[00:00:01] Speaker A: Is the natural world full of flawed, makeshift designs, as some critics of intelligent design have argued?
Or are living things far more ingeniously engineered than we've been led to believe?
Welcome to Idea the Future. I'm your host, Andrew McDermott. Today we're pleased to bring you a conversation featuring award winning British engineer and designer Dr. Stuart Burgess. A senior fellow with Discovery Institute's center for Science and Culture and author of the book Ultimate Engineering. Dr. Burgess has spent decades studying engineering design both in human technology and in humans themselves.
And his work has led him to challenge the popular claim that biology is full of poor design.
In this conversation, originally recorded for the Truthful Hope podcast, host Jacob Vasquez talks with Burgess about the so called bad design argument and what engineering principles can tell us about the evidence for intelligent design in nature.
Without further ado, here's Jacob Vasquez with Dr. Stuart Burgess,
[00:01:04] Speaker B: ID the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
[00:01:11] Speaker C: Welcome everybody, to the Truthful Hope podcast. I'm your host, Jacob Vazquez. Is life the product of intelligent design or the result of blind processes? Over many, many, many, many years, those who say intelligent design will point to certain body parts or mechanisms in the human body and that seem undeniably designed, while evolutionists will point to other body parts and mechanisms, or even the same ones, and say even if it were designed, it's incredibly poorly done, of course, lending support to their view that we are the byproduct of a random, unguided process of evolution. So which one is it? Well, My guest today, Dr. Stuart Stuart Burgess, just published a book titled Ultimate Engineering where he makes an incredibly compelling case for, and you probably guessed it, an ultimate engineer. Thank you, Stuart, for jumping on today.
[00:02:13] Speaker D: Yeah, it's good to be with you. Thank you.
[00:02:15] Speaker C: It's such an honor to have you. I mean, when I saw this book, and I'll show it for our listeners here, when I saw it come out, I was just so amazed.
You know, We've talked about ID on the channel before. We've had Dr. Behe on and Demski and Luskin and a lot of the prominent ID folks because it's just such a reasonable explanation for what we see in, in science. And so when I saw your book really countering what evolutionists are saying about the design of the human body, it really compelled me. So for our listeners, I'm just going to share with them your background and then we could get right into it because I have a ton of questions for you today. So for our listeners, Stuart is emeritus professor of engineering Design at Bristol University. And in 2019, he received the award for the top mechanical engineer in, in the United Kingdom for work on spacecraft design and Olympic bike design. You can't say. Not many people can say they've done that. And he is the author of this book we'll be discussing today that was published this year, so it's brand new by the Discovery Institute Press. And what we'll do for you listeners is we'll include the Amazon link in the show notes, so if you're interested, you can go and find it and buy it there.
So, Stuart, clearly by your. And I just summed up your background, but I looked more into it and you have extensive experience, you know, design, you're a designer. It's. You're, you're no foreigner to design. I just want to start here. Why write this book in particular?
[00:03:48] Speaker D: Well, the whole question of origins is obviously a very topical, controversial subject.
I've spent the last 40 years publishing around well over 200 research papers on the science of design, not just in engineering, but in nature as well as. And I really wanted to show that the scientific evidence absolutely supports intelligent design.
Secondly, I wanted to expose some of the false science, especially of authors like Nathan Lentz, who's written a book, Human Errors Claiming this Bad Design in the Human Body. So I wanted to refute that.
And I think a third thing. I wanted to show that the level of design sophistication in biology is far higher than the best of human technology, which I think is a very powerful evidence for intelligent design.
[00:04:48] Speaker C: So good. And you know, as I was looking through your book, the table of contents I was looking at, it's very nicely done. You could tell exactly what the book is about. I'm just flipping there now. But you do a great job of touching on essentially all of the parts that evolutionists will claim are examples of bad design. And you show no, it's actually examples of amazing design. And you argue why. So it's really cleverly done in that area.
Now, your title is very compelling. Ultimate Engineering. An engineer investigates the biomechanics of the Human body. Really draws you in. How do you define ultimate engineering? And maybe can you give an example or two of ultimate engineering in the human body? Yeah.
[00:05:32] Speaker D: Yes.
Ultimate engineering is the best engineering that you can get.
Ultimate levels of fine tuning, ultimate levels of multifunctioning, ultimate levels of design resolution.
So it's concepts and details that you cannot improve upon.
And that's what you see in biology. I mean, to give you one example, synovial fluid. This is the fluid in our joints and our knee joint and our elbow joints.
It's an incredible substance. I've compared it with the best of human technology because I've worked on Olympic bike lubrication.
So I'm aware of what is the best that human technology can produce.
And synovial fluid is just way ahead of the best of human technology.
In the case of synovial fluid, the friction levels are about a 50th of that on the best Olympic bike. So it's 50 times better than the best of human technology, which is just mind boggling.
And if you look at the process, the processes involved in synovial fluid, they're just incredible. Cartilage is porous, and when you load a joint, the synovial fluid is squeezed out of the cartilage and it separates the bones, creates a fluid film in between. It's a very complex process that engineers can't copy. And on top of that you have molecular layers of lubrication with lubricant, protein, and also phospholipids.
Some incredible engineering at the molecular scale that engineers just can't copy. And what I would say is that engineers are just in awe of every aspect of design in the human body. Not just synovial fluid, but every aspect of biomechanics, all of the musculoskeletal system.
Engineers are just in awe of every detail. And just going back to your previous point about atheists who claim bad design.
Atheists like Nathan Lentz, Abby Hafer, Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, they will often criticize parts that they have not worked on themselves.
And the majority of my book is based on, particularly biomechanics, where I have published research papers. So I know what I'm talking about when I'm reviewing the design of the foot or the lubrication in joints. And what I'm often finding is that these atheists have not worked on those, on those areas.
[00:08:19] Speaker C: And that's what I got from your book while I was reading it, is that, you know, it seems like the, the atheist, like some of the people that you listed off there, they're quick to say, oh look, poor design, but there's lack of understanding. And what you do that's so well done is you give the proper understanding and you even show. I think it's in the introduction, I think the example was maybe the eye or something else where it's been repeatedly shown that it's actually really good design. And still you have atheist Darwinian evolutionists continuing this narrative.
Maybe they haven't looked at it, or maybe they're just being ignorant towards it. I'm not sure. I don't want to judge intent, but it does seem a little strange to me.
So I think I got that from your book as well, which is really helpful.
Now, why does ultimate engineering in biology support intelligent design and not evolution? And maybe if you could maybe also define intelligent design for our listeners just as a refresher as well.
[00:09:23] Speaker D: Yeah. The intelligent design is kind of worldview assumes the possibility that an intelligent designer has actually designed biology as we see it, as opposed to evolution, which claims that undirected forces have just created the intricate designs that we see in biology without any design intent.
And many scientists, myself included, believe in intelligent design because that's what biology reveals. Intelligent design predicts ultimate engineering because because of the following. If an intelligent designer has created the world out of nothing, then that intelligent designer would have a perfect knowledge of what he's created. Not just the materials, but the laws of physics, the laws of chemistry, and such. An intelligent designer could therefore produce a perfect design because they have a perfect knowledge of what they've created, unlike human designers, who have a very imperfect design design understanding of materials and the laws of physics.
And so what intelligent design predicts is ultimate engineering in biology and a level of sophistication which is above human technology. And that's what we see.
In contrast, evolution predicts that biology should have a sophistication below human technology, below, because evolution is constrained by many things, by step by step change, by just good enough design, by vestigial parts. It's constrained by time.
Evolution is constrained by many things that human designers are not constrained by. And evolutionists themselves have admitted that if evolution is true, biology should be at a lower level than human technology, which is the opposite to the intelligent design worldview. But of course, what is so obvious in biology is that it's far above human technology, exactly as intelligent design predicts.
[00:11:37] Speaker C: Yeah, and I want to clarify for our listeners too, when we say evolution, we're making the distinction between micro evolution and macro evolution. Right. You know, and you do this in your book very clearly in the introduction of, you know, micro evolution is adaptation over time, small changes within the species. And then you have the macro, which is change into different kinds. And that's the type that we're criticizing, that macro evolution. I think we would all agree that micro evolution is evidence. We've seen it. Darwin actually did a great job of showing it. But it's when you get into this macro area that this one kind Changes into this other kind really is a position of blind faith, or maybe faith in general. And that you're assuming given so many years, these changes will result in that. And we are saying on the ID front, no, just quite simply, no. Do you want to add anything?
[00:12:27] Speaker D: That's an important clarification. Yeah,
[00:12:30] Speaker C: yeah. So I think really important. I see it conflated all too often in discussions like online about evolution. So it's clear to get that across.
Now, you've been a vocal advocate of ID Intelligent Design in academia and your book explains how you've been criticized by atheists but also supported by many academic colleagues. Do you want to give some examples of this? Because this was really eye opening for me as well.
[00:12:54] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, I've been in academia for more than 30 years and I've discussed origins in the coffee room with many of my colleagues. I've been a little bit surprised.
When I first entered academia, people said, well, you're going to be surrounded by atheists. People won't support you on your belief in intelligent Design. But that's not what I found at all. I found that most academics are agnostic.
They don't have strong feelings. There's a minority of atheists, but they're very vocal. And the media give the impression that all academics are like that.
And what I found, I've been amazed at how many biologists I've spoken to who said, actually they're very sympathetic to intelligent design, but they won't go public on that because they'll be criticized.
But if we discuss, for example, a concept like abiogenesis, the idea that life could come from a chemical suit, many, many biologists tell me they don't think it's possible. There's no scientific evidence for it.
But the only reason they support it is because that's something you have to, you know, you have to follow the line which is, well, abiogenesis must have happened because we're here and yet many biologists will admit there's absolutely no evidence for it whatsoever. So in the private of a coffee room, I'm amazed how much support there is for intelligent design.
[00:14:23] Speaker C: I see the same thing. So I don't know if I've told you this, maybe over email I did, but I'm a bioinformatics scientist in cancer research and you know, all my colleagues are. I also assume that they were going to be atheists and, you know, scientific naturalist and whatnot. But most of them, to my surprise, are more, if anything, newer age and spiritualist, but they still hold to Darwinian evolution because like you said, they kind of have to. But the conversations I've had had far less to do with naturalism and more to do with the spirituality of things and like astrology and whatnot.
But I did, I have shared irreducible complexity. You know, Behe's wonderful input with some. And they've never heard it before. To me, I was like, you've never heard this before. We're looking at biology. You know, it's, it's quite amazing. So I do, I've seen something similar. But I've also had Dempski on and he said he, and you probably know this more than I do, but he's gotten virtually attacked on all angles because of his ID views. So there's definitely two sides of the coin. I'm glad you haven't gotten that treatment, which is very, very encouraging. Now you. I couldn't look past the fact that you worked on spacecraft design. I don't think our listeners can either. That's pretty cool. Now, how does the level of design sophistication in spacecraft technology compared to what we see in biological systems? What's the comparison there?
[00:15:49] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. Because spacecraft design would be like the pinnacle of human technology.
And with the Artemis program running at the moment, it's quite topical.
But even if you compare a spacecraft, you find that biology is far, far more sophisticated, far more compact, far more fine tuning, far higher levels of design resolution. To give you one example, in the human body, there are 90,000 miles of nerve pathways in the same volume of equipment. On a spacecraft, there might be nine miles of wires. So that's 10,000 times more wiring per unit volume.
In terms of computing power, the human brain takes or requires one 100,000 the volume of the best computers. So the best computers require a hundred thousand times more volume.
There are millions of sensors in the human body in the same volume. On a spacecraft, it would be thousands.
So whichever way you do a performance measure, biology is just far above even the best of human technology. And that points to intelligent design.
[00:17:09] Speaker C: Wow. I mean, every time I hear that, it's amazing. And it's important to note too, Darwin didn't have this insight available to him. He just thought of. To my understanding, a cell was like a blob. And maybe he knew some complexes of it, but he didn't know as much as we know today. He didn't have my field of work, biotechnology and genome sequencing and next generation sequencing. He didn't have any of that available. And now we can go in and see not only the irreducible complexity, but the specified complexity, and that these are sequences with meanings and patterns. And it's just absolutely amazing. So when you say things like that, you know, I don't want to, don't want to critique Darwin too much because to his credit, he didn't have this information available to him. But we should know better today. I think today someone said it. The scientific discoveries of late only continue to disprove the Darwinian evolutionary framework, not support it. And I think that's important.
[00:18:05] Speaker D: It's a good point. Yeah.
[00:18:07] Speaker C: Now, I wanted, I want to now shift to objections. That was more the general framework, but I want to jump to objections because I could just picture the atheist Darwinian evolutionist just fuming up right now. I want to address some of his thoughts. So some claim that health issues like disease and genetic disorders, they're signs of bad design.
And I understand that. Right? Because if we're saying there's an ultimate engineer, and you said it before, like he knows all about all the laws of logic and nature and so forth, then the design should be incredible, ultimate.
But yet we see these disorders and diseases. So how would you explain, how would you address this claim?
[00:18:49] Speaker D: Yeah, it's an understandable objection. Although my design colleagues don't have this objection because they understand design better. Some of these biologists don't understand some of the aspects of intelligent design. You see, there's a difference between design and disease. Disease is an external attack on the body. It's not a reflection of the design. You can give an example of this with a motorcar. If you were to park a motorcar next to a river and the car got flooded, that's not a problem with the design of the car. It's an external attack due to the flood. And it's like that with a disease, with genetic faults, genetic disorders, that's not a reflection of the original design.
It's a reality of a decay of the design.
Intelligent design not only predicts ultimate engineering, but it also predicts that those designs will decay over time. Because engineers know if you leave a system on its own, whether it's software hardware, it's going to decay over time.
And so, yeah, some people will have a genetic disorder in their heart, but that's not how our original design was.
When God created Adam and Eve, they would have had no genetic defects. But over time, we've been accumulating genetic defects. So there's a difference between the original design and genetic defects. There's also the issue of bad lifestyles. If people sit too much, they don't do proper exercise, they get a bad back.
And in my book, because I cover these objections in my book and I actually quote certain scientific papers where researchers have proven that when people have sports injuries, twisted ankles, pulled muscles, it's not to do with the design of the joints, is to do with people not being careful about their training programs and the way that they look after their bodies.
[00:20:55] Speaker C: And that makes sense. I mean to me that makes sense. There's an external factor, has no effect on the quality of the design. And then if you add in sin to that, the sinful nature, the fall of Adam and Eve, well, it fits seamlessly. There's really no issue on the theist worldview or looking at intelligent designer. I think the burden of proof is more on the atheist. Like why do we see those things and why are those things bad? And I know that goes into a whole philosophical, moral argument type of discussion, but nevertheless it does hold up for us intelligent designers. There's nothing, ideas, there's nothing wrong with these disorders. Now the atheist, Lathan Lentz, Nathan Lentz, sorry, the individual you were naming before, he claims that many human joints like the ankle joint are bad design.
Why does he make this claim? Because I think you start your book with the joints. Why does he make this claim? And how do you answer those objections?
[00:21:52] Speaker D: Yeah, Nathan Lentz claims the foot is a bad design, particularly the ankle. He claims that the ankle joints, I mean there are seven ankle bones. He claims these would be better just being fused. He thinks such a bad design.
The reason he claims this is because evolution predicts the foot would be a bad design. Because if humans had evolved from an ape like creature, quadruped, there's not enough time to evolve a good ankle, a good foot. So his claim is based on the prediction of evolution. But what Nathan Lentz is unaware of is the copious research papers stating that the foot is an absolutely brilliant design, contrary to what Nathan claims. So his, his prediction of evolution does not tie in with the facts. Instead of following scientific evidence, he's following an evolutionary worldview. And just to add one more comment here, people like Nathan Lentz have not designed anything themselves.
They underestimate the difficulty of design. They just assume biological things fall together and a design just emerges by chance.
But if people like Nathan Lentz actually tried to design something themselves, they'd find actually design doesn't happen by chance. It takes a lot of intelligence, skill and effort.
[00:23:19] Speaker C: That, and that is one of the biggest takeaways I got from your book. Is, you know, how rarely do you come across a designer who's worked on spacecrafts and, you know, Olympic bikes. So you're coming from the perspective of not an academic. I mean you are elite in your academia, but not just sitting up here in your library all day and all night. You've done the work, you've put your hands to the test, you've done the designs. So you know what it takes to design, you know what it takes to do these things. So you come at it from a different perspective. And this will bleed into a question I have for you a little later on on maybe the psychological psychology of some of these atheists who see the evidence and still remain in their doubt, which we'll get to in a bit. But I do want to touch on the most popular.
Richard Dawkins, who claims that the eye is wired backwards. Now your chapter in the eye is, is phenomenal. It was eye opening to me, no pun intended. Sorry, I'm a new dad, so I have dad jokes.
Is his claim that the eye was wired backwards, is that bad? Is that supported by science?
[00:24:24] Speaker D: It's not supported at all. For those unfamiliar with the argument, he claims that because light goes through the eye and it has to go through the retina at the back of the eye because the light sensitive cells are at the back of the retina.
So he just assumed, jumping to a conclusion, that if light is going through the retina, it will somehow be degraded. So it's a kind of a backward process.
But now over 10 years ago, scientists, researchers discovered that the eye is not wired backwards because we have what are called Muller cells that act like fiber optic cables and they guide the light through the eye so that light is not degraded. In fact, they even improve the signal because, for example, it blocks out reflected light. Scientists were stunned when they discovered this. So what was previously thought to be a design weakness turns out to be a design strength. These Muller cells. Now this discovery was highlighted in 2016 in Scientific American.
And so it's not just hidden in research papers. It's been quite widely known that the eye is not wired backwards. Other researchers have said the vertebra eye is a virtually perfect design. If you read the world experts who do research on the eye.
But Nathan Lentz, Ibehfer, Richard Dawkins have not read this research. So again, they're not following the scientific evidence, they're following their worldview. To them, their evolutionary worldview is so important, they don't even bother looking at the science, which is showing that they're wrong. And they're not even updating their books, which is.
It's really bad.
[00:26:13] Speaker C: I want to press in on that a little bit further because that was my big question.
Do you think that they just don't know of the recent science or they do know of the recent findings? That fairly recent, I mean, 10 years is not too recent. That's. That's fairly. That's going back.
Do you think they know this information and yet they are withholding from updating their book by saying, you know what, I was wrong on this. I still object, but here's why. Like, and this is kind of extending out of your field into, like, the psychology and the philosophy of it. But why. Why do they not just admit they're wrong, especially in this area?
[00:26:52] Speaker D: I think it's mostly because they're unaware.
We have these popular writers, Richard Dawkins, Abby Hayford, Nathan Lentz.
They're generalists. They haven't specialized in one particular area, and they have such faith in evolution.
Evolution tells them the human body must be a bad design.
And I actually agree with them that if evolution is true, we should be full of bad design.
And so they find it hard to accept that there's good design in the human body. Therefore they're not motivated to check the science and they're making these wild claims of bad design.
I think there are two weaknesses in their approach. One is they're not checking the science, but the other is they are unaware of the intricacies of design.
I've spent 40 years writing 200 papers on the science of design, and so I'm qualified to do a review of a spacecraft, an Olympic bike.
I've studied biomechanics, and many of my papers are on biomechanics. So I'm qualified to review the design of the human body.
But these authors have no qualifications in the science of design, and yet they're setting themselves up as experts at reviewing design, which is quite incredible.
[00:28:17] Speaker C: I mean, yeah, wow. And it's almost better that they're unaware. I'd rather they be unaware than them be aware and withhold purposefully to further this narrative. Either way, it's not good because if you're going to speak on this, you should be aware of what. Because science is always evolving. Science is discovering new things. You should be caught up to speed.
So it's quite the dilemma, I think, for them on this matter now. And like I mentioned, your chapter on the eye was absolutely fantastic. So for our listeners, if. If you get this book, go right to the chapter on the eye. You'll you'll see what I mean. It's absolutely incredible. Now, speaking of, you know, academics who are not aware of some of these findings taking a brief detour from the objections, do a lot of academics at least acknowledge the evidence for intelligent design? Like, are they seeing this, this evidence, and are they at least thinking maybe there's a possibility here?
Hey, everyone, Just wanted to pause here for a minute and thank you for listening to the Truthful Hope podcast. We hope you've been enjoying the episode so far. To help us with our mission of sharing the hope of Christianity with as many people as possible, please consider subscribing to our podcast and leaving your thoughts and questions in the comments. You could find us on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. Furthermore, if you'd like to make a monetary contribution, please consider
[email protected] donate as a 501c3 nonprofit, your donation may be tax deductible and you'll receive a receipt for your records. Thanks again. And now back to the show.
[00:29:54] Speaker D: Yeah, if I speak to an academic in private, they'll often say, yeah, I can see there's evidence for intelligent design, but I'm not allowed to acknowledge that in public.
The problem is, in modern science, we have this materialistic worldview. There's an unwritten rule that you are not allowed to raise the subject of intelligent design. There was a famous quote in the 1940s by Sir Julian Huxley, the first president of the British Humanist Society, and he said, modern science must rule out special creation, must rule out God. He didn't justify that. It was just a big assumption, a big choice to rule God out.
So that's the worldview that people are supposed to follow today.
There's no scientific justification for that. And if great scientists like Isaac Newton were here today, they would be astounded that God is just ruled out of research.
So today, many, many academics just follow this materialistic worldview. And many academics just want an easy life. Understandably, their focus is their career. They don't want to put the head above the parapet and risk their career being affected by speaking out on intelligent design.
[00:31:15] Speaker C: Wow. Yeah. And you know, I was just as you were talking, I brought to mind this quote that I always think of when I think of this by Richard Lewontin. I know you. You know exactly what I'm thinking of. But I'll read it here. It's quite lengthy for our listeners. And this is what he Willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but on the contrary, that we are faced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying. To the uninitiated, moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door. I mean, that sums up pretty much exactly what you just said. And it's plainly stated. I appreciate the honesty, but it's. It's quite shocking and unsettling.
[00:32:42] Speaker D: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
[00:32:44] Speaker C: Now
[00:32:45] Speaker D: what I find what I find frustrating sometimes.
I have had an exchange with Richard Dawkins and other atheists.
Not many atheists will acknowledge that, that they have a world view.
Someone like Richard Dawkins will say, well, I'm just right. He won't say, well, yeah, I have a worldview. You have a worldview.
You know, he just claims he's right. And it's difficult to debate with someone who cannot see that they have a worldview and have made prior commitments to that worldview.
[00:33:16] Speaker C: Wow. To say you don't have a worldview and then say, you're right. I mean, I'm tempted to say, I would respond by saying, no, I'm right.
Just leaving it at that, seeing where it goes. Wow, that's shocking.
Let's go back to the objections because there's some more here. You brought up another person, Abby Halfer, and she claims that the throat is a bad design because of the possibility of choking. Again, something at the at face value that I could understand.
You know, choking is a severe weakness. It's a limitation. It could be deathly. So how would you answer this objection to design?
[00:33:54] Speaker D: Yeah. Again, she makes this claim because evolution predicts bad design, but she hasn't checked up on the science. I have a chapter on this and I quote various papers. There's one particular Japanese surgeon who is a world expert. He's studied the throat all his life.
Whereas Abby Hafez just writes a chapter without studying the throat at all. This Japanese surgeon describes why the throat, the mouth is an absolutely brilliant Design the way the muscles work together, the way the throat is multifunctioning. It doesn't just eat, but it is involved in speech and breathing.
I've written a scientific paper arguing that to produce better robots, we need to copy the way biology multifunctions. And I mention the throat as an example of brilliant multi functioning that engineers need to copy. So if Abby Haver had read the scientific research, she would have read that the throat is a brilliant example of what engineers need to copy.
Now when she says that choking is a problem, yeah, choking can be a problem for elderly people where the throat is degraded, but for a healthy person, choking is not normally a problem.
Of course, there are many areas in life where we need to be careful. Our eyes and ears are delicate and sometimes we do certain tasks. We have to maybe wear safety goggles or look after things. And yeah, you have to be a little bit careful when you're eating and speaking.
So there are many areas in life where you need some care and attention. But with a little care and attention, people don't have problems with our throat. It's amazing how long, you know, the throat can work.
A hundred years. And that is astounding. Engineers cannot produce a system that functions like the throat for that long. Engineers are in awe of the design of the throat. But the problem is Abby Hafer has not spoken to engineers and researchers who've worked on the throat.
[00:36:08] Speaker C: That brings up a really good point to my mind in that what do you think of the implications of this kind of worldview assumption? Right, Abby Hafer, you just said she's in a sense looking for bad design along with Richard Dawkins and Nathan Lentz. So I can only imagine other individuals in healthcare and biotechnology are also not interested in design, maybe even looking for bad design.
What difference would it make on a practical level if we did accept the design framework and treated human beings as designed beings rather than randomly put together by an unguided process?
[00:36:51] Speaker D: I think that's a good, I think that's a good point. I think when people are looking for bad design, claiming bad design has very negative consequences for science, even for healthcare. In terms of science, one classic example is junk DNA.
When they found parts of DNA they didn't understand, they jumped to a conclusion, oh, this must be bad design, because that's what evolution predicts and it held back science. There were scientists saying, hang on, that's not going to be junk. Have a high view of biology, have an intelligent design view, look for sophistication. And if they'd had that view, it would have been that they would have had faster work.
In my own area, I produced bio inspired designs. For example, the knee joints, the hand.
I would not have looked for that if I didn't have an intelligent design worldview. If I thought the knee was badly designed, I wouldn't be trying to copy it. But I did try to copy it and that gave me success and design awards.
So having an intelligent design worldview has helped me.
In his book, Nathan Lentz claims people would be better off if they fused the ankle bones together.
It's a medical fact that you should not fuse your bones together.
And it really worries me that people reading Nathan Lentz books are doing things to their body based on evolutionary predictions that it's going to be a disaster for their health.
So yet there are consequences to having this negative view of bad design in the human body, both for science and health care.
[00:38:37] Speaker C: Wow, that's.
Fuse your ankle bones together. That is not something I expected.
My goodness. Now homology, meaning similarity of the vertebrate limb, is an iconic example of evolution. Can you explain the homology argument? And can you explain why you see homology as supporting intelligent design rather than against it?
[00:39:02] Speaker D: Yeah. You write the homology argument is an iconic argument for evolution.
Darwin noticed that different types of creature have a shoulder, an elbow, wrist or a hip and knee and an ankle.
Not only mammals, not only land mammals, but marine mammals like whales. Their flipper has a shoulder and elbow, wrist and fingers, but also frogs and birds, other creatures as well.
So Darwin said, ah, this must be a sign of evolution that these creatures are related.
Interestingly, one of Darwin's assumptions was that this must be bad design. This is actually related.
So Darwin said, surely the whale flippers are bad design, because surely the whale does not need fingers, does not need a wrist, does not need an elbow.
So it's this same assumption, oh, this must be a bad design.
And for the last over 150 years, biology books have repeated Darwin's argument that only evolution can explain the similarity.
Well, over the last 30 years, I've done research on animal joints, birds, humans, other creatures, and I've discovered that Darwin was absolutely wrong with his assumption.
If I give you one specific example of the whale flipper, the whale flipper does need an elbow joint, a wrist joint and fingers. And I show in my book, the reason whales need fingers in their flippers is because whales need to morph the shape of their flippers to twist them in order to produce hydrodynamic efficiency, to get low drag. When a whale is Swimming and turning, it needs to be able to morph its flipper into different shapes and also fine tune the stiffness. Not just the shape, but the stiffness and fingers are the best design.
And in my book I also show that recent discoveries have shown that the finger muscles are actually functional in a well. So not only do they have fingers, but it's been proven that they move their fingers with finger muscles and they move their wrist joint with, with muscles for the wrist. So it's been shown that whales do need their fingers and their wrist. But of course, Darwin didn't understand hydrodynamics and he didn't understand aerodynamics because for a similar reason, birds need a wrist and fingers to morph their wings when they fly. So I've produced a paper showing that the vertebrate limb is optimal for all the different creatures.
And I say this challenges Darwin's homology argument. And I published this in the Institute of Physics in the Journal of Bio Inspiration.
Some of my colleagues said they're amazed that that journal would publish a paper that completely contradicts this iconic homology argument. But I wasn't surprised because engineers are very pragmatic and robot designers, they need to know, is the wow flipper a good design or not? And they need to know, is the bird wing a good design or not? Because they want to know should they be copying it? According to Darwin, they should not be copying the whale flipper if they make hydrofoil, they shouldn't be copying the bird wing if they make a wing. But I've explained they should be copying because they're optimal design. And so the editor of the journal said, well, yeah, this might be contradicting evolution, but robot engineers need to know is this a good design or not?
And the reviewer said it's these designs are good, so we must publish this paper.
But it's interesting that Darwin makes the same mistake as the modern authors assuming bad design in biology without actually investigating whether it is bad design or not.
[00:43:14] Speaker C: Yeah, and I just keep thinking about the implications, you know, like we were speaking before of like health care and, and treating disease and whatnot, but now we're speaking of what robot designers and, you know, are making for general use for whether it be the environment or for shipments or whatever it might be. You know, do you copy the design of life like the bird and the whale, or do you not? And Dawkins and others are saying, no, don't, but it's clearly a misguided reasoning as to why they shouldn't, when the science evidently supports that it is ultimate engineering that it is something you should be copying.
So, wow. I mean, the implications are, I think, a lot bigger than. It's not merely just losing or winning an argument. It seems this goes much, much deeper, which would make sense. If it is truly intelligent, intelligently designed, there would be implications of not living in accordance with that design.
[00:44:07] Speaker D: I think this is really important.
Engineers see biology as the gold standard of design.
That's why there are quite a number of journals of bio inspiration where there are literally hundreds of examples of what engineers are copying designs from biology.
And, you know, if you are a good designer, you would copy the work of a master designer engineer, see biology as the master, the gold standard of design.
And it just absolutely supports intelligent design.
[00:44:42] Speaker C: That's. That's incredible.
You have a chapter in Intelligent and Ultimate Engineering on that shows that biodiversity of life on Earth is best explained by an intelligent designer. Can you explain that? Because I just. I read that chapter and I found it so interesting.
[00:44:59] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, I should say that during writing this book, which was about five years, there were two really quite actually emotional experiences I had. Because when I started writing the book, I said, in biology we see excellent engineering. And having reviewed hundreds of parts of the human body and having had experience working with esa, with NASA, with Panasonic, I suddenly realized, and this kind of filled me with awe and fear, that biology is not excellent engineering, it's ultimate engineering.
And I thought, I'm looking at the design of a designer who's perfect. And that filled me with fear. And that's when I changed the title of the book to Ultimate Engineering.
But I then had a second kind of revelation, and that is I could see that the intelligent designer has perfectly explored the design space. And I can appreciate this from a personal example or personal experience, because I've worked for the British Olympic cycling team. We produced the fastest bicycle in the world, breaking world records.
I worked on the Envisat satellite, which was the largest Earth observation satellite in the world. So engineers love to design the fastest, the quickest, the deepest, the smallest, the best.
Then I suddenly realized that's what God has done in creation.
Because dinosaurs, or the largest dinosaurs are as big as you can get. It's the ultimate.
And I suddenly realized, of course God would design dinosaurs. He had to design dinosaurs because he was demonstrating his ability to design the biggest and the fun of designing the biggest, he had to design the blue whale. The blue whale is at the limit of what is possible for marine creatures, the limit of the heart.
And Goethe designed the largest flying creature, some of the dinosaur flying creatures.
He's designed the fastest animals, the cheetah, the sail fish, and he's designed the fastest bird. He's designed the brightest colors with peacocks with their laser beams and their thin film interference.
And God has designed the smallest creatures. He's done it with perfection. You can see the same with plants. Every time, a type of plant, you can see it with the stars in the universe.
He's created every pattern, every size. This is what a designer does. A good designer loves to explore the design space. Evolution cannot explain that extreme of exploration, but intelligent design explains it perfectly.
[00:47:54] Speaker C: Wow. Makes you.
Makes you give him glory too, right? And I think that that's really the primary purpose of his general revelation, his natural revelation. And looking at these things just being like, wow, there is an intelligent creator behind this. He deserves my worship. That's. That's the other implication. Right. There's the implication of missing the design, then there's the implication of recognizing the design and what do you do with that? And it's made for the purpose of knowing him and glorifying him forever. So it's such a wow. It's a beautiful thing.
Now, we've talked about a lot today, I. I do want to ask you on a practical level, what impact?
There might be many. But what primary impact do you hope that your book will have?
[00:48:39] Speaker D: I think the primary impact is to show the readers, whether they're believers or not, that science is on the side of intelligent Design. Intelligent Design is not a pseudoscience. It's absolutely scientific. And if you believe in intelligent design, you stand shoulder to shoulder with the greatest scientists that ever lived.
And I also want people to understand what academics really think.
We get a very distorted view from the media of what academics actually think. So I want people, especially students, to know that science is on the side of Intelligent Design. I want people to think for themselves, not just to believe what the spoon fed in the schools.
[00:49:24] Speaker C: Wow. Yeah. I mean, I grew up, you know, learning Darwinian evolution, as many others did. And I know part of Discovery Institute's goal is to push for ID to also be taught, you know, not. Not necessarily replace, because they're both, in a sense, theories, but have them both be taught and then have the students decide what's more reasonable. I think that's the most reasonable decision there, but save that for a different episode.
Now. What are you working on now? You know, you're a fellow of the hu. Well, I might have pronounced that wrong center in Cambridge, maybe explain what work is being done there and, and what you're working on next. And then. Yeah, so our listeners could keep track of what you're doing.
[00:50:05] Speaker D: Yeah, I still do research at Bristol University. We're working on bikes for the Los Angeles Olympics in 28. So I'm enjoying that. I'm also an adjunct professor at Liberty university supervising some PhD students.
But, yeah, most of my work now is at the Whewell Centre in Cambridge. It's a center for science and natural theology.
It's an exciting center opened by the Discovery Institute, working on projects related to Intelligent Design and actually doing.
Pushing for what you were just talking about, pushing for Intelligent Design to be included in the education system in schools and also universities.
Cambridge has a rich history in origins, with Isaac Newton, with Lord Calvin, with James Clerk, Maxwell Ambrose Fleming, all studying at Cambridge.
It's been a university that has really pushed Intelligent Design in the past, also with William Paley as well as.
And so they wanted to have that academic presence in Cambridge to show that Intelligent Design has a very solid academic base. So I'm writing scientific papers at that Discovery Institute Huell center in Cambridge. So it's a very exciting initiative, I think, and they've been surprised how many academics want to join that center from places like Oxford University and other places. It's been a very encouraging start in the last year.
[00:51:48] Speaker C: That's exciting, you know, because you're right, the media can portray it in a way of all the scientists, all the top guys, they're all atheists, they don't believe in God, no designer. And if you believe in it, you're anti science. But it seems like from what you're coming from, there's actually a growing popular, you know, a growing, growing sense of acceptance of some sort of the Intelligent Design movement. And I think that's expected, in my opinion, if we're truly following the evidence, where it leads, or we end up on the Richard Lewontin front or the Richard Dawkins where we reject it based on worldview presumptions. So I think it's encouraging to see that so many academics are coming to realize that there is Intelligent Design and we're even more seeing that, evidently. So it's really, really encouraging.
[00:52:39] Speaker A: That was Dr. Stuart Burgess in conversation with Jacob Vasquez, host of the Truthful Hope podcast. Our thanks to Jacob for allowing us to share this conversation at ID the Future.
To explore this topic in more detail, you got to get your hands on a copy of Dr. Burgess book Ultimate Engineering. That's step one. And if you're curious about Dr. Burgess work on Olympic bicycles in particular, and his work with the British Olympic cycling team. That is a whole other exciting chapter of Dr. Burgess's career. And it's still going.
He's still helping them out. So if you want to learn more about that, check out my recent conversation with him on the Olympic bicycles in particular. That's another episode of ID the Future.
I'll include a link to it as well as Dr. Burgess book in the show Notes for today's episode, which are always
[email protected] I'm Andrew McDermott for the podcast. Thanks again for joining me.
[00:53:37] Speaker B: Visit
[email protected] and intelligent design.org this program is copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
