Intelligent Design the Future

On this episode of ID the Future, Sarah Chaffee discusses the University of Chicago’s action to uphold academic freedom, including a letter to incoming freshman and a piece by Pres. Robert Zimmer in the Wall Street Journal.  As Zimmer notes, “Every attempt to legitimize silencing creates justification for others to restrain speech that they do not like in the future.”

Today on Intelligent Design the Future we hear from the editors of the major new Crossway book, Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique. Philsophers J.P. Moreland and Stephen Meyer examine contradictions right at the heart of theistic evolution, answer logical challenges directed back at intelligent design theory, and explain more than one severe issue with thinking science ever has or ever could thrive on its own, without strong support from both philosophy and theology.

 

Sarah Chaffee interviews German paleontologist Günter Bechly on the book Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique, specifically his chapter with Stephen Meyer on The Fossil Record and Universal Common Ancestry. Bechly, who had been a prominent proponent of Darwinism, discovered late in his career that there are significant scientific reasons to doubt the evolutionary story. His chapter in the book describes some of these reasons. A big one: the abrupt appearance of major body plans in the fossil record, and not just in the often-discussed Cambrian Explosion. In fact, as Bechly puts it, “Abrupt appearances are the rule." In this episode he discusses one of these abrupt appearances in particular.

On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin interviews Wayne Rossiter, author of Shadow of Oz: Theistic Evolution and the Absent God. Rossiter shares about the biggest scientific and theological problems he sees with theistic evolution.

On this episode of ID the Future, Tod Butterfield reads from the beginning of Heretic: One Scientist’s Journey from Darwin to Design, by Jonathan Witt and Matti Leisola. It’s an exciting new book that tells the story of how one major European scientist who applied the maxim, “Scientists are supposed to investigate mysteries with an open mind; not assume an explanation from the outset.” He came to see that arguments insisting on purely material causes in nature are based on assumptions, not evidence. He noted how history shows that scientific consensus doesn’t always mean scientific truth. And ultimately — in spite of serious opposition from mainstream science — he came to see that the evidence in nature really points to intelligent design. 

On this episode of ID the Future, German paleontologist Günter Bechly describes the Dali skull from China, and how it disrupts the conventional out-of-Africa account of human origins. There were already several significant discoveries in 2017 upending traditional scientific accounts of human evolution. And now another one. Bechly asks, “How many more major rewritings do we need to endure until a major rethinking is considered?” For more, read the essay on Evolution News.

 

On this episode of ID the Future from the vault, Casey Luskin interviews Wayne Rossiter, author of Shadow of Oz: Theistic Evolution and the Absent God. Rossiter shares about his conversion away from atheism in 2008, and the writing of his book on theistic evolution.

In this episode of ID the Future, Tod Butterfield interviews Michael Egnor, pediatric neurosurgeon at Stony Brook University, about the science-destroying practice of Lysenkoism. Dr. Egnor discusses Trofim Lysenko, a Soviet agronomist who for several decades in the 20th century was allowed to use the power of the state to enforce belief in Lamarckianism in the Soviet Union.  The government punished people who questioned the reigning view, and the results were catastrophic. Today the term Lysenkoism applies to any use of government power to enforce scientific orthodoxy. It need not mean the Gulag; it could involve, for instance, the denial of federal grants to quietly enforce Darwinian orthodoxy. And Lysenkoism holds science back.

On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid presents German paleontologist Günter Bechly’s recent critique of ape-to-man evolution. Listen in to learn about six discoveries in 2017 that throw the standard evolutionary account of human origins into chaos. Perhaps the most striking of these: the Cretan footprints.

On this episode of ID the Future, hear from Michael Flannery, historian and expert on Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-founder of the theory of evolution. Dr. Flannery responds to claims of new-found evidence that Darwin and Wallace stole the theory of natural selection from Patrick Matthews, explaining why these claims have little credibility or historical foundation.