Intelligent Design The Future

On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin interviews Dr. Angus Menuge on his latest research, including his arguments rebutting methodological materialism, a defense of downward mental causation, and a non-materialist theory of information. Listen in as he shares from his experience debating PZ Myers on how neuroscience actually points to the existence of non-material causes.

On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin interviews Dr. Angus Menuge, professor of philosophy at Concordia University Wisconsin and author of Agents Under Fire, Materialism and the Rationality of Science. Dr. Menuge shares how he got involved in the debate over intelligent design and evolution and what made him a skeptic of Darwinian evolution. Listen in as Dr. Menuge explains what is necessary for the Darwinian account of evolutionary complex systems.

Does evolution have any practical benefits for science? In this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin reveals that the answer, surprisingly, is no. Listen as Luskin discusses past biological discoveries, reviews recent surveys of biologists, and quotes several scientists, including noted Professor of Biology and intelligent design critic Jerry Coyne. All three sources agree: the theory of evolution has yielded few practical benefits for scientific discovery.

In this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin explains why many scientists oppose intelligent design. He argues that most of the objections to ID rest on false caricatures and misunderstandings of the theory. Is ID just a negative argument against evolution? Does ID necessarily appeal to a God-of-the-Gaps? Is ID an attempt to disguise theology as science? Listen as Casey addresses these questions and shows how ID is a positive and scientific argument that infers the best explanation: intelligent design.

On this episode of ID The Future, Senior Fellow Jonathan Wells counters the Darwinian claim that humans are accidents of biology and the result of unguided natural processes like natural selection and survival of the fittest. Listen as Wells explains why Darwinism is a materialist creation myth that three-quarters of Americans are correct in rejecting.

This episode of ID the Future features an excerpt from Dr. John West’s opening comments at “Evolution and Intelligent Design: An Exchange,” a panel at a recent conference sponsored by the New Hampshire Humanities Council. Here Dr. West outlines the three most important things people should know about the intelligent design and evolution debate.

On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin continues an interview with leading intelligent design theorist and CSC Senior Fellow William Dembski. Together, Dembski and Luskin address the three most common objections to design: that it is improper to infer design based on unlikely probabilities, that dysfunctional or suboptimal biological structures disprove that they were designed, and that intelligent design is nothing more than repacked creationism. Touching on such topics like pattern detection, design constraints, philosopher Immanuel Kant, and theology, Dembski shows that there are logical and reasonable answers to these objections and that intelligent design is a useful and scientific theory.

On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin interviews leading intelligent design theorist and CSC Senior Fellow William Dembski. A mathematician and philosopher, Dr. Dembski is also a prolific writer with 3 books forthcoming this year: •Understanding Intelligent Design: Everything You Need to Know in Plain Language, a user-friendly take on ID written with students in mind. •The Patristic Understanding of Creation: An Anthology of Writings from the Church Fathers on Creation and Design, a thorough survey of the writings of the early Church theologians who were challenged by ancient Greeks who believed in an eternal world. •How to be an Intellectually Fulfilled Atheist (Or Not), co-authored with Jonathan Wells, explains how materialistic approaches to the origin of life have failed. If we still have the origin of life problem, can one be an intellectually fulfilled atheist? Would the early church fathers accept theistic evolution? What should pro-ID students do to get involved? Tune in and find out.

On this episode of ID The Future, Casey Luskin speaks with biophysicist and author Cornelius Hunter about naturalism, the dogma of evolution, and his new book Science’s Blind Spot. According to Hunter, naturalism predominates in modern science and is assumed to be capable of explaining every phenomenon in the universe. Hunter traces the historical development of this mindset, and investigates the usefulness and limitations of naturalistic science. He also analyzes the interface between naturalism and Darwinian evolution. About Dr. Cornelius G. Hunter Dr. Hunter is an engineer and biophysicist. He received his doctorate in biophysics and computational biology from the University of Illinois. Hunter has authored three books related to science, theology, and philosophy: his most recent book, Science’s Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism; Darwin’s God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil; and Darwin’s Proof: The Triumph of Religion over Science. All three of his books can be purchased through Amazon.com.

This episode of ID the Future features part two of an interview with Dr. Charles Thaxton, one of the first intelligent design scientists in the modern ID movement. Critics of intelligent design often try to frame ID as a political response to court rulings striking down the teaching of creationism. Today origin of life theorist and chemist Charles Thaxton tells the true history of intelligent design as a modern scientific movement fueled by new discoveries and critical examination of the evidence by open minds. Listen in as Dr. Thaxton explains what led him to ID and tells the story behind Of Pandas and People, the textbook that so disturbed Eugenie Scott because "it looks legitimate!" Charles Thaxton is a member of the American Chemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Scientific Affiliation and a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemistry.

On this episode of ID The Future we feature a short clip about homology -- the idea that there is structural identity and similarity of parts in distinct species such as the pentadactyl plan of the human hand, the wing of a bird, and the flipper of a seal. Scientists such as David Berlinski, Paul Nelson and Stephen Meyer argue that Neo-Darwinism explains some of the facts of homology but leaves many significant anomalies unexplained. Want to know more about homology? Go here.

This episode of ID the Future features part one of an interview by Casey Luskin with CSC Fellow Charles Thaxton, co-author of The Mystery of Life's Origin (1984), a foundational work for the intelligent design movement. Listen in as Dr. Thaxton takes us back to the first stirrings of the modern intelligent design movement and discusses the chemical challenge to naturalistic origin of life theories. Charles Thaxton is a member of the American Chemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Scientific Affiliation and a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemistry.

This episode of ID the Future features remarks by Stephen Meyer at Freedomfest conference in Las Vegas. What do intelligent design, evolution, information and purple people eaters all have in common? Well, they all took front stage at Freedomfest in Las Vegas last week when ID proponents Stephen Meyer and George Gilder squared off against Darwinists Michael Shermer and Ronald Bailey in debating whether there is scientific evidence for intelligent design in nature. Listen in as Stephen Meyer shares his opening remarks for the crowd.

On this video episode of IDTF, Senior Fellow Dr. John West takes a look at free market economics and business. It is often claimed that the free market operates like biological natural selection because the best ideas and products survive while others die out. However, West argues that the success of products and ideas is the result of intelligent decisions in designing products and developing new ideas. To mix economics and evolution together is to misunderstand both.

On this episode of ID The Future we have a short clip of Dr. Jay Richards, discussing the question who designed the designer? Critics of intelligent design theory often throw this question out thinking to highlight a weakness in ID. Richards shows that the theory’s inability to identify the designer is not a weakness, but a strength. ID does not identify the designer is because ID limits its claims to those which can be established by empirical evidence. As CSC Senior Fellow Dr. Michael Behe puts it: " [A] scientific argument for design in biology does not reach that far. Thus while I argue for design, the question of the identity of the designer is left open."

On this episode of ID The Future we are highlighting a second short clip from PBS' Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg that features CSC Director Dr. Stephen Meyer explaining the differences between intelligent design, evolution and creationism.

In this episode of IDTF, CSC’s Logan Gage discusses the “new” atheists’ approach to religion as a byproduct of evolution. Citing new research which shows that some religious beliefs and ways of processing are innate and are thus not accumulated by experience, Gage explains why the “new” atheists’ views are unfairly biased against religious beliefs and why they are ultimately self defeating.

In this episode of IDTF CSC’s Logan Gage takes another look at David Berlinski’s The Devil’s Delusion. Gage reviews the book and examines how Berlinski masterfully takes apart the arrogant claims of the new atheists and then calls capital ‘S’ Science --which has supposedly proven there is no God-- back to earth.

Critics of intelligent design sometimes claim they are defending the principles of American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson in trying to ban discussions of intelligent design. In the words of one writer, “Thomas Jefferson makes it quite clear that there was not a consensus of support among the authors of the Constitution... to support theological doctrines such as intelligent design.” But would Thomas Jefferson himself agree? In this special July 4th edition of ID the Future, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow John West explores the real views of Jefferson on intelligent design.

Many credit Alfred Russel Wallace, who along with Darwin co-presented the theory of natural selection in letters to the Linnean Society of London, 150 years ago this year. But few seem to remember that, contrary to Darwin, Wallace actually believed that it was possible to detect design in nature. So, what would modern Darwin defenders make of Wallace today?

On this episode of ID The Future we feature a short series of comments from Dr. Ed Pelzer on the status of current theories of origin of life research. Dr. Pelzer holds a PhD in oceanography from Scripps Oceanographic Institution at UCSD, and was a researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) for over twenty years. These comments are from the new documentary film Teaching Origins Objectively available through the Intelligent Design Network.

On this episode of ID The Future, Dennis Wagner of ARN discusses how ID inspires the arts and the specific material on idarts.org. This is part two of a series on idarts.org,/b>, a website which pushes the frontier for ID theory and opens the discussion for design to the metaphysical and philosophical questions raised by ID.

On this episode of ID The Future we have Dennis Wagner, executive director of the Access Research Network. Dennis discusses the launch of ARN's new website on intelligent design and the arts, www.idarts.org. Dennis explains how artists such as Jody Sjogren reflect the greater design of the universe in their work. IDarts includes examples from literature, poetry, music, theater, film and painting to explore this exciting new movement.

On this episode of ID the Future, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez joins Casey Luskin for an interview, discussing the Copernican Principle and his latest research on extrasolar planets. Is our place in the universe special or purposeful? Listen in as Dr. Gonzalez answers that question and shares his future research plans.

Robert Crowther On this episode of ID The Future the CSC's Robert Crowther explores the growing number of claims that Darwinian evolution is the foundation of biology, the backbone of science, and the source for many new biodiscoveries. Are the assertions true? Is evolution the cornerstone of the biological sciences? Let's find out.

On this episode of ID the Future, Robert Crowther interviews Discovery Institute senior fellow David DeWolf, a leading expert on the legalities of teaching evolution who helped shape the sample academic freedom legislation available at www.AcademicFreedomPetition.com. Dr. DeWolf explains the idea behind the academic freedom bill currently moving forward in Louisiana and what it means to teach the controversy over evolution. Should teachers have the freedom to treat Darwinism as an open and interesting question? Listen in and decide for yourself.

With the recent news coverage on teaching strengths and weaknesses, we thought it worth taking a look at a science textbook that teaches the whole story on evolution. This episode of ID the Future examines the new textbook Explore Evolution: Arguments For and Against Neo-Darwinism. This is the first biology textbook to present the scientific evidence both for and against key aspects of Darwinian evolution. Explore Evolution promotes inquiry-based learning, encouraging students to participate in the process of discovery, deliberation, and argument that scientists use to form their theories. For more information, visit the textbook website at www.exploreevolution.com. Listen as CSC’s Rob Crowther explains what makes this new science textbook so revolutionary.

On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin examines how the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has attacked Expelled, getting involved in movie criticism and religion promotion. With example after example, Luskin shows how the AAAS has admitted then denied intolerance towards scientists who dissent from Darwinism, prompting the question: is this about science or is it about politics? Listen in and judge for yourself.

On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin reports from Baton Rouge, LA, with Louisiana College professor of biology Wade Warren, who recently testified in favor of the Louisiana Academic Freedom bill. Dr. Warren discusses his research on circadian rhythms and his skepticism of Darwin as a professional biologist, explaining why he supports academic freedom for teachers and sharing his own story of what happened when he tried to question Darwin as a graduate student.

On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin continues his review of the recent academic freedom bill hearings in Louisiana. Of particular interest this time is Dr. Barbara Forrest, a professor of philosophy with an undeniable distaste for anything critical of Darwinism, who, in her testimony, demonstrated a deep disdain for the Discovery Institute and its insidious conspiracy to undermine American science education. Too bad, as Luskin puts it, her claims are “exceedingly and demonstrably wrong.” And so, pointing out her flaws one-by-one, Luskin sets the record straight on the so-called conspiracy.