Intelligent Design The Future

On this episode of ID the Future from the vault, CSC Senior Fellow Dr. Ann Gauger talks about a recent paper in the journal Cell, and how it seems that the more we look, the greater order we find. She discusses a critical transition in embryo development, a compound which aids this transition, and the origins of this compound. According to Gauger, this order may point beyond neo-Darwinian processes.

On this episode of ID the Future, biologist Jonathan Wells speaks again with distinguished Brazilian scientist Marcos Eberlin about Eberlin’s new book Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose. A world leader in the field of mass spectrometry, Eberlin explains how chemistry reveals foresight in the design of molecules and chemical systems. To the untrained eye water looks like a simple clear liquid. To the chemist it has 74 unique, even “weird” properties essential for life. And lightning seems purely destructive, but it, too, is essential for life. As Eberlin argues, both of these suggest foresight in the design of life--foresight to solve problems necessary to make life on earth possible.

On this episode of ID the Future, Jonathan Wells speaks with distinguished Brazilian chemist Marcos Eberlin about Eberlin’s new book Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose. Eberlin is a world leader in the field of mass spectrometry, and the book is endorsed by three Nobel laureates. In this first of two conversations, Eberlin speaks to the scientist’s duty to follow the evidence where it leads, and explains how the incredible problem-solving engineering involved in just one structure, the cell membrane, must lead one to the conclusion that a mind planned it in advance.

On this episode of ID the Future from the vault, Sarah Chaffee interviews CSC Senior Fellow Ann Gauger about apoptosis – or self-induced cell death – and how it plays into multicellular life. Listen in to learn more about the immune system, development, and how apoptosis demonstrates purpose.

On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid interviews paleontologist Günter Bechly about the latest hominin fossil that’s once again “rewriting human evolutionary history.” News of the find reached the media early this month. Dubbed homo luzonensis due to discovery on the Philippine island of Luzon, it poses yet another challenge to neo-Darwinian theory. A fossil like this one should have been found in Africa, not the Philippines. It should have been a lot older than it is, and it confuses the human evolutionary tree even more than before. “Darwinian theory predicts there should be one true tree of life that should converge,” says Bechly, “but the fossil record respectfully disagrees, again and again.”

On this episode of ID the Future, host Jay Richards and astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, authors of The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery, discuss what’s changed in the 15 years since the book first appeared. One big change, the number of exo-planets discovered has exploded from 200 or so to several thousand. Gonzalez walks through this and other exciting recent advances in astronomy, and the two discuss how these new discoveries bear on the predictions and arguments they advanced in their book. Please consider donating to support the IDTF Podcast: idthefuture.org/donate.

On this episode of ID the Future from the vault, Ann Gauger shares about the cell as a bustling city. What is the powerplant of the cell? How about its thoroughfares? Waste recycling? Listen in to learn more!

On this episode of ID the Future, Jay Richards interviews astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez on the first images ever taken of a black hole, released to the public early in April 2019. Not that it’s exactly an “image,” for as Gonzalez explains, no light can escape a black hole. But this massive object — equaling billions of suns in mass — in the M87 galaxy still provides important information, adding to the list of confirmations for Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, which also provides further support for Big Bang cosmology. And that, in turn, tells us our universe isn’t infinitely old — so where did it come from, if not an intelligent designer?

On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid continues his series with Michael Behe about Behe’s new book Darwin Devolves: The New Science about DNA That Challenges Evolution. Here Behe explains the “Revenge of the Principle of Comparative Difficulty,” According to this principle, evolution it is much easier for evolution to create a new adaptive niche by damaging one or more genes than even the simplest new genes and irreducibly complex structures. Along the way, Behe also explores how biology got enamored of mathematical theory built on “hopeful ignorance” regarding the nature of genes. Please consider donating to support the IDTF Podcast: idthefuture.org/donate.

On this episode of ID the Future, CSC Senior Fellow Ann Gauger discusses the library of the cell.  She delves into transcription and translation and the speed with which these processes take place. Listen in to learn more about the workings of the cell!

On this episode of ID the Future, Emily Kurlinski speaks with author and professor Melissa Cain Travis about the path that led to her work in the field of science and faith, and the writing of her book Science and the Mind of the Maker: What the Conversation Between Faith and Science Reveals about God. It started for her at a conference ten years ago where she heard Dr. Michael Behe sharing on intelligent design a conference. That led to studies and research on science and faith, and a commitment communicating it understandably for lay persons. Early next month it comes full circle, as she’ll be sharing the program with him and others at the May 3-4 Discovery Institute conference “Reasons 2019: New Conversations on Science and Faith” in Houston (see discovery.org/events to register).

On this episode of ID the Future, biochemist Michael Behe speaks further about his new book Darwin Devolves: The New Science about DNA That Challenges Evolution. Behe explains how evolutionists in the past had freedom to use their imaginations to suppose ways evolution could achieve major innovations, but new research at the molecular level now reveals obstacles previously unimagined. The most productive adaptations in nature tend overwhelmingly to be in one direction, Behe says, degrading or destroying genes, and no series of mutations have ever demonstrated the kind of coordinated effects needed to produce new systems.

On this episode of ID the Future from the vault, Todd Butterfield interviews Michael Flannery, author of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Rediscovered Life. Flannery discusses his article on the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras (ca. 500-428 B.C.), who was one of the first to articulate an argument for design in nature. Read the article here!

On this episode of ID the Future, Emily Kurlinski interviews bioethicist, author, and Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith on transhumanism. It’s a technology-driven anti-aging effort to create a post-human species with advanced intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, and even immortality. Built on zeal and desperation to defeat death, it’s a quasi religion, except with no plan or apparent interest in cultivating a more wise and loving human species — which, Smith argues, makes it more dangerous than it might at first appear. Please consider donating to support the IDTF Podcast: idthefuture.org/donate.

This episode of ID the Future features the second and concluding part of a talk given by Stephen Meyer at the 2019 Dallas Science and Faith Conference. Picking up from his previous comments on how atheistic/materialistic assumptions have come to dominate much of the science community. That’s the bad news. The good news, Meyer says, is the the discovery of multiple lines of scientfic evidence with theism-friendly implications, including confirmation that our universe had a beginning, a development “anticipated by no one except the theologians,” in the words of astronomer Robert Jastrow. Materialistic atheism can’t effectively explain where that finely tuned Big Bang came from, but “Let there be light” — God’s first words in Genesis — provides a great explanation. Meyer offers this and other lines of evidence for theism in this talk, drawn from his upcoming book, The Return of the God Hypothesis, now available for pre-order at Amazon.