Intelligent Design the Future

December 27, 2022 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Louis Pasteur, the French scientist whose scientific breakthroughs have saved millions of lives, and whose work on microbes sounded the death knell of the idea of spontaneous generation. On this episode of ID the Future, biologist Ann Gauger walks listeners through the triumphs, flaws, and tragedies in the life of this extraordinary individual. In the nineteenth century, it was widely believed that the spontaneous generation of life from non-life was common and unremarkable, since it was thought that spontaneous generation of worms, mold, and other life forms occurred all the time in rotting meat and dirty rags. Pasteur constructed an experiment demonstrating that these “spontaneously” arising worms and such in fact sprang from microorganisms contained in the dust of the air. In this way Pasteur lent decisive support to the view summarized in the Latin phrase, “Omne vivum ex vivo”—all life is from life. This is sometimes referred to as the law of biogenesis and holds that organisms do not spontaneously arise in nature from non-life. Thanks in no small part to Pasteur’s work in this area, the origin of the first life on Earth came to be seen as a powerful mystery for scientists committed to the chance origin of the first life, a mystery deepened by discoveries in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries showing that even the simplest single-celled life is vastly more sophisticated than even our most advanced manmade factories. There is so much more to the fascinating life and work of Louis Pasteur, from his pioneering and life-saving work on vaccines and the special relationship he had with his wife to his Christian faith that bore him up through the death of three of his children. Tune in to learn more about this complex man of science and faith.

On today’s ID the Future Your Designed Body author and physician Howard Glicksman takes a deep dive with Philosophy for the People podcast host Pat Flynn into Glicksman’s new book, co-authored with systems engineer Steve Laufmann. As Glicksman puts it, he and Laufmann look not just at how the human body looks but at what it actually takes for it to work and not die, and what this implies for evolutionary theory. Begin by piling up the layers of complexity in the human body—the layer upon layer of complex interdependent systems. Then ask hard questions about whether any blind and gradual evolutionary process could have kept our evolutionary ancestors alive at every generational stage as all this was gradually engineered by countless random mutations over millions of generations, beginning with the first single-celled organisms billions of years ago. Once one faces those hard questions without retreating to vague just-so stories about nature needing vision (or hearing or any number of other bodily functions) and therefore magically evolving it, at that point Darwinism’s story of gradual and blind evolution collapses. The explanation that is left standing, according to Glicksman, Laufmann, and Your Designed Body: intelligent design. This episode is posted her with the generous permission of Pat Flynn and the Philosophy for the People podcast.

On this classic ID The Future, John West, author of Walt Disney and Live Action: The Disney Studio’s Live-Action Features of the 1950s and 60s, talks about Walt Disney’s life-long fascination with evolution. By exploring various messages embedded in Disney’s theme parks and animated features, from the Magic Skyway created for the 1964 World’s Fair to the 1948 animated film Fantasia, we see Disney’s recurring contemplation of evolution. Fantasia, in particular, provides an extended depiction of evolutionary history along with imaginatively rendered reflections on rationalism, materialism, and animism. At first blush Fantasia’s “Rite of Spring” seems to promote Darwinian materialism, but as West explains, a closer look reveals considerable nuance and ambiguity. On the Magic Skyway, animatronics were used to tell stories of ages past, from the age of the dinosaurs to the arrival of man. Disney’s presentation there skirted the origins of humans but, as West argues, the narration suggests that humanity is something qualitatively different, a message at odds with Darwinian materialism. While we have you here, please consider an end-of-year gift to Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture (CSC) to support this podcast and the culture-impacting work of intelligent design. The research and writing of CSC fellows such as Stephen Meyer, Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, Casey Luskin, and Ann Gauger are pushing back the darkness that is Darwinian materialism. The CSC’s work is also shining a light on the truth that nature is a work of genius and that we are, indeed, fearfully and wonderfully made. Click here to give.

On today’s ID the Future, philosopher of science Stephen Meyer, theologian Vern Poythress, engineer Stuart Burgess, and biologist Jonathan McLatchie answer questions about science and faith posed at the Westminster Conference on Science and Faith, held in the greater Philadelphia area. The session is moderated by Discovery Institute Vice President John West, and the conference jointly sponsored by Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture and Westminster Theological Seminary. Panelists: Dr. Stuart Burgess has held academic posts at Bristol University (UK) and Cambridge University (UK), and published over 180 scientific publications on the science of design in engineering and biology. He also has received many national and international awards for design, including from the Minister of State for Trade and Read More ›

On today’s ID the Future, biologist and intelligent design researcher Ann Gauger tells host Eric Anderson the rest of her story about how she was drawn into the intelligent design movement. The two discuss everything from the challenges she faced making it in a male-dominated field to the evidential power of beauty in the natural world. But how did she end up in the ID movement? After stepping out of a promising career as a research scientist to focus on her family and meeting the needs of an autistic child, she assumed that her life as a scientist was behind her. But then several years later she began reading the work of Darwin skeptics and intelligent design trailblazers—Phillip Johnson, Jonathan Read More ›

On this ID the Future from the vault, systems engineer Steve Laufmann joins host Tod Butterfield to discuss an article he wrote for Evolution News and Science Today in which he spotlights how biology is becoming increasingly engineering-centric. Laufmann describes how his work as a systems engineer relates to the red hot field of systems biology, the significance of the fact that “the value of the system as a whole is derived largely from the relationship of the parts,” and the extreme improbability of a well-engineered biological system of systems assembling by way of purely blind processes. Laufmann is author, with physician Howard Glicksman, of the groundbreaking new book, Your Designed Body.

On this ID the Future, Your Designed Body author and physician Howard Glicksman again sits down with host and professor of neurosurgery Michael Egnor to further explore Glicksman’s new book, co-authored with engineer Steve Laufmann. Here Glicksman gives a quick flyover of what they explore in fascinating depth in the book, namely the irreducible complexity of that extraordinary systems of systems that is the human respiratory system. As Glicksman explains, there are individual systems that are irreducibly complex, and these are joined together into a higher-level system of systems that is also irreducibly complex, marked by causal circularities and coherent interdependencies at every turn. Without all of it guided by various highly precise control mechanisms, no life. Darwinian gradualism is Read More ›

On this ID the Future, host Eric Anderson sits down with biologist and intelligent design proponent Ann Gauger to hear her story of how she got into the intelligent design movement and how the evidence for design has shaped her life. It begins with a lonely girl on a Kansas military base who at one point loses her Christian faith but also discovers the wonders of nature, and friendship, when she is given a horse and begins taking it for long rides in the countryside. Her intellectual journey takes her to MIT, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the University of Washington, and eventually into the Catholic church, where she explores becoming a nun until a conversation with echoes from the Read More ›

On this ID the Future from the vault, Steve Laufmann critiques an article by Nathan Lents, “The Botch of the Human Body.” The article purports to show that so-called “design errors” in the human body prove it wasn’t designed. Laufmann describes five ways Lents’ argument is a “bizarre blend of ignorance and arrogance.” For instance, Lents often ignores something basic to engineering—the necessity of design tradeoffs. For a more in-depth response to Lents and to others making similar bad-design arguments for mindless evolution, see Laufmann’s new book, co-authored with physician Howard Glicksman, Your Designed Body.

On today’s ID the Future, Your Designed Body co-author and physician Howard Glicksman talks with host and neurosurgery professor Michael Egnor about Glicksman’s new book, co-authored with systems engineer Steve Laufmann. Glicksman walks through a series of systems in the human body that are each irreducibly complex, and are each part of larger coherent interdependent systems. As Glicksman puts it, the human body is “irreducible complexity on steroids.” How could blind evolutionary processes, such as neo-Darwinism’s joint mechanism of natural selection working on random genetic mutations, build this bio-engineering marvel? Your Designed Body makes the case that it couldn’t. It’s not even close. What is required instead is foresight, planning, and engineering genius.