Intelligent Design the Future

On this ID the Future from the vault, Jorn Dyerberg, the Danish biologist and co-discoverer of the role of omega-3 fatty acids in human health and nutrition, talks with host and physicist Brian Miller about finding irreducible complexity in cells, and how it takes many enzymes and co-enzymes working together for life-essential metabolism to work in every living cell. This poses a problem for neo-Darwinism, Dyerberg explains, since if these enzymes showed up one at a time, and evolved via one or two small mutations at a time, as Darwinian gradualism posits, then “over these eons, the other enzymes would just be sitting there waiting for the next one to come,” and waiting around without any function that might explain Read More ›

On today’s ID the Future, author and engineer Steve Laufmann delves into the theory of biological design he develops in Your Designed Body, his new book co-authored with physician Howard Glicksman. Laufmann explains how his engineering background has helped him further develop design theory and, with help from Glicksman, apply it to the human body. In exploring the causal capacities of intelligent design, Laufmann spotlights four elements: (1) intentional actions, which in turn require mind, agency, and foresight; (2) adaptive capabilities, which involve, among other things, control systems that employ sensors, logic, and effectors; (3) design properties (e.g., modularity); and (4) degradation prevention. The last of these features is implemented by engineers to get a system to last longer. In Read More ›

On today’s ID the Future, Your Designed Body co-author and systems engineer Steve Laufmann continues his conversation with host and neurosurgeon Michael Egnor. In this episode, Laufmann reviews four causal factors involved in Darwin’s theory of evolution, and explains why they lack the power to generate life’s great variety of forms. To dive deeper into his argument, check out Laufmann’s new book co-authored with physician Howard Glicksman.

On this ID the Future from the vault, hear a segment from Discovery Institute Vice President John West’s talk given at the Dallas Conference on Science and Faith, on how Darwinism has corroded Western culture. Here he examines the morally poisonous effects of Darwinism on marriage, sexual ethics, and religion, such that virtually anything can be defended as OK, and no particular culture’s ethic is to be preferred over another. Humankind’s spiritual purpose has likewise been eroded. Yet West closes with hope by pointing to moving examples of science in our generation uncovering more and more signs of intelligent design and purpose in nature. As West further notes, a new generation of researchers, including at least one Fulbright scholar, are Read More ›

On today’s ID the Future, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor hosts systems engineer Steve Laufmann, author with physician Howard Glicksman of the new book Your Designed Body. Egnor makes the surprising confession that his medical library is full of engineering texts because at some point he discovered that engineering texts, and engineering principles, often shed more light on human physiology than did his physiology books. Egnor, then, is extraordinarily well prepared to interview Laufmann about the amazing engineering of the human body. Tune in for Part 1, and stay tuned for Parts 2 and 3.

On this ID the Future, astrophysicist Bijan Nemati delves further into why intelligent design matters to him and into the exciting work he’s doing for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman space telescope, slated for deployment in three or four years. That telescope and his contribution to it, as it so happens, tie directly into the popular science documentary he participated in, The Privileged Planet. Nemati describes how the instrument his company is building for the telescope is designed to aid in the search for earth-like planets beyond our solar system and why the list of criteria for planetary habitability is longer than many people suppose.

On this classic ID the Future we hear commentary on the singularity from distinguished cosmologist Frank Tipler, co-author of The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. The singularity in question isn’t the supposed future singularity imagined by transhumanists, but the evidentially well-supported singularity at the foundation of the Big Bang. The equations are clear, says Tipler, as are their implications: among its many arresting features, the Big Bang singularity had an existence outside of space and time, was intrinsically infinite, and was not subject to any laws of physics. Atheists today still resist this conclusion, Tipler says, but only this conclusion has experimental support, and the negative implications for atheism are hard to miss. This episode is drawn from bonus material from the YouTube film series Science Uprising.

On today’s ID the Future, astrophysicist and intelligent design proponent Bijan Nemati shares the first part of his story of science and faith. Those who follow Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture may know Nemati from his appearance in the popular ID documentary The Privileged Planet. Born and raised in Iran, he moved to the United States shortly before the Iranian revolution, became an atheist in college, but eventually found his way to a strong religious faith, in part through his exposure to the scientific evidence for intelligent design, first in biology and then in cosmology. Along the way he landed a high-level job with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and became a leading expert in space interferometer telescopes and the science and technology of detecting earth-like planets. Tune in as he shares with host Eric Anderson his journey of discovery.

On today’s ID the Future from the vault, systems engineer Steve Laufmann further explores physician Howard Glicksman’s 81-part Evolution News series on the human body’s sophisticated architecture. Here in Part 2 of the discussion, Laufmann explains the engineering concept of coherence and the challenge it poses for evolutionary gradualism. It’s all about maintaining function at every creative stage along an adaptive continuum, he says, and once we understand just how many of the body’s systems and subsystems require various other systems and subsystems in order to function at all, we begin to see the monster bootstrapping problem Darwinism faces. Laufmann describes the prospect of blind evolution successfully launching a complete and functional body plan as “impossible squared.” But we do exist, so how was the impossible made possible? Via the same type of cause employed to fashion and assemble the many parts required to build a functional automobile, Laufmann says—intelligent design. He and Glicksman expand this argument, and take an awe-inspiring journey through the engineering marvels of the human body, in their November 2022 book, Your Designed Body. Get your copy here.

On this ID the Future from the vault, Tod Butterfield interviews systems engineer Steve Laufmann about physician Howard Glicksman’s 81-part Evolution News series, The Designed Body. Listen in as Laufmann reflects on the body’s fight against equilibrium, the Goldilocks principal, and more. Then pick up the new book by Laufmann and Glicksman, Your Designed Body, which delves deeper into the exquisite engineering necessary for the operation of the human body.