Intelligent Design the Future

A recent ABC News article says the latest research about the hominid species Homo naledi "erases the idea of human exceptionalism." A new Netflix documentary suggests that humans are not that special after all. Should we believe the media hype? Or is there more to the story? On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid speaks with Dr. Casey Luskin to get an update on the Homo naledi controversy. In this episode, Dr. Luskin reviews each of the three main claims about Homo naledi made by Dr. Lee Berger and his team and gives us a summary of the strongest counter-arguments. He also gives his thoughts on the recent Netflix film. "It's very important to communicate scientific ideas to the public," says Luskin. "And I think it's great when scientists do that, when they do it carefully and responsibly and they're making sure that the evidence has been thoroughly worked out...in this case, there was a sense that they had sort of put the cart before the horse."

Biochemist Michael Denton was a featured speaker at the 2023 Westminster Conference, speaking on the topic of his latest book, The Miracle of Man. To mark the occasion, we bring you this classic episode of ID the Future from the archive. Here, Denton discusses with host Casey Luskin the various ways the universe is uniquely fit for carbon-based life, and perhaps even human life. Denton argues that when it comes to evidence of fine-tuning in the universe, the more you look, the more you find. "The design inference is something the individual must make on this evidence," he says. "The evidence is pretty extraordinary..the actual science shows that it's fit, uniquely fit, for beings like ourselves." Tune in to discover what he has found that has led him to the inference that our world is intelligently designed.

Are humans progressing morally as well as materially? What does it mean to be human in the cosmos? On this ID The Future, we bring you the second half of a stimulating conversation between Dr. David Berlinski and host Eric Metaxas on the subject of Berlinski's recent book Human Nature.

In Human Nature, Berlinski argues that the utopian view that humans are progressing toward evolutionary and technological perfection is wishful thinking. Men are not about to become like gods. "I'm a strong believer in original sin," quips Berlinski in his discussion with Metaxas. In other words, he believes not only that humans are fundamentally distinct from the rest of the biological world, but also that humans are prone to ignorance and depravity as well as wisdom and nobility. During the second half of their discussion, Berlinski and Metaxas compare and contrast the ideas of thinkers like psychologist Steven Pinker, author Christopher Hitchens, and physicist Steven Weinberg. The pair also spar gracefully over the implications of human uniqueness. Berlinski, though candid and self-critical, is unwilling to be pigeonholed. Metaxas, drawing his own conclusions about the role of mind in the universe, challenges Berlinski into moments of clarity with his usual charm. The result is an honest, probing, and wide-ranging conversation about the nature of science and the human condition.

This is Part 2 of a two-part interview.

Eminent paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould has argued that humans differ only in degree, not kind, from other organisms, and to think otherwise betrays an ancient and outdated prejudice. But does this match up with what science has revealed in the last century? On this ID The Future, we are pleased to share the first half of an engaging conversation between Dr. David Berlinski and host Eric Metaxas on the subject of Berlinski's recent book Human Nature. Some argue that humans are growing more peaceful, enlightened, and improved by the year, and that a coming technological singularity may well usher in utopia. Berlinski isn't buying it. "There is no society without its underlying ideology," he writes in Human Nature. A universal civilization requires a universal theory, and the prevailing grand narrative preferred by most materialist scientists today is fueled largely by Darwin's theory of evolution. But is the world of matter the only world that matters? In this conversation and in his book, Berlinski argues that human beings have a fundamental essence that is radically different from the essence of other organisms and that cannot be changed at will. It's a view that is supported by the latest evidence about life and the universe in biology, chemistry, physics, and even cosmology. And it represents a fatal flaw in the Darwinian story.

This is Part 1 of a 2-part conversation. This interview originally aired as a Socrates in the City event in 2022. We are grateful to Eric Metaxas for permission to share it. Watch the conversation in video form on YouTube.

Though they disagreed scientifically about the nature of human beings, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace maintained a lasting friendship. On this episode of ID The Future from the vault, we continue to celebrate the bicentennial of the birth of Alfred Russel Wallace. Host Mike Keas concludes his three-part discussion with Michael Flannery about Flannery’s book Nature’s Prophet: Alfred Russel Wallace and His Evolution from Natural Selection to Natural Theology. Here, Flannery describes the tolerance Darwin and Wallace maintained for each other, a quality crucial to the spirit of science and academic inquiry. He notes that some contemporaries of Darwin lacked this spirit of professional civility, including Darwin's "bulldog" Thomas Henry Huxley. Flannery also relates his experiences at the 2nd Annual International Conference on Alfred Russel Wallace. The paper he presented raised some eyebrows and inspired students and fellow Wallace scholars alike, some of which were entirely unaware of Wallace's natural theology. Both Keas and Flannery hold out hope that the same spirit of tolerance Darwin and Wallace demonstrated can be emulated today by Darwin's defenders and critics.

The RNA world is proposed by some to explain how early life began before DNA. But is RNA capable of maintaining a life-friendly self-replication rate? On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid welcomes back Dr. Jonathan McLatchie to discuss another headache for the RNA world scenario. Before a trial and error process like natural selection can even get started, self-replicating molecules must have a minimal accuracy rate to copy genetic material effectively. The required fidelity rate is estimated to be 2%. Any error rate higher than that results in error catastrophe for organisms. The average error rate in RNA copying is estimated to be around 17%, vastly higher than the estimated maximum error threshold for survival. McLatchie explains the implications of this for chemical evolutionary theories like the RNA world hypothesis. He also explains how a Bayesian approach to this evidence can provide us with the likeliest explanation for the origin of biological life. "The sorts of features that we observe in life are not particularly surprising if we suppose that a mind is involved," says McLatchie. But things like minimal self-replication fidelity are wildly surprising on a naturalistic hypothesis.

Just what is information? Why is so much of it needed for life? And where did it all come from? On this ID The Future, we're pleased to rebroadcast in audio form the latest episode in biochemist Michael Behe's Secrets of the Cell series on the mystery of biological information. In this episode, Behe starts by explaining just what information actually is. From the decision to flip a switch to the thousands of decisions needed to build complex structures, information is everywhere in our world, and it also runs the show in the hidden inner world of cells. Behe describes how cells manage information to build tissues, organs, and systems. He also explains that each cell is part of a massive collaboration of trillions of cells, where the right information at the right time flows through us in the form of chemical and electrical signals, activating different energy modes and keeping our entire body functioning efficiently.

To conclude, Behe invites us to join him for a sobering thought experiment: attempting to build an instruction manual for a human femur bone. Sounds simple enough in theory. It's just a bone, after all! But Behe reminds us of the many layers of complexity inherent in making even a single bone part of a larger, dynamic, and coordinated living system. Complex machines and working structures, says Behe, are possible only through specific code that determines form and function. And our uniform and repeated experience affirms that specified or functional information always arises from an intelligent source, not a strictly material process.

2023 marks the bicentennial of the birth of Alfred Russel Wallace, co-founder with Charles Darwin of the theory of evolution by natural selection. Unlike Darwin, Wallace thought that biology, chemistry, and cosmology proclaimed clear evidence of intelligent design. With this episode of ID the Future from the vault, we celebrate the life and achievements of one of the godfathers of intelligent design. Host Michael Keas continues his conversation with historian Michael Flannery about his book Nature’s Prophet: Alfred Russel Wallace and His Evolution from Natural Selection to Natural Theology. When Wallace broke with Darwin in 1869, it was over the nature of human beings. Flannery explains how Wallace became convinced of an “overruling intelligence” in nature — a cause sufficient to explain the special attributes of human beings: their facility with mathematics, their propensity toward abstract thought, their love of dance, their appreciation of music, and more. "All of these uniquely human attributes do not have per se any survival advantage in nature," says Flannery. "So...they can't be relied upon by Darwin's own principle of utility to be things which developed via natural selection. They have to come from some other source." And while some may claim Wallace's view is just a "gap" argument, Flannery notes that it's instead a positive argument calling on a cause sufficient to explain the special attributes of human beings.

This is Part 2 of a 3-part conversation.

The vertebrate blood coagulation system is a delicately regulated marvel that helps maintain the integrity of the circulatory system. Over 20 years ago, Michael Behe argued it was an example of an irreducibly complex system. Does Behe's claim still hold up today? On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid speaks with fellow Scotsman Dr. Jonathan McLatchie about his new article series examining recent claims that an evolutionary pathway has been identified for this incredible process. McLatchie is a fellow and resident biologist at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Forensic Biology, a Masters degree in Evolutionary Biology, a second Master’s degree in Medical and Molecular Bioscience, and a PhD in Evolutionary Biology. In their conversation, McLatchie describes how the blood clotting cascade works and why it poses a challenge for evolutionary theory. "Evolution doesn't perform particularly well when you need to make multiple co-dependent mutations," he says. McLatchie explains just how delicately regulated the blood coagulation system is and defends Behe's argument for the cascade, saying it exhibits irreducible complexity in spades. McLatchie also critiques recent proposals by the late biochemist Dr. Russel Doolittle, who claims to show a step-by-step evolution of vertebrate blood coagulation. McLatchie notes that Doolittle helps himself to irreducibly complex components as he attempts to explain its origin, inadvertently helping to confirm Behe's arguments in the process. Read McLatchie's 3-part article series on the blood clotting cascade at evolutionnews.org.

When it comes to biological life, even the simplest single-celled organism is an astonishingly complex multi-part system. Just how simple can a living cell get? On this ID The Future, Eric Anderson hosts another conversation with Dr. Robert Sadler to evaluate the claims of abiogenesis researchers. A recent Nature paper reports on an engineered minimal cell and how it contends with the "forces of evolution" compared to the non-minimal cell from which it was derived. In an attempt to find life's lowest common denominator, experimenters reduced the minimal cell down from 901 genes to 473 genes. The result was a fragile, irregular organism, sheltered and well cared for. But does this reduction in genomic complexity demonstrate evolution or devolution? Is it an unguided process at work or adaptation within the boundaries of an organism's design? "When people speak of evolution, they speak of random changes and natural selection," Sadler says. "But are they really random? Or does the organism have a built-in ability to change the genome to its own benefit?" Sadler puts the paper's results and claims in perspective for us.