Intelligent Design the Future

On this episode of ID The Future from the vault, Biologic Institute's Dr. Richard Sternberg explains what a gene is, how it works and how our understanding of genes and DNA has changed over the years. He also discusses the growing number of discoveries that are overturning the notion of junk DNA.

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On this episode of ID the Future, host Mike Keas talks with Sean McDowell about his book Understanding Intelligent Design: Everything You Need to Know in Plain Language, co-authored with William Dembski and released ten years ago. Sean talks about changes over the past ten years: Everyone has a smartphone and can, quicker than ever, find someone taking the other side of an argument, and many young people are trusting feelings more and science less. But some things haven’t changed, Sean argues: ID isn’t just good science, it’s good common sense. It just needs to be explained well.

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On this episode of ID the Future, Steve Laufmann critiques a recent article by Dr. Nathan H. Lents, The Botch of the Human Body. The article purports to show that so-called “design errors” in the human body prove it wasn’t designed. Laufmann describes five ways Lents’ argument is a “bizarre blend of ignorance and arrogance.” For instance, Lents often ignores something basic to engineering--the necessity of design tradeoffs.

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On this episode of ID the Future from the vault, Casey Luskin continues his interview with Biologic Institute director Douglas Axe about his paper, “The Limit of Complex Adaptation: An Analysis Based on a Simple Model of Structured Bacterial Populations,” in BIO-Complexity. Listen in as Dr. Axe reports on the work done at Biologic Institute to test whether amino acids are able to be converted from one function to another in Darwinian step-wise fashion.

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On this episode of ID the Future, Dr. Andrew Jones tells about his work on population genetics, with host Sarah Chaffee. Using statistical physics methods, by which, as he puts it, “we’re actually measuring things rather than telling stories,” scientists are refuting theories claiming that there could be no original human pair. These methods can show as well that even if evolution were otherwise possible, it would take much longer than the available time could allow.

On this episode of ID the Future, Sarah Chaffee interviews German paleo-entomologist Günter Bechly on the Cambrian explosion, the relatively sudden appearance of new body plans in the fossil record an estimated 550 million years ago. Dr. Bechly explains how the Cambrian explosion has been challenged by non-experts with an anti-ID bias, yet remains very much a real event in the opinion of specialists in the field — and with the continuing failure of Darwinian explanations, a strong source of evidential support for intelligent design.

This episode of ID the Future from the vault features a lecture excerpt by Biologic Institute scientist Doug Axe on lignin, which makes up 30 percent of non-fossil organic carbon on the planet. Former BIO-Complexity journal editor and Heretic co-author Matti Leisola has argued that lignin is a troubling case for Darwinian evolution. In this lecture excerpt, Axe explains Leisola’s argument and suggests that lignin fits well in a design paradigm.

On this episode of ID the Future, Michael Flannery, historian of science and emeritus professor from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, discusses a little known dustup among Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, and the great geologist Charles Lyell. Wallace, the co-discoverer of the theory of evolution by natural selection, eventually concluded that an overruling intelligence must be involved in the history of life. Scandalized, Darwin wrote to Lyell seeking support for his purely materialistic account of evolution. Lyell’s response may surprise you.

On this episode of ID the future, podcaster and Forbes contributor Jerry Bowyer concludes a conversation with John West about the intelligent design documentary film Revolutionary. They discuss German paleontologist Günter Bechly, who changed his mind about Darwinism after reading a book by the main protagonist of the film, Michael Behe. West also shares a fascinating postscript to that story. And West and Bowyer go on to discuss an upcoming Discovery Institute film, Human Zoos, which explores Darwin-inspired scientific racism in the early 20th century.

On this episode of ID the Future from the vault, Casey Luskin interviews Biologic Insitute director Douglas Axe about his peer-reviewed paper in BIO-Complexity, "The Limit of Complex Adaptation: An Analysis Based on a Simple Model of Structured Bacterial Populations."

Dr. Axe explains complex adaptations -- adaptive changes that require more than one simple mutation to a genome in order for a particular adaptation to work -- and the difficulty Darwinian evolution faces when beneficial mutations have maladaptive intermediate stages.