Michael Aeschliman explores Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, its defense of natural law, and its bracing takedown of scientism.

On this ID the Future host and geologist Casey Luskin continues his conversation with astrobiologist Guillermo Gonzalez about the many ways Earth’s place in the cosmos is fine tuned for life. In this second half of their conversation, Gonzalez zooms out to discuss the galactic habitable zone and the cosmic habitable age. Luskin says that the combination of exquisite cosmic and local fine tuning strongly suggests intelligent design, but he asks Gonzalez whether he thinks these telltale clues favor theism over deism? That is, does any of the evidence suggest a cosmic designer who is more than just the clockmaker God of the deists who, in the words of Stephen Dedalus, “remains within or behind or beyond or above his Read More ›

On today’s ID the Future, astrobiologist Guillermo Gonzalez, co-author of The Privileged Planet, provides a rapid survey of some of the growing evidence that Earth is finely tuned in numerous ways to allow for life. He draws a helpful distinction between local fine tuning and universal fine tuning. And he tells us about the many extra-solar planets astronomers have discovered in recent years and how all that new data continues to undermine the misguided assumption (encouraged by the misnamed “Copernican Principle”) that Earth is just a humdrum planet. Far from it, Gonzalez argues. The conversation is occasioned by Gonzalez’s essay in a newly released anthology, Science and Faith in Dialogue.

Dr. Richard Sternberg speaks on his mathematical/logical work showing the difficulty of identifying genes purely with material phenomena.

Today’s ID the Future features another reading from scholar Olufemi Oluniyi’s new book, Darwin Comes to Africa. In this excerpt we learn how Darwin himself laid much of the groundwork for social Darwinist ideas, primarily in his book The Descent of Man, and how those ideas were energetically developed in the ensuing decades by various mainstream scientists. Oluniyi further details how their work fueled pseudo-scientific racism against black Africans and other indigenous peoples outside the West. To learn more about this neglected corner of modern Western history, and for the good news that the flow of evidence has turned against Darwinism and, with it, social Darwinist principles, pick up Oluniyi’s book here.

On today’s ID the Future, host and evolutionary biologist Jonathan McLatchie sits down with software R&D engineer Jonathan Bartlett to discuss Bartlett’s work on the question of when genetic mutations are random versus directed. Bartlett explains that the issue isn’t an all-or-nothing affair. Often a given biological system dramatically limits the search space of possible mutations in useful ways, and then within that much more limited set of possible mutations, random processes are at play. He gives the example of antibody mutations. He argues that many biological systems show considerable evidence of having been beneficially designed for directed mutations. Why, then, are many mutations deleterious? He also has an answer for that. Tune in to learn more. Bartlett’s two peer-reviewed Read More ›

On today’s ID the Future, geologist Casey Luskin continues to unpack his recently published essay against the view that humans evolved from ape-like ancestors via blind Darwinian processes. In this episode he shares his experience of walking into the fossil hall at South Africa’s famous Maropeng Museum and immediately being confronted by a piece of shameless materialist propaganda, a Richard Dawkins quotation prominently displayed as part of a floor-to-ceiling display. The quotation insisted that humans are essentially just DNA survival machines. Luskin says, not so fast, and points out the various ways such a view fails to explain important aspects of human behavior, including altruistic behavior toward non-kin. Luskin and host Eric Anderson also call evolutionary theory to task for being Read More ›

On this ID the Future from the vault, Nancy Pearcey, professor and scholar in residence at Houston Baptist University, tells some of the political history of Darwinism, and explains how the same troubling issues persist today. Darwin was one of the first to say, if it isn’t purely naturalistic, it isn’t science. Others, then and now, have suggested that we can keep Darwinian evolution and just trust that God is at work behind the scenes. Pearcey, co-author of The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy, says that the problem with this tactic of wedding Darwinism and theism is that ultimately it turns one’s understanding of God into something that is largely private and subjective.

On today’s ID the Future, hear a Nigerian voice-actor reading from the opening pages of Nigerian scholar Olufemi Oluniyi’s new book, Darwin Comes to Africa. In this section from the preface, Oluniyi explores the relationship of Darwinism to Social Darwinism, and some of the ways Social Darwinism fueled and justified horrific ideas and actions among European thinkers and colonizers. Oluniyi tells the story of Russian scientist Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov, who, guided by Social Darwinist thinking, “sought to produce a race of super-soldiers for Stalin’s army by impregnating French Guinea women with the sperm of a dead chimpanzee—black African women, mind you, who were presumed to be less highly evolved and thus closer to chimpanzees than were white European women.” As Oluniyi Read More ›

On today’s ID the Future historian Richard Weikart (Cal State Stanislaus) dissects a recent Cambridge University Press book on social Darwinism by Jeffrey O’Connell and Michael Ruse. Weikart, author of Hitler’s Ethic, From Darwin to Hitler, Hitler’s Religion, and The Death of Humanity, says a major shortcoming of the Cambridge UP book is the authors’ attempt to put as much distance as possible between Darwin and eugenics thinking, and between Darwin and Hitler. The new book paints Darwin follower Herbert Spencer as the eugenics-championing bad guy and contends that Darwin and Darwinism had little or no influence on Hitler’s warped master-race ethic. Weikart patiently highlights some key evidence to the contrary, including statements front and center in Hitler’s writing. Did Darwin cause Hitler? No. Would Darwin have approved Read More ›