[00:00:05] Speaker A: ID the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome to id the future. I'm your host, Andrew McDermott. Well, Doctor Brian Miller is back on the program, this time to discuss his recent participation at a conference in Guadalajara, Mexico, and how intelligent design is making inroads internationally. Doctor Miller is a senior fellow of Discovery Institutes 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, welcome back.
[00:00:55] Speaker C: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be back.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Well, you've recently traveled to Guadalajara, Mexico, as a keynote speaker at a conference on science and faith there at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara. Was this your first trip to Mexico? How did you find the city?
[00:01:11] Speaker C: Yeah, this was the first city I had visited in Mexico, and it was a really beautiful city. I would encourage anyone to visit it who's going to Mexico. And it has a very rich history. It has wonderful historical monuments. So the entire experience was really wonderful. And my host took me to just amazing food. That was one of my favorite parts.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I bet. And this university, is it an old established one or is it sort of newer?
[00:01:38] Speaker C: Well, it's a very established university. In fact, it was the first university that was not controlled by the government, which is why they call it the autonomous university.
So it has a very special history along those lines also.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah, I wondered about that. Well, you were at an event here, a conference looking at the interrelationship between faith and science. Can you give us an overview of the event?
[00:02:01] Speaker C: Yeah. The conference addressed several diverse topics on faith and science. And the first few talks were by myself and my host, who's Mauricio Alcacer Ruthlin, and he has a PhD in biology. And we talked about the evidence of design in nature. And after that, there was some really interesting talks about the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It was a christian conference, obviously, and then also how faith provides a foundation for morality and ethics. And then also there was a wonderful talk about the impact of social media on mental health. So it was a very much all encompassing conference on the issue of faith and science.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: Okay, now, you gave a talk titled the Design Revolution. What topics did you address in?
[00:02:42] Speaker C: Well, because Mauricio was giving a very detailed overview of intelligent design, I gave a quick introduction to the overall design argument. I talked about the design and the laws of nature, our planet and life. And then I focused on the failure of evolutionary theory to try to rationalize the way the evidence for design. And then I concluded by talking about some of the research that discovery Institute was doing, like some of the research of our engineering group, to talk about how engineering principles helps us to understand life in a much deeper way. So that was my part of the talk.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: Yeah. And you've got some really exciting lines of evidence that you're lining up in that area. Did you present any new arguments critiquing darwinian evolution?
[00:03:24] Speaker C: Yeah, what I did was I came up with an analogy that I found is very effective at explaining the nature of the data, because when you look at the fossil record, what you find is that the top researchers acknowledge that the record clearly shows this picture of sudden appearances of radical new types of organisms, animals, plants, and the like. And then after anything significantly different appears, it doesn't change much at all. But what happens is the public has presented very powerful images that suggest that there is this transformation going on in the fossil record. And one of the most common examples is what are called transitional fossils or transitional sequences. A common example is you may have seen that image where you have an ape like creature that slowly transforms into a human over a series of steps. Another common example is the transitional sequence for whales. And previously, the horse series was very common, and the imagery is very powerful, but it's so powerful because it doesn't accurately portray the data. So when you see something like that human series, what the data does not show is a clear linear progression of one organism slowly changing into another. What that image represents, it's just a series of different fossils that happen to have similarities, that happen to be able to be produced in a sequence. Although people know they're not, they don't actually represent ancestry descendants series. But the analogy I used to illustrate the problem with these types of arguments is from the movie WALL E, because in the movie WALL E, what happened is humans evacuated Earth because of various issues, but what was left behind were massive piles of garbage. And I said, what would happen if aliens came to the earth and they sort of probed these piles of garbage? And what they found is all these human artifacts, everything from transportation vehicles to appliances to kitchen items. And they looked, and they noticed there were all these similarities, and they said, well, maybe all of these items evolved from a common ancestor. So they might imagine there was some automated factory in the past and that the program controlling that factory would occasionally mutate, have changes, and that would alter what the factory would produce. And they would justify this belief by looking at this beautiful progression of one entity transforming into another. For instance, you might have a unicycle, a bicycle, you might have a motorcycle, a convertible car, a station wagon, and then a bus. And that would look like a very clear, linear progression of the inner cycle slowly transforming into the bus. But clearly, that's not what happened historically. And you can imagine the aliens might even try to put it on an evolutionary tree where they'd have branches, where each of these entities would branch back to common ancestors, which would go back to a common ancestor for all of them. Well, clearly, this is a very artificial way to interpret the data. But what happens is the same thing is occurring in the issue of biology, because what you see in the fossil record is a consistent pattern of things appear suddenly and don't change. But because there's so many entities, so many fossils with so many similarities, occasionally you can put them in a linear progression. But those linear progressions are very problematic because all they represent are the tips of the smallest branches of the tree. But the tree actually doesn't exist. There are no branches that lead back to a clearly identified common ancestors, and there is no progression that you see in the fossil record. And the other problem that our aliens would find is they would notice that every time they try to draw a tree to link these different entities together, they would do so based on similarities. Like, they might notice that a motorcycle, a car and a bus all have engines. So they might think they all evolved from a common ancestry with an engine. But then another alien would say, but wait a minute, we notice that the bicycle and the motorcycle have two wheels, so maybe they evolved from a common ancestor. So the similarities are not consistent with one tree. And the exact same thing happens with life, that these lineages, you see these pictures, are very, very artificial and represent perhaps just statistical artifacts. So that's kind of a new analogy I used, which seemed pretty effective.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: Yeah, that's some great insight. I like that. And it's true, these common images, you know, they look like, ah, yeah, it's pretty simple and straightforward, and that's the progression. But it says nothing of the chasms between those elements, and that's where the truth comes. The difficulty of darwinian process is to actually produce that progression. Yeah, very good insight. Now, Brian, did your presentation go into any new evidence for design in life?
[00:08:12] Speaker C: Yes. What I was able to cover is a topic that I've covered more on private presentations, but not so much publicly. And that's what I focused on was really how the idea of systems engineering has been incredibly helpful for us to understand biology. So, specifically, I used the example that was also used in the book your design body by Howard Glixman. And Steve Laughman and I talked about our hearing system. And what's amazing is when you study systems engineering, you find that systems engineers have many concerns that that they have to think about when they design something. And that would be things like interfaces between different subsystems, adaptation, risk management, construction, maintenance, signal transmission, signal processing. And then when you look at life from the lens of assistance engineer, you see those same concerns being addressed in very clever ways. And what this represents is the fact that life does not look like the product of some undirected incremental process, but what life looks like is the product of a mind which planned everything out very carefully in advance. Because what you find is biological systems are really incredibly complex because they have many subsystems that have to work together in a very careful way. So Michael Behe talked about this idea of irreducible complexity, where you have some molecular machine or some system that has many parts, and the iconic example is the flagellum. But as it turns out, that is really just the tip of the iceberg, because when you look at a complex system like our hearing system or our visual system, what you have is a system of very different subsystems that have to work together. And each of those subsystems also has a set of irreducible parts, and those each of those parts very often has irreducible subparts. So what you have is multiple layers of irreducible complexity. And beyond that, each of these concerns I mentioned have to be dealt with at every level and between each system. So, for instance, when you look at the hearing system, what happens is you've got sound going through the air, but then it'll hit, let's say, in a mammal, the tympanic membrane. And then it has to be transmitted to what's called your cochlea. And your cochlea is actually this tube filled with water. And then the sound gets transmitted to the water, which then, or a liquid, which causes these hair cells to vibrate. But the challenge is the interface, because sound going through air faces a very different sort of resistance than sound going through a fluid. So if you don't deal with that, what happens is almost all the sound will bounce off that interface and you won't be able to hear. So what happens in mammal ears is you've got these three bones which form a double lever, which is perfectly engineered to ensure that the impedance or the resistance air matches, the sound matches in air is matched or transmitted to the resistance in fluid. So this careful interface is what allows all the most of the energy to transmit through. Also what you have is things like risk management, because the problem is that the hearing system in mammals is very fragile. So if you didn't deal with loud sounds, you would easily damage your ears, so you could no longer hear effectively. But what happens is these little bones I talked about have specialized muscles that attach to them. So if you hear a loud sound, there's a feedback loop that goes through your brain, through your nerves, to your muscles, which prevent the bones from moving if the sound is too loud. So that's a classic example of risk management.
Also, you have things like signal processing in this fluid filled chamber. I talked about, the width of the chamber sort of changes gradually. So the different parts of this chamber, the membrane, vibrates at different frequencies. So what effectively is happening is the different frequencies in the sound get separated. They then cause specific hair cells assigned to that frequency to move, which then transmits signals through separate channels to your brain. So you're effectively deconstructing sound in the various frequencies, and then your brain can reconstruct it. Well, that's just kind of the tip of the iceberg. But again, what you're seeing is that when a systems engineer looks at something like the hearing system, they can actually almost, as a famous scientist once said, think God's thoughts after him and see how God directly dealt with these challenges that systems engineers have to deal with. So that was sort of a new sort of argument that I presented.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: Yeah, this systems engineering approach is just such a game changer. I mean, I've been around intelligent design for twelve to 15 years or more, and yet this is one of the most exciting developments, is just revitalizing the way that we approach this. And of course, you have plenty of examples, and it even hearkens back to the greats of the scientific revolution and what they took for granted. They didn't have the evidence that we have today to back it up, but they had the assumption that these systems were going to be designed by a mind and they operated on that knowledge. But now we have some of the science that actually is backing that up, is showing us in real life what we're talking about. So that's a very exciting, exciting thing to do and to talk about. Well, speaking of talks, how was your talk in Guadalajara received? Did you get any interesting questions from the audience?
[00:13:53] Speaker C: Yes, the talk was very well received. We had actually no pushback from what I heard about people love hearing about the evidence for design. They loved hearing about how the design framework can help advance science. And we even had people that want to participate in a design research program. So people were inspired to think even more greatly about how a design framework can help shape their research. And that was really, those are really wonderful conversations. But one of the questions which I thought was most relevant to this conference was someone asked about how christians have historically understood the evidence for design in biology. Because many christians have been told more recently that christians shouldn't really talk about the evidence for design in biology. We should just uncritically accept the secular narratives, how everything was just produced by undirected processes. And you'll find that the perspective that people have today is very, very different, or some people, than the past, because through most of church history, christians just took for granted that God directly created different organisms, and that he created those organisms in such a way so that the evidence to design was clearly seen. And this goes back to, like, romans one, where Paul talks about how God's invisible qualities is divine. Nature is revealed in nature, it is revealed throughout nature. And the early christians thought that definitely applied to biology. But what's taken place is what you find in western countries, places that have been very influenced by these secular philosophies, like the United States, Europe, places like Australia, is that the evolutionary narrative and this idea of scientific materialism, where everything has to be explained in natural processes, essentially has captured the hearts and minds of society. So in many ways, western society has fallen into an intellectual captivity to these materialist philosophies, and elite universities and centers of power have basically said to people of faith that you are welcome to have a place at the table if you look at the world through this materialist lens. So what I'm not saying is that people of faith, whether christian or jewish or Muslim, or compromising their faith. But what happens is those people of faith who are most susceptible to the forces that pressure them to embrace this lens are the ones who are then given access to these positions of power. So if you want to be a professor at Harvard, you want to be a professor at Oxford or someplace like that. If you embrace a materialist philosophy and say, well, I'm a person of faith, but I will not talk about design and nature, I think everything has to be explained in terms of natural processes. Well, if you will basically affirm the secular party line that gives you access to these positions of influence. So what's happened to many christian leaders? They said, well, if we want to understand about the science. Who are we going to go to? We're going to go to the people in power, the people that have the strongest influence, the people at the elite universities. But those are the very people where the secular philosophy has most compromised their objectivity. But then what these people have said is that we must conform Christianity or whatever religion to the materialist dogma. We have to embrace the evolutionary narrative. We have to embrace the idea that life formed through undirected processes. And then in a sense, these theologians and Bible scholars have had almost like a philosophical gun put to their head where they've been pressured to rewrite christian history, to reinterpret the scriptures, to reinterpret christian theology so that it conforms to the evolutionary narrative. So what that's meant is people have interpreted the scriptures. They've interpreted people like Aquinas or Athanasius in ways that are the opposite of what they actually believed. So my message was that christians historically have embraced the evidence of design in nature, but through reasons that are really not because people are trying to be deceptive, not because they have bad motives, but just sort of as a historical circumstance. They misled into believing that they have to reinterpret Christianity to conform to secular assumptions. And my message to them was that you can reclaim your right to tell the truth about what scripture teaches. You can reclaim your right to tell the truth about what people like Aquinas or Athanasius or Basil actually believed. So that was just a really thoughtful question and I was really excited to answer it.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: And your answer is very well put. And you know, what's nice about all that is in defense of religious beliefs, even when you have them, it's not just that it's good to express that. It's that science is finally catching up to revealing some of what religious people have long held. So you don't have to compromise your religious beliefs at the door, because science is actually confirming them in lots of different ways. So it's an exciting time to be a person of faith and someone who loves science. Indeed. Well, you were not the only presenter discussing evolution and the evidence for design. You mentioned mexican professor doctor Ruthling also spoke on that. What did he cover and how did it complement your talk?
[00:19:01] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, that's a. That was. That was a really very nice talk. Also, obviously, I didn't fully appreciate it because it was in Spanish and. And my talk was actually translated to Spanish. But just from talking with him beforehand, I could tell that he really was addressing in some very eloquent ways, topics like fine tuning. So I gave an introduction to fine tuning, but he talked about it in much more depth, how the laws of nature are really designed for life. He also talked about some of the standard arguments, things like the presence of biological information, how information points to design. But he also talked about how you can see in the design architecture of animals and plants, genius models of engineering. And he also talked about the construction process. And that's something that the people in our community really need to talk about more, because the challenge is not just that the final product, like in a salamander limb, works, but the embryological development. When the egg turns into an embryo, into an adult, that construction process has to be meticulously designed to work properly. So if you don't have, let's say, a limb, and you want a limb, then you have to have the entire construction process at once, because if you don't, you're going to have undifferentiated tissue, and that's going to be useless to the organism. So that focus on the construction of things like animal limbs was very, very powerful. So I really appreciated his talk, particularly that part.
[00:20:25] Speaker B: Huh. That's great. And that also reminds me of Mike Behe's challenge in his video series, secrets of the cell, where he says, okay, well, let's let's see if we can construct an element in biology. And he finally lands on the femur bone and says, well, this looks simple enough. Let's let's see how it's done. And by the time he's finished, you know, presenting that, it's it's way too complicated for even the best of us to approach because there's so many interconnected systems and things related to the production of that, as you say, from embryo all the way on.
[00:21:00] Speaker C: Well, one thing that's really exciting about this is that the reason Michael B. Can talk about that, the reason that Mauricio can talk about that is because of the advancements in the science. So if I look at, let's say, the intelligent design movement back in the eighties, there were some good arguments, no question about that, with the early founders, people like Michael Denton, people that wrote about the mystery of life's origin. But the knowledge we have now is so much greater that the positive evidence for design is so much stronger that it's going to be increasingly difficult to suppress the truth.
[00:21:32] Speaker B: Agreed. Well, your trip to Mexico comes after a speaking trip last year that you had to South Africa and Kenya. Can you remind us of the reception you received while in Africa?
[00:21:42] Speaker C: Yeah, it was absolutely amazing. So we spoke at several top universities in South Africa, had many students that were very encouraged and faculty that came. But in Kenya, it was absolutely unimaginable because we went to universities, and one university literally put out a red carpet, a literal red carpet that we walked on. And then a marching band led us into the classroom, and we had the vice provost that gave a beautiful introduction to intelligent design. And he was extremely versed in people all the way back to Phil Johnson, some of the subtleties of the history. And we had many scientists, all of whom, as far as I could tell, were very enthusiastic about what we wanted to talk about. So, in fact, there were even intelligent design majors. There were clubs of people talking about design and nature that had, like, 100 people. So in Africa, because the people who grew up in Africa haven't been trained to see the world through these very powerful philosophical lenses, where they're conditioned to suppress the evidence of design, they had the freedom and the intellectual capacity to really understand the arguments. And they want more and more and more, and they even want to continue to do more research related to the design framework.
[00:23:00] Speaker B: Wow. And did you find the same hunger and passion and excitement in the students and faculty in Guadalajara?
[00:23:07] Speaker C: Well, unfortunately, because I can't speak Spanish, it was hard for me to fully appreciate the response. But from all I could tell from the faces, from the conversations I did have, there was an enthusiastic reception of what we had to say. And the same with the university leaders. The university just has opened us with open arms and really understands the value of what we're doing. So that was incredibly encouraging.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: And on that note, there are clear signs that id is making inroads internationally. Can you comment on that? Just maybe give us a few more examples of what you've experienced and seen lately.
[00:23:42] Speaker C: Well, certainly particularly in the global south, where, again, the materialist philosophies haven't as fully captured society as here. It's happening as we speak, but it's not as extreme. You're seeing that scientists have the freedom to honestly pursue the truth. So you have, like in Brazil, where Marcus Everland talked about his recognition of design and nature, and then we've had. They had hundreds of academics that would want to join him in terms of being part of this network of researchers. They have active research projects, conferences where thousands of people show up, hundreds of biologists in their network, and other academics. You look in Africa, you have just an incredible reception, not just in Kenya, but other countries where they want to hear the truth. They want to participate in helping to shape the future of biology and the sciences based on this design intuition. Even in Mexico, I mentioned that there are scientists that want to do research with us. There's other countries, too. I won't name them all, but there's other countries around the world where we're seeing pockets of researchers wanting to participate. And really what I argue is the next great design revolution. That's in its earliest stages, but it's gaining momentum. I'm very encouraged with what's happening internationally, and I believe what will happen is you'll see the pendulum shift strongly, or it's already shifted in the global south and other countries not as shaped by western materials philosophies. And then eventually those researchers will start to come into more into academy in western countries. And then I expect in a few generations we'll see shifts here, too. But it'll take much longer in our world for those reasons.
[00:25:19] Speaker B: Yeah, but some exciting developments to look forward to. Well, we have an international cohort that goes through our summer seminar programs each year, and that's a great opportunity for young scholars in other countries to delve into the evidence for design. Are there other ways that young people around the world can connect and participate with the intelligent design research community?
[00:25:41] Speaker C: Certainly. People could go to discovery.org.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: Comma.
[00:25:43] Speaker C: They could click on, subscribe, and then they would get regular updates of what the research community is doing and other events that we have. That's one way. We also have summer seminars where people from around the world can participate through Zoom on a series of lectures. And you can just kind of email us if you're interested. We're starting to develop communities that are affluent in different languages, and that's part of what we hope to do, is continue to reach out to the spanish speaking world, find more people that can translate our materials. They're already being translated into Portuguese because of the brazilian group. But yeah, just email us and then we would love to just dialogue with you about how to be part of the next great scientific revolution.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: Very exciting. Well, Brian, thank you for reflecting on your recent trip to Mexico. It's exciting to see how well designed arguments are being received on college campuses around the world. I appreciate you being with me today.
[00:26:34] Speaker C: It's been a pleasure.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: Now, by the way, how can listeners learn more about your work? Brian? Where can they read more and find out what you're up to?
[00:26:41] Speaker C: Well, people can learn more about my work and
[email protected]. That's intelligentdesign.org has lots of articles. Also, if you go to evolutionnews.org, that's evolutionnews.org comma. Then you can look me up because I'm one of the authors regular contributors, and then you can see a lot of my articles. So that's really a good way to start. Also, there's a nice book printed in South Africa. So if you look up faith and science and dialogue South Africa, you'll see the book. It's a free download. And then I have chapter seven in that book. And there's other people like Casey Luskin that have really wonderful chapters and many other great contributors, too. And that's a great way to learn more about what I'm talking about.
[00:27:20] Speaker B: Okay. And the title of the book, again.
[00:27:22] Speaker C: It'S faith in science and dialogue.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: Okay, that's a good one. Well, Brian, thanks again. I appreciate your time, and you're a treasured resource. So we'll have you back on very soon to id the future. For now, for the podcast, I'm Andrew McDermott. Thanks for listening.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: Visit
[email protected] and intelligentdesign.org. This program is copyright Discovery institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
