Intelligent Design the Future

On this ID the Future from the vault, catch the first half of a public talk by political scientist John West on how Darwinism has poisoned Western culture. In the lecture, delivered at the Dallas Conference on Science & Faith, West explores how Darwin’s purely materialistic theory of evolution drained meaning from nature, undercut the idea of inherent human dignity, and fueled the rise of scientific racism in the twentieth century. West is author of Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science.

On this classic ID the Future, philosopher of science Paul Nelson speaks with host Andrew McDiarmid about pursuing intelligent design theory in a naturalistic culture. Nelson also expresses his appreciation for his University of Pittsburgh mentor Adolf Grünbaum, with whom he shared the kind of friendship that can come from caring deeply about the same things, even if taking different positions on them. Nelson talks about what’s involved in holding a minority position, some of the potential pitfalls that come with holding a majority position, and the danger we can all face of seeking polemical advantage rather than truth.

Today’s ID the Future features a recent Michael Medved Show with artificial intelligent expert Robert J. Marks, author of the new book Non-Computable You: What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will. The occasion for the conversation is an article by Marks about the Tom Cruise movie Top Gun: Maverick. In the article, Marks argues that, strictly in terms of optimal military tactics, the job of the human fighter pilots in the movie would have been better filled by drones. But as sanguine as Marks is about the possibilities for AI in military and other applications, he is among the loudest voices insisting that the AI community tends to overhype AI capabilities. In his conversation with Michael Medved, and in Read More ›

On this ID the Future from the vault, hear the final segment in a five-part conversation between host Casey Luskin and neurosurgeon Michael Egnor. Dr. Egnor discusses how Europe’s Judeo-Christian culture in the Middle Ages and Renaissance laid the groundwork for the rise of science. Egnor goes on from there to address the claim that the rise of atheism has somehow been a boon to science. Not so, Egnor says. Tune in to hear his explanation.

Today’s ID the Future continues intelligent design theorist Casey Luskin’s conversation with Apologetics 315 podcast hosts Brian Auten and Chad Gross. Here in Part 2, Luskin give a peek behind the scenes of ID 3.0, the current research program inspired by the intelligent design framework. Luskin is then asked to explain his reservations about theistic evolution, and Luskin points out the evidential, rhetorical, and logical problems he sees with the brand of theistic evolution advocated by Francis Collins and Biologos. What about the future of the intelligent design movement? Luskin says he’s optimistic, both because of the exciting research and publication breakthroughs of late, and because of the many converts he’s seeing to the ID framework. According to Luskin, many of these Read More ›

Today’s ID the Future features Apologetics 315 podcast hosts Brian Auten and Chad Gross interviewing scientist Casey Luskin about the past, present, and exciting future of the intelligent design movement. Here in Part 1, Luskin tells how he got into ID movement, gives the back story on the birth of a promising intelligent design research program known as ID 3.0, and relates how he ended up rushing back from his geology work in South Africa at the front end of the Covid-19 pandemic to rejoin Discovery Institute. From there Auten and Gross push Luskin to provide a clear, easily grasped definition of intelligent design and to explain how it differs from creationism. Luskin also makes the case that intelligent design Read More ›

On this ID the Future from the vault, award-winning neurosurgery professor Michael Egnor joins host Casey Luskin to talk more about his interactions with atheist evolutionary biologist Dr. Jerry Coyne. Listen in as Egnor tells about Jerry Coyne’s efforts against open discourse on intelligent design and evolution—specifically two incidents of censorship, one at Ball State University and the other at the LA County Museum of Natural History.

On this ID the Future, host Andrew McDiarmid sits down with historian and philosopher of science Michael Keas to discuss a recent article at Times Higher Education, “My Precious! How Academia’s Gollums Guard Their Research Fields.” The article looks at how scientific progress is being impeded by a culture in which scientists jealously guard their research instead of sharing it. Keas says the problem seems to have gotten worse in recent years but isn’t a new one. He illustrates with the story of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler. Brahe, a sixteenth-century Danish astronomer, sat on his astronomical research for years, rather than sharing it with Johannes Kepler, his assistant. Kepler only got hold of it when Brahe died unexpectedly shortly Read More ›

On today’s ID the Future, philosopher of science Paul Nelson explores an intriguing tension in the thinking of famous scientist and science popularizer Carl Sagan concerning his agnosticism shading into atheism on the one hand, and on the other hand his embrace of certain ideas consistent with the theory of intelligent design. As Nelson is quick to clarify, if Sagan had lived to see the rise of the contemporary intelligent design movement, he probably would have rejected it, particularly its theistic implications. And yet, Nelson says, Sagan’s thinking and arguments laid out in his Gifford lectures and in his science fiction novel Contact strongly support the idea that intelligent design can be detected. Nelson goes further, saying that if we Read More ›

On this ID the Future from the vault, hear more of professor of neurosurgery Michael Egnor and host Casey Luskin’s discussion on free will. If there is no free will, and humans are merely following our chemical instructions, then how can we recognize evil and good? How can an evolutionist such as Jerry Coyne condemn even something as manifestly heinous as the Nazi holocaust? Egnor explains how Coyne manages it and argues that the attempt doesn’t wash. The best solution is to reject evolutionary materialism and accept what humans recognize at a deep level, Egnor says, namely that we are moral agents capable of freely choosing between good and evil. Egnor further argues that taking Coyne’s approach of denying free Read More ›