Intelligent Design the Future

Are we responsible for our choices? What can the laws of nature teach us about morality? On this classic episode of ID The Future from the archive, host Andrew McDiarmid welcomes back Dr. Eric Hedin, Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy at Ball State University, to conclude a discussion about his two recent articles on suffering, free will, and morality in a designed world.

Some scientists continue to argue that human free will is an illusion and that we have no more control over our choices than the decision to breathe. But this idea, known as determinism, flies in the face of our human experience. Dr. Hedin explains that far from being slaves to external forces, humans have a great latitude of freedom in the universe. In other words, the ball is in our court.

This is Part 2 of a two-part discussion.

A Quick Message From Host Andrew McDiarmid: Hey thanks for joining me! Did you know that although ID The Future is free content, it’s not free to produce? If you’re enjoying the interviews, commentaries, and readings you hear on the podcast, would you consider partnering with me to create more new content next year? Support the CSC today to help me generate another amazing lineup of interviews with ID scientists and scholars. Thanks for your support! When biologists use principles of engineering to study living systems, they can gain a richer, deeper understanding of how and why life works. But most biologists are trained to view design as the product of a blind, purposeless, gradual evolutionary process. Today on ID Read More ›

It's easy to be blown away by the examples of engineering prowess in the human body. But it can be challenging to turn that evidence into a robust argument for intelligent design you can share with skeptical friends and colleagues. To help you learn to do that, host Andrew McDiarmid begins a roundtable discussion with not one, not two, not three, but four guests to the podcast, all part of our team of resident scientists at Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture: geologist and lawyer Casey Luskin, biochemist and metabolic nutritionist Emily Reeves, biologist Jonathan McLatchie, and physicist Brian Miller. The first half of the discussion kicks off with a review of the basics of design detection, including various methods for empirically detecting the hallmarks of design in nature. After that, these four experts take turns diving into examples of extraordinary design in the human body. This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation.

Is natural evil an argument against intelligent design? And is human evil more consistent with naturalism or theism? On this classic ID The Future episode, host Andrew McDiarmid speaks with Dr. Eric Hedin about his article "Thoughts of Evil in a Designed World."

First, Dr. Hedin discusses the problem of natural evils like earthquakes, hurricanes, droughts, and other natural disasters. He reports that in the last century, the human death toll from such tragedies has dropped as we have learned to mitigate the effects of these natural forces in our lives. Hedin also discusses the impact of sickness on our bodies. "Any complex system can break down," Hedin reminds us, "because we do live in a world where the second law of thermodynamics applies not just to stars and mountainsides and physical systems but also to our own bodies." But suffering, tragic as it can be for all of us to endure, is not inconsistent with design.

Then there's the other major cause of suffering in life: human evil. If humans are products of an evolutionary process, we'd expect human evil to more or less match what we see in the animal world. But as recent attacks on the people of Israel starkly demonstrate, that is not the case. We are capable of much worse, as well as much better. Dr. Hedin explains that humans have the gift of rational override, something determinists tend to forget. This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation.

On today’s ID The Future, host Brian Miller concludes a two-part conversation with physicist Aaron Zimmer and mathematician Ellie Feder, hosts of the Physics to God podcast, as they critique current explanations for the laws of nature and argue for an intelligent cause of the rules that govern the universe. This half of the conversation tackles the attempts made by scientists to explain these life-friendly laws as the result of chance, not design. This is Part 2 of a two-part conversation.

You might already have heard that the laws that govern our universe are finely tuned to allow for our existence. But beneath the special numbers of the universe lies an even deeper mystery: the laws of nature themselves. On today's ID The Future, join host Brian Miller as he begins a two-part conversation with physicist Aaron Zimmer and mathematician Ellie Feder, hosts of the Physics to God podcast, as they discuss their new work arguing for an intelligent cause based on the qualitative structure of reality's rules.

The dream of finding a unique, logically necessary "theory of everything" has failed, which leaves an intriguing question: Why these specific laws? Zimmer and Feder explain why fundamental forces like gravity and complex systems like quantum mechanics are uniquely designed to produce a complex universe featuring atoms, molecules, stars, and life. The new argument focuses on the fundamental qualitative structure of the laws of nature, rather than the finely tuned quantities. Zimmer and Feder argue that these laws are not logically necessary, debunking the idea that a unique "theory of everything" could explain them. Instead, the laws are uniquely designed to produce a complex universe.

This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation.

Progress is an appealing idea, but what happens when we do not all desire the same things? On this ID The Future, we mark the 60th anniversary of the death of British writer C. S. Lewis as host Andrew McDiarmid concludes a conversation with Dr. John West about Lewis's prophetic warnings to us about science and scientism. Dr. West explains how scientism harms real scientific progress and leads to moral relativism. And he discusses how we can bring science back into alignment with older, deeper human truths. This is Part 2 of a two-part conversation.

No amount of small, blind, and gradual changes to the steam engine could ever have produced the internal combustion engine. To get to that fundamentally new type of engine, an infusion of new information was required. That analogy can be applied to the origin of biological life too. The spectacular order, complexity, and design we see in life could not have been achieved gradually by a process that lacked foresight. On today's ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid welcomes mathematician Granville Sewell to the podcast to share some of his compelling arguments for intelligent design.

We might think that mathematicians are focused on incredibly complex ideas and equations, way above the everyday thoughts of the rest of us. But as Sewell points out, mathematicians are trained to value simplicity, and complex problems can often be solved in simple ways. Sewell's straightforward, yet profound arguments for intelligent design are worth memorizing and sharing with your friends, family, and associates.

Failed ideas tend to eventually crumble under the weight of contrary evidence. Is modern evolutionary theory heading for the same fate? On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid speaks to biochemist Michael J. Behe about his core arguments for intelligent design and his recent experience sharing them at an Ivy League school. Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University and author of Darwin's Black Box, recently presented some of his ID arguments to faculty, students, and post-docs at Cornell University. Behe reveals how his talk was received and shares some of his key insights highlighting the problems with Darwinian evolution.

What happens when science leaves human values behind? Or when governments become beholden to scientists? On this classic ID The Future out of the vault, we mark the 60th anniversary of the death of British writer C. S. Lewis as host Andrew McDiarmid begins a conversation with Dr. John West about Lewis's prophetic warnings to us about science and scientism. Dr. West discusses what scientism is, what happens when science neglects deeper human truths, and how Lewis warned against the rise of technocracies. This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation.