[00:00:04] Speaker A: Id the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome to id the future. Im your host Andrew McDermott. Well, today im welcoming back to the podcast Doctor Brian Miller to discuss how planet Earth is specifically designed for human technology.
Doctor Miller is a senior fellow of Discovery Institute's center for Science and Culture, where he serves as research coordinator. He holds a b's in physics with a minor in engineering from MIT and a PhD in physics from Duke University.
He helps to manage the CSCS ID 3.0 research program, and he speaks internationally on the topics of intelligent design and the impact of worldviews on society. Brian, thanks for joining me.
[00:00:51] Speaker C: It's a pleasure to be here.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Well, I'm excited about this topic because, as you know, I've been studying the history and philosophy of technology for several years now. It's a fascinating and timely subject, to be sure. Now the argument for intelligent design includes lines of evidence showing our planet is designed for life as well as for scientific discoveries. And to add to that, you have a talk you've developed explaining how earth is designed for technological advancement.
Now first, can you give us an overview of this talk that you've been starting to give?
[00:01:24] Speaker C: Yes. What happened is actually presented this talk for the first time at our Dallas conference on faith and science. And I was really happy with how it was received. And what I did is I talked about three main points. The first is I talked about how people often will address different design parameters in nature. Things like the fine tuning of the laws of nature, things like the design of our earth. But what I did is I talked about how these different design parameters actually work together in symphonic harmony to help enable humans technology. And I also talked about how that fits very closely with how our bodies were designed for technology. A second point I made was talking about how geology and ecology were designed to allow for technology. And I also included agriculture as a type of technology. And my third point was how life was designed in such a way that actually inspires us to advance technologically with our own innovations. So those were the three points that I made.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah, I mean, any one of those would be interesting itself, but when you put them together, that really packs a punch. Well, the first point you make is the convergence of design parameters to allow for technology. And you provide three examples. The human body, fire and vision. Tell us about a few of the design features of the human body that might pave the way for technological advancement.
[00:02:49] Speaker C: Yeah. And what's extraordinary is that the human body is perfectly designed to perform technological advancements. So, for instance, we have hands that have enormous precision. So we can use tools in a very careful fashion to advance technologically. We also have the ability of language so that we can hear words and repeat them. And that's something that chimpanzees and other primate mates cannot do. So our ability to use language is what allows us to transfer knowledge from one generation to the next. Also, we have upright posture so that we can use our hands for technology very effectively. And we also have complex facial features that are unique to humans, that allow us to maintain complex social networks that are essential for societal development and technology. So all these things work together in our anatomy to allow us to do what we can do and advance with science and technology.
[00:03:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. Well, how important is the production of fire to our ability to create technology? We have what it takes with our human body. But when you throw fire into the mix, what are the properties of fire that make our technology possible?
[00:04:05] Speaker C: Yeah. And what people don't realize is that fire is absolutely essential for technological advancement, because if you don't have fire, then the tools you would use would be things like stone. So you could create a stone axe, you could create a stone weapon. But to have really advanced technology, you have to have tools with enormous precision. And for that, you need to use metals. And what fire does is it allows us to melt metals from rocks and then fashion them into very precise tools. So that's essential. Also what fire does, it allows us to cook food, which allows us to absorb nutrients and sustenance in a very efficient way. That'll actually give us more time to advance technologically. Now, fire, as I mentioned, is essential for technology, but fire isn't something that's going to happen by accident. Our atmosphere has the perfect amount of oxygen for fire, because if we had too much oxygen, what would happen is we would burn down all our forests. Fires would burn so strongly that we couldn't contain it. But if we had too little oxygen, then we couldn't produce enough fire to use it for technology. So again, what happens is the oxygen level in our atmosphere is not just perfect for us to breathe and to sustain energy, but it's perfect for us to advance technologically. Also, that relates to the amount of nitrogen in our atmosphere, because nitrogen acts like a fire retardant. So what happens? We have just the right amount of nitrogen so that the amount of oxygen that's perfect for us to breathe also is the right amount for us to produce just the right amount of fire. Now, also, we happen to have arms, which are just the perfect length for us to be able to use fire for us for different purposes, like cooking and for technology.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: Yeah, that's quite something. What about vision? An essential component, of course, if we're going to advance technologically, why is that system part of a convergence of design parameters?
[00:06:04] Speaker C: Right. And that is really one of my favorite examples, because to have vision, you have to have light of the right frequency or electromagnetic radiation of the right frequency. And as it turns out, the sun produces just the right type of radiation. So if you look at the peak of the sun's output, it's at visible light and heat, the two right types of radiation for us to live. As it turns out, our atmosphere also allows the right type of radiation through. So it allows heat through, it allows radiation light through, but it blocks radiation that would be dangerous to us, things like microwaves or x rays also, as it turns out, water allows the right radiation through also. And that allows fish to see because the light penetrates our water, which is absolutely amazing. But beyond that, what we find is that the wavelength of visible light is perfect for the optics of the eye. So an eye the size of a human eye is ideal to focus light at a very sharp point so that we can have high resolution vision. In fact, if the wavelength of light were much longer, what would happen is our eyes would have to be the size of a football field to allow for high resolution vision. If the wavelength of light were much smaller, that would cause other problems. As it turns out, if you look at photoreceptors, a photoreceptor has to be a certain size because it has to contain enough of the molecules that actually interact with the photons. And the highest resolution possible based on the smallest that photoreceptors can be, matches the resolution possible based on the wavelength of light. So this is a beautiful example where you see this convergence of the design behind the laws of nature, the design behind our sun, behind our atmosphere, behind water, and behind the human eye that allows us to have high resolution vision. And high resolution vision is essential for us to advance technologically, right?
[00:08:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's not just one thing that's coming together to allow for that optimal vision. It's multiple things, as you say, a convergence, a coming together of all of this different fine tuning. Well, how do these arguments that you're presenting relate to the work of Michael Denton, Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards?
[00:08:29] Speaker C: Well, the arguments I'm making really are, a lot of them are taken from their wonderful books that they've written. So Michael Denton, for instance, has written a beautiful book called Nature's destiny. Which talks about how the, the different elements we see in nature all play really important roles, both in allowing life to exist and allowing us to advance technologically. And the fact that the elements are so perfect for those, for both life and for technology relates to the fine tuning the laws of nature. The fact that you have quantum mechanics based on Schrodinger's equation, which is perfectly designed for that purpose. Also, what you see is the different laws of nature, things like the electromagnetic force, the strong nuclear force, are also been carefully fine tuned so that we would have the type of elements we have. Also, in addition, I've drew from material from Michael Dennin's book, Firemaker, also the Miracle of Man, and also his books on the human body, and also on books like the children of Light and the wonder of water. Now, in addition to that, I drew some of the material that is going to be in the next edition of the privileged planet. So Guillermo Gonzalez was gracious enough to share with me some of the material that he'll be talking about. So the second edition of the book that he wrote with Jay Richards will be out later this year, and I was giving somewhat of a preview of that work.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: Oh, that's excellent. So you're drawing from lots of resources and lots of study that's already been done within the intelligent design community.
Now, when we think of agriculture, we don't always equate it with technology, but indeed they're closely related. Explain how our ecosystem is ideally designed to advance agriculture and what that means for us.
[00:10:16] Speaker C: Well, agriculture is extremely important. It is a type of technology because we're actually using plants and our own ingenuity to produce more food. And what's really amazing is that if you look at the way our planet's designed, the way soil is designed, the way the ecosystem is designed, it allows us to produce enormous amounts of food in a very small space, relatively speaking, because what happens is you've got, for instance, and Michael Dennen, Michael Dennin talks about this in his books, is you have like the water cycle, which actually reproduce the perfect type of soil in different places where humans can live. In addition, what you have is you have bacteria in the soil, nematodes, earthworms, and a lot of other whole orchestra of organisms that work together to maintain the right chemistry and physics of the soil that allows for such large amounts of food to be grown. In fact, what you actually see in the soil are these fungal networks, these mycelium networks that act like an Internet. So what happens is different trees and different plants can communicate with each other to actually warn each other if, let's say, a predator is coming. So if you have one plant where a caterpillar starts to eat it, it'll actually use these networks to warn the rest of the plants that this danger is there. And that's why we can have actually agricultural farming at such a high level, is because this ingenious design, and we have to have agriculture, because what happens with agriculture is reproduce large amounts of food fairly easily, and that allows us to have extra time to advance scientifically and to create innovations.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: And I've heard the term wood wide web as sort of a way to explain this amazing hidden network of organisms and microorganisms and plant life all working together in this related cycle. It's pretty amazing. Well, how is intelligent design, as a research initiative opening up a new frontier in ecology?
[00:12:25] Speaker C: Well, as you mentioned, you talk about the Wood Wide web, and that's just a beautiful example, because what's happened now is we've organized people that are experts in farming, experts in soil ecology, experts in the various organisms that are part of these soil ecosystems, to come together and think about how does a design perspective help us to really unpack what's happening in ecosystems, in ecology and agriculture? And it's really quite amazing, because when you look at how these various organisms communicate with each other, they're employing the same techniques, the strategies, the logic, as we do in things like telecommunication and things like the Internet. So by applying these engineering motifs and models to ecology, we're able to unpack what's happening at a much, much deeper level. And also what's happening is we're seeing how the design principles in life are not simply for individual organisms, but they're for the entire ecosystem. So for, in. For instance, earthworms in their life patterns actually take nutrients, and they transport them to different depths in the soil. They've often been described almost like the freight trucks that will bring the right materials to different locations in the soil. As another example, which is quite amazing, is if you have an ecosystem, you have to have closed loop cycles. In other words, if you take some materials out of the ecosystem, you have to put it back. So one challenge is that organisms need nitrogen, but if life simply pulled nitrogen out of the air, the system would collapse. But there's actually these very sophisticated bacteria, the animox bacteria. And Marcus Eberlin talks about this in his book Foresight, that these bacteria have very complex mechanisms to put nitrogen back into the atmosphere. So what we see is high level coordination, not simply within individual species, but among different species to keep a stable ecosystem.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: Hmm, it's quite something. Well, in your talk, you mentioned that geology and ecology interconnect with one another. Can you explain that relationship a little bit and how it relates to our ability to create technology?
[00:14:40] Speaker C: Yeah, and this is something I learned very recently from Guillermo Gonzalez, and it's absolutely amazing is people don't really think about how fortunate that we are that we can mine minerals, gold and iron and other precious minerals at the surface of our planet. And the reason we're able to do that, partly is through things like plate tectonic tectonics, through our water cycle, and through many other features of our planet that seem to have been carefully designed to accumulate important materials at the surface of our planet. In addition, what we see is that life like bacterial mats, what'll happen is living organisms will super accumulate different minerals and other materials that we need for technology and for advancing in our society near the surface of the planet. So it's this interplay of geological cycles and biological cycles that allow us to have all the materials we need for technological advancement. Also, there's numerous minerals that only life produces. So what we find in the biosphere is lots of highly sophisticated materials that we're just beginning to understand and how we can use them, from everything from telecommunications to sensors to harnessing the energy of the sun for energy.
[00:16:00] Speaker B: Now, next we'll talk about biomimetics. But first, there's a cool nugget hidden in your talk that hints, I think, at a fundamentally new way of looking at the natural world. You say that one of the most important contributions the darwinian evolutionary framework has made to science is that it has slowed progress. It slowed the progress of science. Wow, that's a weighty proposition. What do you mean by that?
[00:16:25] Speaker C: Well, there's two ways it's really slowed progress. One is people assume that life was simply a product of unintended accidents, natural selection, changes in the environment. But if you assume that, then you're not going to expect highly sophisticated design. You're not going to suspect an overarching design logic. You'll think things just kind of came together haphazardly and it'll be really inefficient. So that's why very often biologists have found something about life they didn't immediately understand. So, for instance, our photoreceptors face backwards, away from the light instead of forward. And people thought that's just bad design because of the historical process of evolution. Well, what's happened as science has advanced is we found that what people initially thought was poor design is actually optimal design. But we initially missed that because of these false assumptions. And perhaps the most classic example is junk DNA, that people thought the human genome would be filled with nonfunctional DNA, because that's what evolution predicts. But what's happened is people have found that what they thought was junk DNA is actually essential in acting almost like a. Like a higher order control system for our genetic system. Now, a second problem is that people have failed to appreciate the genius of biological design, so we didn't try to copy it as aggressively as we should have. Now, more recently, people have realized how. How life looks both optimally designed, and it demonstrates the use of genius ideas that we haven't thought of. So you have people like Stuart Burgess, who's part of our network of scientists, who is copying the design of life to make better technology, things like better micro air vehicles. He's copying design of the foot and the ankle complex to help make better prosthetic limbs and also better robotic limbs. But people like Nathan Lentz, who's looking at the world from this evolutionary perspective, assumed that what you would see with, let's say, the human limbs is bad design. So he failed to appreciate how much we could use it to advance technologically. But people like Stuart Burgess, who comes from a design perspective, has actually looked much more aggressively at copying design. So that's how the darwinian framework has slowed progress and how a design based framework advances progress.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: Right. Makes a lot of sense. Well, so that is biomimetics. Can you define that word? Because it's a little tricky for some people and tell us how it relates to technology today.
[00:19:00] Speaker C: Yeah, biomimetics is simply copying the design patterns in life to advance human technology. That's what it really means. I already gave you a few examples from Stuart Burgess, but another beautiful example is vision. So when people look at trying to create machine vision, what they've done is they've looked at the neural networks in human vision and the vision of other animals to look at the genius behind the design of how our networks will deconstruct an image and reconstruct it. And we attempt to copy the overarching design logic. Now, we can't do it as well as life can, but we're learning the best we can. Another example is neural networks. In fact, neural networks that we use in computer learning and computer systems are copied from the brain, the neural networks in our brains. And of course, the example that you alluded to is this idea of what's called the wood wide web. So, as I mentioned, you have these mycelial networks where you have fungi that have these filaments that work together almost like an Internet. What's happened is people who are at the forefront of Internet technology, of network technology, have looked at these networks to learn how to design our own networks more efficiently, to use less materials, to expand larger distances more efficiently. And also what's really amazing, there is an article in Forbes called Finding Wisdom for business networks in the Wood Wide Web, where they actually looked at how these mycelial networks will take some of the nutrients that are passed through them as kind of a payment for service. And they do that in a way that's incredibly efficient. So what it does is it allows them to maintain these organisms to maintain this network, but then it allows other organisms to send signals very efficiently and at a low cost. So people have actually looked at that model, and the balance is shown in nature to help improve our business models of how much we should charge for things like Internet service. So those are some examples of how people are looking to life in the field of biomimetics to improve our own technology.
[00:21:10] Speaker B: Wow. Those are fascinating. So it's not just objects we're recreating, but it's also models. It's also networks and relationships and all the complexity that goes with that.
So you've given this talk most recently at the 2024 Dallas conference on science and faith. Did you receive any insightful questions from the audience afterwards?
[00:21:32] Speaker C: Yeah, I received some very thoughtful questions. One is, what to. The one question was, to what extent have we borrowed ideas from nature versus discovering them independently? And what's happened is there's been both. So, for instance, velcro is a material that we discovered in nature. So we're using that pattern.
We are looking at the design of things like dragonflies to improve our micro air vehicles. In fact, if you looked at that, if you've watched the movie Dune, you see that example of copying that technology from nature. In other cases, we discovered things independently. So, for instance, we came up with the idea of digitally encoding information independently of nature. So when people like Francis Crick discovered how DNA works and figured out the genetic code, they realized that what life was doing was very, very similar to what we were doing. In fact, that's what helped inspire them to figure out what's taking place. So we really have both taking place. Now, what I believe is that if we had anticipated the genius of design earlier on, then we would have been able to copy the technology from life at a much higher level than what we've done today. So we've actually lost a great opportunity because of our lack of our failure to appreciate the level of design in life.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: But you do see evidence that things are turning around now with a design perspective, we're going to be able to do much more and take it to the next level.
[00:23:04] Speaker C: That's definitely the case, because, again, as you're having more and more engineers working with biologists, what's happened is you're seeing this shift in assumptions, where a lot of the assumptions driven by an evolutionary framework, that life is poorly designed. It doesn't look anything like human engineering, are being overturned. And people are now using these design based assumptions. They expect optimality, they expect similarity. That's allowing that progress at a much more advanced level. Also, I wanted to mention there was another really good question related to this from the audience. And that question was, are we limited in our ability to advance technology? Is that by design? In other words, were limitations placed on our world so we wouldn't advance too quickly in technology? And that's a really thoughtful question, and it's not something I've thought very deeply about. But there are some obvious examples, like the speed of light is a clear limit, so you can only travel so fast in space until you reach the speed of light. Unless we have really advanced technology that we haven't even conceived of, it's possible that our world and our universe was designed that way to prevent contamination. So maybe, who knows? This is just speculation that there's other creatures that were created in different parts of our universe. And the fact that we're so far away and our speed is limited may ensure that there isn't cross contamination between those different species. Who knows? That's speculation. Also, what we find is that one form of energy, like, let's say, fossil fuels, allows us to produce a limited amount of energy. And what's happened is we've been able to harness that energy, learn how to use it wisely, and that allowed us to use a different form of energy, like nuclear energy. So again, it may be the case that certain levels of technology are limited, but then, as we perfect them, as our science develops, we then can go to higher levels, which allow us to use more powerful sources of energy. So that's possible in the way our universe is designed.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: Yeah, totally.
Now, with all this fine tuning, you get each individual strand of evidence of fine tuning and, you know, someone might push back and say, oh, coincidence. Yeah, coincidence. But you can only go so far with that, you know, and it's. It's it's one reason I like to talk about it in terms of bayesian logic. You know, you're building that likelihood ratio for whether something, a hypothesis, is true or false. And so you can only go so far in saying, coincidence, coincidence, before the evidence is just piling up, you know, the other way, and you can't deny it. And that's what I see happening here. With all this fine tuning, would you agree with that?
[00:25:49] Speaker C: Absolutely. In fact, I would even go further than that. And I would say that one we now see just irrefutable evidence for design. We see the same design logic we use, except at a much higher level. You see extraordinary levels of ingenuity. Plus, we know that this could not happen through some blind, undirected evolutionary type process. Well, how do we know that? Well, it's because if you ask what should an evolutionary process produce? It should produce what almost would be like an onion. You should see something simple produced. And then you add a piece, it's a little bit more complicated. That's like another. Another layer on the onion. You add another piece, it becomes even more complicated. That's not what we see in nature. What we see is clear evidence that a mind planned a high level design logic in advanced and brought multiple systems together in a highly coordinated way to achieve a predetermined purpose. Now, a great example of that would be something like high resolution vision, because imagine you've got some sort of visual system that can detect fuzzy images that would be like certain jellyfish that can detect shadows. Well, how do you go from a low resolution vision to high resolution vision? Well, you need to change multiple systems at once. Obviously, you have to have a lens that will focus the light, and that's no small task. But you also have to have specialized muscles that'll change the dimensions of that lens so you can focus. Because if you can't focus, high resolution vision won't be helpful if you're looking at different objects at different distances.
Also, you also have to have an array of photoreceptors, and that array has to separate the image into little pixels. Then you need separate neurons for those pixels, which might be a small set of photoreceptors, and they have to be sent in separate channels to the brain. And then you need very complex neural networks to reconstruct those pixels into more complex images. In addition, what, you have to have specialized feedback loops that causes your eyes to focus on the same point at the same time. Because if you don't focus on the same point, you'll have a very blurry image. So we have very complex feedback loops that keeps the eyes highly focused on the same point so that you can actually detect high resolution images. And the list goes on and on and on and on. Again, if you look at the example of I talked about the signaling in plants, if you have, let's say, a plant, and what some plants do is if they're attacked by an insect, they'll send a signal, a chemical signal, to a predator to actually eat that insect. That requires multiple systems working at once. So you need a complex signal pathway so that the plant can detect when it's being attacked by an insect. Then it needs a logic center to determine when to send a chemical signal to the predator of that particular insect. Then you have to have a mechanism to send the chemical signal. Then the other predator, like a wasp, has to be able to detect that signal. And then it has to have a logic center to direct the insect to go to the plant to eat the insect. So what happens is you have to have all these various systems at once perfectly integrated, or it will not work. Interspecies communication is very, very hard. So these are just a few examples of why the logical systems we see in life, the high level design, could not have come about by an incremental system, but it points to a mind that planned everything in advance.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: Yeah, great examples and great insight. So what you're saying is an evolutionary process. You can expect complexity as you go along, not from the beginning, but as you move forward.
But we're talking about design all the way down, to borrow the turtles analogy. You know, it's designed from the beginning, irreducibly complex design built into systems from the get go, and that you cannot produce with an evolutionary process.
[00:29:55] Speaker C: And this is a key point that people don't realize, because Michael Behe wrote beautifully about this idea of irreducible complexity. But what we know now is that these complex systems, both in terms of what an individual organism can do and how organisms work in higher ecosystems, is you have irreducible complexity at multiple layers. You've got an irreducibly complex set of systems where each system has an irreducibly complex set of subsystems, where each subsystem has an irreducibly complex of complex set of components, where you have to meet incredibly tight constraints, and everything has to coordinate with each, with each other. Now, a person might argue, and they have that. Perhaps if you have a simple, irreducibly complex system, maybe it originally wasn't irreducibly complex and later developed that appearance, but you simply cannot argue for the systematic hierarchy of irreducible complexity and the incredibly tight constraints that have to be met based on the design logic to have occurred incrementally. It just doesn't make sense.
[00:31:05] Speaker B: Right. Agreed. Well, Brian, we'll leave it there for now, but this is a fun topic, so we'll need to talk about this more in the future. Thanks for joining me today.
[00:31:15] Speaker C: It's been a pleasure.
[00:31:17] Speaker B: Doctor Merler's talk on how earth is designed for technological advancement will be posted to our Discovery Science YouTube channel later in 2024. Now, Brian, where's the best place listeners can go to learn more about your work and your research?
[00:31:32] Speaker C: Well, if you go to intelligentdesign.org dot, there's a lot of really nice articles, some of which are mine. You can go to evolutionnews.org and you can see a list of my articles there if you look under writers. And also there's a really nice book on the intersection of science and faith that was produced in South Africa that if you just look up my name, South Africa in faith and science, you'll find, and I have some a chapter in that book, as well as other people like Casey Luskin and people like Marcus Eberlin. So that's another great way to learn more about what I've been talking about.
[00:32:05] Speaker B: Yeah, and if you go to discovery.org, check our calendar, our schedule of events, you may indeed catch Brian Miller speaking at a conference or event near you. Well, once again, thank you, Brian. And we'll have you back again later to unpack more of this amazing complexity and design that we take for granted in life. For id the future, I'm Andrew McDermott. Thanks for listening.
[00:32:29] Speaker A: Visit
[email protected] and intelligent design.org. This program is copyright Discovery institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
