Science and Culture Today Discovering Design in Nature

ID the Future

with Andrew McDiarmid

Scientist Roundtable: Examples of Intelligent Design in the Human Body

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Emily Reeves, Jonathan McLatchie, Brian Miller, Casey Luskin
December 8, 2025
It’s easy to be blown away by the examples of engineering prowess in the human body. But it can be challenging to turn that evidence into a robust argument for intelligent design you can share with skeptical friends and colleagues. To help you learn to do that, host Andrew McDiarmid begins a roundtable discussion with not one, not two, not three, but four guests to the podcast, all part of our team of resident scientists at Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture: geologist and lawyer Casey Luskin, biochemist and metabolic nutritionist Emily Reeves, biologist Jonathan McLatchie, and physicist Brian Miller. The first half of the discussion kicks off with a review of the basics of design detection, including various methods for empirically detecting the hallmarks of design in nature. After that, these four experts take turns diving into examples of extraordinary design in the human body. This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation.

Eric Hedin on Suffering in a Designed World

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Eric Hedin
December 5, 2025
Is natural evil an argument against intelligent design? And is human evil more consistent with naturalism or theism? On this classic ID The Future episode, host Andrew McDiarmid speaks with Dr. Eric Hedin about his article “Thoughts of Evil in a Designed World.” First, Dr. Hedin discusses the problem of natural evils like earthquakes, hurricanes, droughts, and other natural disasters. He reports that in the last century, the human death toll from such tragedies has dropped as we have learned to mitigate the effects of these natural forces in our lives. Hedin also discusses the impact of sickness on our bodies. “Any complex system can break down,” Hedin reminds us, “because we do live in a world where the second law of thermodynamics applies not just to stars and mountainsides and physical systems but also to our own bodies.” But suffering, tragic as it can be for all of us to endure, is not inconsistent with design. Then there’s the other major cause of suffering in life: human evil. If humans are products of an evolutionary process, we’d expect human evil to more or less match what we see in the animal world. But as recent attacks on the people of Israel starkly demonstrate, that is not the case. We are capable of much worse, as well as much better. Dr. Hedin explains that humans have the gift of rational override, something determinists tend to forget. This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation.

Why Intelligent Design Best Explains the Laws of Nature

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Elie Feder, Aaron Zimmer
December 3, 2025
On today’s ID The Future, host Brian Miller concludes a two-part conversation with physicist Aaron Zimmer and mathematician Ellie Feder, hosts of the Physics to God podcast, as they critique current explanations for the laws of nature and argue for an intelligent cause of the rules that govern the universe. This half of the conversation tackles the attempts made by scientists to explain these life-friendly laws as the result of chance, not design. This is Part 2 of a two-part conversation.

Latest Videos

The Origin of Animal Body Plans

Stephen C. Meyer
December 2, 2025
2025 Dallas Conference on Science and Faith
What produced different animal body plans in the history of life? Scientist and philosopher Stephen Meyer explains why unguided evolutionary mechanisms weren’t sufficient and why animal body plans required intelligent design. Dr. Meyer is Director of the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute and author of the bestselling books Signature in the Cell, Darwin’s Doubt, and Return of the God Hypothesis. Dr. Paul Nelson, a philosopher of biology, joins Meyer later in the session to discuss the latest research. This session took place at the 2025 Dallas Conference on Science and Faith.

Living in a 3-D World

The Center for Science and Culture
November 3, 2025
Secrets of the Human Body

Human beings possess uncanny abilities to perceive and navigate within a three dimensional world. In this episode of Secrets of the Human Body , join medical doctor Howard Glicksman and systems engineer Steve Laufmann as they investigate the hidden systems that make our astounding spatial awareness possible.

Engineered for Oxygen

The Center for Science and Culture
September 1, 2025
Secrets of the Human Body

Without enough oxygen, your body will die. In Episode 1 of Secrets of the Human Body, learn about the astonishing engineering of the body that allows it to harness oxygen’s power and keep us alive.

Intelligent Design

Historical Sciences

Origin of Life

Evolution

Paleontology

Ancient Eyes, Modern Design

Does this discovery suggest that the principles of compound vision emerged nearly half a billion years ago as the authors concluded?

Cosmology

Human Origins

The Neanderthal Story Keeps Evolving

The University of Seville announces that Neanderthal footprints found along Portugal’s Algarve coast have led to unexpected insights about Neanderthal culture.

Archaeology

The Joy of (Neanderthal) Cooking

The Darwinian account of the human race would be much easier to believe in good faith if scientists could point to a clearly inferior and clearly human being.

History of Science

The Legacy of Baruch Spinoza

Join host and geologist Casey Luskin and historian of science Michael Keas for a lively conversation puncturing a series of anti-Christian myths.

Geology

Life Sciences

Life Sciences

Neuroscience

Medicine

Biology

Physical Sciences

Physics

Chemistry

Postcard from São Paulo

Kristin Marais spoke about “How to Make Chemistry Fun by Teaching Intelligent Design and the Origin of Life.”

Astronomy

Fine-Tuning

We Are Children of Light and Water

“In this vast range, there’s only one…infinitesimally small band which has the right energy for photosynthesis,” a prerequisite for human life. Coincidence?

Earth Sciences

Geophysics

Environment

Rare Earth

Planetology

Culture

Human Exceptionalism

Arts

Ethics

Social Sciences

Faith and Science

Science Education

DI Academy “Meet the Teachers” Zoom

If you weren’t able to drop by our booth in Florida, why don’t you consider joining our “Meet the Teachers” Zoom event on Thursday, May 29 at 5:00 pm (PDT). 

Scientific Freedom

Science Reporting

On the Origin of Our New Name

First, the conversation delves into the site’s launch in December 2004, when the modern intelligent design movement and the Internet were both relatively new.

Science Struggles with Reality

There seems to be little relationship between many science writers’ current concerns and the reasons that public trust in science has been steadily declining.

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