On this ID the Future from the vault, we hear part two of a panel discussion on “The Danger of Totalitarian Science,” held at the July 2018 FreedomFest in Las Vegas. This discussion followed a screening there of the film Human Zoos, written and directed by John West, who emceed the panel discussion. Here, Discovery Institute senior fellow George Gilder raises concerns about artificial intelligence (AI) — but not the usual economic ones. He’s more concerned about the thinking underlying some of the more ambitious attempts at AI — and how it would tend to turn the whole world into one very large yet confining human zoo.

On today’s ID the Future, physicist Bijan Nemati, an expert in advanced astronomical instruments, discusses the new James Webb space telescope with host Jay Richards. The NASA telescope has been successfully launched into space and has reached its destination, known as the Lagrange Point 2, roughly a million miles from Earth. If all goes well with the extremely delicate multi-phase deployment, the Webb telescope will go online in late spring or early summer 2022 and begin sending back stunning images. In this first of two episodes, Nemati describes the remaining steps in the telescope’s deployment, some of the extraordinary technology involved, and the telescope’s amazing powers, including its ability to see into the far infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, and Read More ›

Today’s ID the Future features the second half of a recent webinar spotlighting historian Richard Weikart and his new book, Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism. Here Weikart fields questions from the webinar audience. Along the way Weikart touches on the connection between Darwinism and scientific racism, the objection that Darwinism, properly understood, doesn’t support scientific racism (much less Nazi racism), the racism inherent in Darwin’s own writings and those of prominent early Darwinists such as Ernst Haeckel, and more recent manifestations of Darwinian-inspired scientific racism both academic and populist. This and much more is explored in Weikart’s new book, available here. And for scientific reasons to reject Darwinism along with its racists implications, jump over Read More ›

On today’s ID the Future, philosopher of biology Paul Nelson discusses his chapter in a recent Harvest House anthology edited by host Casey Luskin, The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith. Nelson says the theory of universal common descent, a key component of modern evolutionary theory, has generated multiple predictions that have failed. The prediction he discusses here is that there would turn out to be a single universal genetic code, since that’s what we should expect if all life on earth is descended from the last universal common ancestor (LUCA). Findings over the past three decades have  proven that prediction spectacularly wrong. How does the theory of universal common descent shrug off this contrary empirical finding? The trick for Read More ›

On this classic ID the Future, hear the story of how leading German paleo-entomologist and Darwinist Günter Bechly became convinced of intelligent design. Host Ray Bohlin shares the clip from the documentary Revolutionary, and sits down with the star of the film, Lehigh University biologist and Darwin’s Black Box author Michael Behe, to discuss some possible lessons to glean from Bechly’s dramatic story. In the time since the documentary was filmed, Bechly was forced to resign from his position as curator at the prestigious State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany. Then his English language Wikipedia page disappeared in an apparent attempt to shove this distinguished scientist down a memory hole. Bechly, meanwhile, is standing by his convictions and continuing Read More ›

Today’s ID the Future is part one of a recent webinar featuring Darwinian Racism author and noted historian Richard Weikart, discussing his new book with webinar host and Center for Science and Culture managing director John West. Weikart and West begin by discussing Whoopi Goldberg’s recent claim that the Jewish Holocaust under Nazi Germany was not racist. Yes it was, explains Weikart. Hitler and the Nazis believed that the Nordic or Aryan Europeans, which included Germans, were a superior race, and they viewed Jews, blacks, Slavs, and other races as inferior. Worse, Hitler and other Nazis drew upon Darwin’s theory of evolution, and in particular ideas laid out in Darwin’s The Descent of Man, as well as the work of Read More ›

On this ID the Future, biophysicist Cornelius Hunter explores Charles Darwin’s theological arguments for his theory of evolution. By theological, Hunter doesn’t mean that Darwin was arguing for theistic evolution. He means that Darwin received what is known as theological utilitarianism from the intellectual culture of his youth, which had strong deistic tendencies and expected everything in creation to be perfectly adapted, and he made a case against it, presenting mindless evolution as a better explanation for his observations of the biological world than theological utilitarianism. But one problem with this approach, according to Hunter, is that it assumed that theological utilitarianism is THE alternative to blind evolution. In fact, there are other alternatives, including an orthodox Judeo-Christian understanding of Read More ›

On this ID the Future from the vault we hear from Richard Weikart, author of the new book Darwinian Racism, and John West, director of the award-winning hit documentary Human Zoos. The episode is the first part of a panel discussion from FreedomFest 2018, where West and Weikart speak on “The Danger of Totalitarian Science.” Science is a great blessing, but like all exercises of human reason and creativity, it can be abused. When science is considered the only route to knowledge, scientific experts are given the right to rule, and science becomes totalitarian. It happened decades ago, as documented in the Discovery Institute film Human Zoos. But don’t think it’s all in the past. As the panelists explain, totalitarian science remains with Read More ›

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Today’s ID the Future features the newly released Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism by distinguished historian Richard Weikart. Here Andrew McDiarmid reads from the introduction and chapter one. Weikart begins his book by revisiting the harrowing Columbine High School mass shooting and underscoring the curious fact that one of the mass shooters, a white nationalist, claimed inspiration from not just Adolf Hitler but also Charles Darwin. Since Darwin was a peaceable Victorian English gentleman and naturalist, what possible connection could there be between Darwin on the one hand and Hitler and contemporary white nationalism on the other? Weikart shows that the connection is in fact quite clear from the writings of Hitler, Darwin himself, and Read More ›

On today’s ID the Future Biola University physicist John Bloom discusses his chapter in the recent anthology The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith, co-edited by host Casey Luskin. Bloom’s focus in his contributed chapter is the pivotal role of Christianity in the rise of science. Bloom, the academic director of Biola’s master’s program in science and religion, draws on his PhD training in physics but also on his PhD in ancient Near Eastern studies and his study of the history of science. Here he argues that while the Babylonians and Greeks contributed some discoveries and insights that would eventually play into the rise of science, science did not take off, was not born, until a cluster of crucial ideas Read More ›