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The Universe: Meaningful or Meaningless?
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Is the universe meaningless as many modern scientists would have us believe? In this episode of ID the Future, CSC's Robert Crowther reads the prologue from A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature, a book aimed at counteracting this unfortunately pervasive western view. Written by authors Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt, A Meaningful World seeks to act as an "antidote" for the "poison" of the relativism and meaninglessness supposedly existing in our world and proven by science. Listen as Crowther reads from the book's prologue, telling the tale of an alien park ranger determined to figure out why, in an age of prosperity, humans have lost meaning in their lives.
Modeling Evolution With Stylus: Part Two
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n this episode of ID the Future, CSC's Casey Luskin is joined again by Brendan Dixon, a programmer with the Biologic Institute who recently coauthored a paper on his co-developed program, Stylus. Dixon continues the two-part interview by sharing how Stylus was developed, what the authors hope is accomplished by using the program, and where others can take a look at the code itself to understand and see what the authors have done. Listen as Dixon further explains how Stylus can help us better understand the strengths and limits of evolution.
Modeling Evolution With Stylus
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In this episode of ID the Future, CSC's Casey Luskin is joined by Brendan Dixon, a programmer with the Biologic Institute who recently coauthored a paper on his co-developed program, Stylus. Dixon explains that Stylus is a computer program that is designed to simulate evolutionary processes in proteins. It tests and applies the principles of evolution to determine what evolution can yield, what problems it can solve, and to determine what evolution can and cannot do. Using digital organisms, the program assesses protein fitness due to simulated gene mutation and based on similarities to Chinese characters. Will evolution prove capable of explaining life on earth? Listen as Dixon explains in more detail how Stylus can help us better understand and possibly answer that question.
Irreducibly Complex: Behe on the Bacterial Flagellum
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On this episode of ID the Future, CSC's Casey Luskin interviews Senior Fellow Michael Behe, the well known author of Darwin's Black Box, and more recently, The Edge of Evolution. Behe shares his work on the bacterial flagellar motor and explains why, in his view, the flagellum is irreducibly complex. Behe also examines the two currently proposed evolutionary explanations for the assembly of the flagellum, co-option and homology, showing why both proposals fall short in uncovering the origins of this molecular machine.
Rebutting Methodological Materialism: Interview With Angus Menuge, Part Two
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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.
Agents Under Fire: Part One With Angus Menuge
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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?
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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.
Why Do Some Scientists Oppose ID?
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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.
Are Humans Biological Accidents?
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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.
Three Things to Know about Intelligent Design
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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.
Is ID Creationism? William Dembski Answers Top Three Objections to ID
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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.
William Dembski on the Origin of Life, Early Church Fathers, and Understanding ID
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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.
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