blind material processes couldn’t have created many things in nature, much less the cosmos itself. Intelligent design is the better explanation. What about the idea that an alien created, say, the first life on Earth (intelligent design without the need for God)? Dembski says that idea–one that some atheists have suggested as a fallback explanation—is a poor explanatory substitute for an immaterial intelligent designer.

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Red marked mountain trail. Stone stairs in difficult rocky terrain. Tatra Mountains. Slovakia

ID Pioneer William Dembski on His Rocky and Rewarding Journey

On today’s ID the Future intelligent design pioneer William Dembski tells the story of his rocky journey into and out of higher education, the reasons for his sabbatical from the ID movement, his recent success as an entrepreneur, and his return to intelligent design work. Along the way Dembski bats down a mistaken rumor about his sabbatical. The occasion for his conversation with host Casey Luskin is the recent anthology Dembski and Luskin contributed to and helped edit, The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions about Life and the Cosmos.

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Casey Luskin and Adam Shapiro Debate Intelligent Design, Pt. 1

On today’s ID the Future, design theorist Casey Luskin, an editor of The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith, and science historian Adam Shapiro, co-author of Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction, debate the meaning and prospects of intelligent design. Here in this first half of their conversation with host Justin Brierley of the Unbelievable? podcast, the focus is on how the term intelligent design is used, or misused, and its relationship to theological issues. The interview is used by permission of Justin Brierley.

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Debunked Transitional Fossils Just the Tip of the Iceberg

On today’s ID the Future Casey Luskin hosts distinguished German paleontologist Günter Bechly to discuss Bechly’s essay in the recent Harvest House anthology, The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos. Darwinian evolution predicts a gradually branching tree of living forms, with one form shading into another over long periods of evolution, with each transitional step almost too modest to notice. Does the fossil record suggest such a pattern? Quite the opposite, Bechly says. Instead the pattern of the fossil record is consistently one of sudden appearance, and evolutionists have yet to successfully construct a single robustly populated series of gradually transitioning fossils that move chronologically from one form to a distinctly different morphology. Darwinism would lead us to expect such transitional sequences all over the fossil record, and yet evolutionists, searching assiduously for more than 160 years, have yet to construct a single one of these. Bechly debunks the hype around some fossil sequences, such as that said to have been assembled from ape-like to human. He explains the difference between “transitional forms” as paleontologists generally use the term and the meaning of the term for evolutionists attempting to defend modern Darwinism. And he and Luskin also discuss fossil forgeries, how to tell real from fake fossils, and four explosions of morphological novelty in the history of life.

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Fossil dinosaur lizard. Fossil of prehistoric lizard skeleton on the rock

Jonathan Wells and The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith, Pt. 1

Today’s ID the Future spotlights a new book, The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions about Life and the Cosmos, and specifically a chapter by biologist Jonathan Wells titled “What are the Top Scientific Problems with Evolution?” Wells is the guest, and the host is geologist and Center for Science and Culture associate director Casey Luskin, who co-edited the anthology from Harvest House Publishers. In this episode the first problem that Wells highlights concerns homology and convergence. A second problem involves fossils. Darwin anticipated “innumerable transitions” in the fossil record, but such a rainbow of transitional forms has never been found. Not even close. Another problem, molecular phylogenies. Another: the lack of observational evidence that natural selection can help to accumulate many small changes into major new innovations. What about the power of random mutations, with or without natural selection? Wells says that this, too, is a problem for modern evolutionary theory, and he provides laboratory evidence to support his claim. Another problem: evidence pouring in from what are known as molecular phylogenies. As Luskin notes, there is much more in the essay, and it’s only one of many essays in the new anthology, with contributions from many of the leading lights of the intelligent design movement. Each essay is written in a concise and accessible form. Find the new book at Amazon and other online booksellers.

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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.