How is the Intelligent Design Movement Doing? Interview with William Dembski

we're glad you're will with us today sean mcdowell i'm here with bill dempsky you will recognize him because he is one of the voices and one of the founders really of the intelligent design movement with a phd in mathematics and in philosophy many would say he's done the heavy lifting but has recently uh entered into some very different ventures and we want to catch up today and talk about some reflections back on the intelligent design movement maybe some ways he changed his mind some things he's learned from it what he's up to now before we start make sure you hit subscribe because tomorrow we have an interview with gary habermas and michael kona of a new book they have coming out on the resurrection asking where is the resurrection evidence pointing towards today so bill thanks so much for coming on great to be with you sean great to see you again well let's let's start by asking i want to hear your journey to faith because as i understand it intelligent design or evolution had nothing to do with you first becoming a christian is that right that is true my my dad was actually a biologist who taught evolution at the college level and um you know i was comfortable with the notion but it was not something that really uh either helped or hindered from what i can see my my faith journey i mean for me i was i believed in god you know some sort of god whatever that might be but it wasn't uh a christian god i mean i did go to catholic schools but that was more just because the academics was good but uh it was uh you know i had a sense that there was a god but uh you know who that god was uh you know i consciously rejected the doctrine of hell consciously rejected that god became human in jesus christ you know and so uh so i mean i i was i was certainly not a christian doctrinally but um it was during a time i had taken a year off from college was trying to get my head together things were not going as well as i would have liked and i had this sense that god was perfect and here i was in my imperfection and how does one make that bridge you know how how can we connect with god in a in a real way uh you know it wouldn't wasn't going to be enough just you know well i'm perfect you know until you know just wallow in your your sorrow you know i needed you know so this this sense of connection where could i find it and it was at that point that the incarnation i remember walking on sheridan road in chicago and it just kind of it hit me the incarnation and even this was a doctrine you know as i just described i had consciously rejected but it was in the incarnation of god becoming human in christ and then dying for us that suddenly things made sense you know and uh and the thing is i mean i had read the bible you know i actually liked john's gospel in high school i was at a catholic high school but you know and i try to think back what did i like about it it's like you know there was just a haze over my mind uh so it's it's uh but you know when faith uh real faith in christ came then it seemed that that haze lifted so how old were you when you became a believer roughly um 18 turning 19. okay 18 or 19. no if evolution had nothing to do with you or creation getting into the faith why once you became a believer did you decide to study and commit 25 years of your life to this intelligent design movement yeah that's that's a good question and i think you know once you enter the faith uh then you know there's natural impulse at least on the part of some to try to figure out well why is it true why how does it hold up and you know i i was raised you know in a i mean my dad was an academic you know and you know it doesn't take long to realize that the christian faith is not considered you know the cutting edge in the the world of academia and it's you know it's uh it's overwhelmingly materialist uh science is widely touted as having disproven god you know and so you you face that sort of mindset and then you try to figure out well what's really going on and so i started reading some of the creationist literature that was really the only literature available and i think i i you know i really enjoyed uh fellow named a.e wilder smith i thought he had some intuitions about information theory that i ended up running with uh so that was good and then there was also um what was it uh there was a um a book uh which had a little appendix in the back it was about um close encounters of a third kind was a movie that was very popular at the time yeah and so uh i there was a book about it challenging it but then they had a little appendix on the probabilities or improbabilities of the origin of life and i remember reading that and it's something resonated in me and it was at that time then that i started getting doing a lot of statistics just uh i was in a program graduate program uh with where i just needed a lot of statistics and so as i started thinking about these arguments it just uh i thought the origin of life that that was just intractable for these sorts of materialistic scenarios and you know once you know you distinguish between the chemical evolution how brute chemicals inorganic you know lifeless chemicals can organize themselves into first life and then evolution normally we think of it as biological evolution once you've got first life how can that process keep going and how can you evolve from some single cell organism to us but you know it just seemed to me that that whole story was you have just a huge gap at the origin of life and uh and i've never changed my view on that i mean everything i know about the the processes there and the improbabilities tells me that's a naturalistic origin of life is is ain't going to happen we have some folks joining us from kentucky wisconsin massachusetts we're glad all of you are here we're reflecting back on the intelligent design movement with william dempsky and as we get going into this interview we're going to take some live questions so if you have some questions for him uh write them down or add them here and then put him in at the end and we will uh go to him directly on these so looking back what has surprised you most about what's happened over the past 25 to 30 years since the intelligent design movement started positive negative what's something you're looking back saying i had no idea like to anticipate that heading into the work that you did good good question um you know i wish i could say that there was you know some you know sometimes in science you talk about the critical experiment something happens and nothing is ever the same after that you know every the people's worldview shifts and i think that's what i was hoping for with the intelligent design movements you know so that by the time i hit 65 retirement age i'm now 60 i thought you know i thought we would have won the day but uh that hasn't happened you know i think uh the arguments we have are better but you know one uh one thing i cite sometimes is there's an old new yorker cartoon where an attorney sits across from his clients and he tells the the client you have a very good case mr pitkin uh now how much justice can you afford you know and i think that's that's it you know we've got the case you know i think you know i i think we've i think we've shown in many levels experimentally and also theoretically that natural selection can't bear the burden that's put on it nor can any other supplements to it such as evo devo evolutionary developmental uh approaches to evolution uh so i think we've got the better case but getting that out there uh and getting it accepted and getting the sort of critical mass of people because i mean scientific movements require talent and uh you know it's much easier to go along with the flow and uh you know go with the the standard evolutionary theory and then you can really do a lot of word substitutions or you can say evolution did this when clearly there's some sort of design involved but uh you know so back to your question you know i think for me there's been a big disappointment that this movement hasn't been as successful as i think it might have been um that said you know i think a lot of that is because my my vision is focused on the us it does seem that we have made some inroads internationally so i was at a meeting last year and it seemed that in places in europe brazil it seems these ideas are exploding so uh so they're they're positive signs but uh i think for me uh you know i think one of the reasons i've got i've semi-retired let's say from intelligent design okay is that it seemed to me that a lot of the play where we missed it the reason we weren't as successful as we might have been is that we have an educational system that just does not train people to think to reason it doesn't make them courageous in standing up for truth i think we've you know the whole tenure system i think is a way of enfeebling the academy uh making them go along with the party line and so i think they're so i'm you know so i focused on what i think of as as it were getting to the the root of some of the problems or maybe another analogy would be doing an end run around the system and trying to deal with some educational issues that will then make intelligent design prosper now originally much of the discussion was about the power of naturalism not so much the educational system how has that shift come about that you started to recognize oh it's educational system and does that downplay the role of naturalism or is it still both in your mind well i mean i think the educational system you've also got a much more of a relativist post-modern social constructivist view which is very much out there um you know i i don't know i mean to you know it's not that i sat back and thought you know the real problem is education that's where i need to focus i mean the my odyssey took much more this form i was you know let me just be blunt i was teaching at southern baptist seminaries um i was an old earth creationist it seemed that the southern baptists were making a savage lurch to a uh you know can't still be more uh right-wing and literalist than me uh approach to things so it was just uh and i found myself being the odd man out i found ken ham going around and berating me in the seminary for having hired me and basically trying to get me fired it was at that point that something shifted in me because on the one hand i had been persona known grata at baylor for being you know being out there with intelligent design and now you know the the conservatives were no longer happy with me and so basically i approached a former uh research assistant of mine who'd become a millionaire doing working in educational technologies and asked how'd you do it what'd you do and he showed me and then i did it myself so so i got into education more as a matter of survival in my own sanity because uh you know it was it was deeply disappointing dealing with you know getting it as it were from both sides and so that though got me thinking once i got into these educational technologies is there a way to try to revivify intelligent design and try to strengthen the hand of it you know i mean often uh common criticism is what would an intelligent design curriculum look like you know so these are sorts of questions that i've also considered we have some folks from brazil from the philippines um gosh from perth australia joining here and there's some great questions coming in let me ask you a little bit of a practical one here uh andrew green says should theistic believers seek to prepare themselves to become qualified educators in order to try to develop or introduce curricula for teaching the controversy yeah you know when i hear educators you know it's it seems to me you know my dad was uh i mentioned that he was a biologist he also had i mean he got his phd in biology he also had a master's in education i mean he would often joke you know those who can do those who can't teach and then you could take that further those who can't teach teach teachers those who can't teach teachers they get into administration and so on you know i mean you just you can keep running with that but uh there's a sense in which it seems you know i think we do ourselves better by actually gaining expertise in areas pertinent to intelligent design to actually advancing the program and there are different aspects to it i mean they're they're philosophical issues methodological naturalism something like alvin planiga has done good work on that william lane craig stephen meyer at discovery institutes you know they're theological issues i have a masters of divinity you know and i've focused some of my work on the theo theology and people on the other side have used that oh that just means intelligent design is uh is a theological or religious endeavor but you know from my advantage if somebody like steven j gould can say ever since darwin we know that we were not created in the image of a benevolent god he's drawing theological or anti-theological implications from evolutionary theory likewise it seems to me that there are theological implications to intelligent design and so i've explored that but at its base intelligent design needs to be a scientific program because if it's not that then the you know then there's really nothing nothing there now this has been something we've we've stressed you know i think a problem with creationism historically has been this conflation of science and religion and so often it's come across as a religion versus science controversy and so at its base i think we need to cash out intelligent design as a science versus science controversy and so as far as we're successful with that you know i think we help ourselves but uh you know the the other side doesn't want to allow that you know i mean and so to this day if you look at wikipedia entries um yeah me or intelligent designer my colleagues they make the editors made very sure that in the very first sentence the word pseudoscience uh pseudoscientist you know discredited theory creationism you know are all put there now intelligent design is not a theory of creation i mean i think this is one another thing that's got me into trouble with um you know with my uh baptist friends because i think you know they saw for a while intelligent design as this stalking horse that would be able to deal with the culture and then move forward the the baptist agenda when that no longer seemed uh possible you know i think they abandoned it and so you have i mean creation is about an infinite personal creator god who brings the world into existence out of nothing you know the at least if you're traditional christian uh intelligent design is about finding patterns in nature that point to an intelligent source now the ultimate source you know that intelligent source could be an alien intelligence it could be a stoic divinity a mind you know pervading you know teleological principle you know or it can be the christian god i'm a christian so for me the ultimate source of the design in the world is the christian god and i i say that without apology but as a scientific and philosophical approach to understanding the world intelligent design does not get you to christian theism and you know that's uh some regard that as a weakness i regard it as a strength because you're defending less you're not having to defend uh literal 24-hour day genesis account you can still hold to that and be an intelligence line but you're not defending that as a matter of intelligent design i i've always thought there's some integrity built into the way you argue for intelligent design you don't try to argue too much or try to argue too literally try to say here's what the science shows and then beyond that we're wading into philosophical and maybe historical in the case of christianity and other kinds of questions that are not distinctly scientific but i had stephen myers on recently had a chance to interview him and he said the id movement is kind of shifting from theory to doing practical hands-on science and that it never would really break through until there was some id directed scientific pursuits and i might have put i might have phrased that in a little way more me than him but that was a general point he was making you you grew that as a whole and do you see some of those scientific advances coming through that had done in an id friendly fashion you know i'm i'm seeing it but more from a distance so i can't speak to you know research that's actually going on i mean my day job is i'm working on websites developing educational technologies writing articles you know um so it's uh and and then doing books like a baseball biography you know so i've got lots of different interests and so we might get to that at some point but um but what i'm seeing though is i mean it does seem that there's movement uh you know i'm still privy to what's going on at discovery institute i'm on the board there uh i'm a fellow with the bradley center so i i you know i still have my ear to the ground they are talking about intelligent design 3.0 this is uh you know so it's this is the the program to really make it a full-fledged scientific research program i know they are supporting uh people financially to do experimental work and that seems to have been ramped up quite a bit i know that had been an aspiration but they're they're doing that so uh so that's all to the good you know uh you know i think the the issue always remains can we get a critical mass at what point uh do we have some sort of breakthroughs where scientists say okay we can't even play act at a darwinian naturalistic evolutionary story anymore more it's dead you know uh i think that's that's the point we need to get to uh but uh you know so it's uh i think we we need to keep pressing and it does seem that these ideas have gotten out there you know they still it seems people at least for public consumption people in the mainstream academy who have not formally come on board with intelligent design still need to give the sense that uh hey we're we're still faithful to darwin and these intelligent design people they're nuts you know i think that's that they have to say that you know otherwise you know this age of social media mobs you know you can get uh you know get doxxed or whatever you know so you you don't see you so you you know you play it safe and um but it does seem that you know what people privately think i wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot more sympathy for what we're doing but you know i don't that's something i don't tend to see you know i'm not going to the conferences i'm not rubbing shoulders so much anymore with people so it's i look at this more from a distance bill as you know i think it's about four months ago i hosted a great conversation with josh suamados and uh with doug axe who's at biola with me and one of the topics that came up was whether or not you had abandoned the design filter or kind of backtracked on your approach to design so my question is during your time uh since the beginning of the intelligence die movement have you significantly changed your views changed in a small way backed off your design filter cleared the air force so to speak yeah i mean i actually responded to josh swamidas i think in three installments uh on my blog and then that was picked up by evolution news and views at discovery institutes and the short of it is that i i don't retract anything that i've i've done i mean you know there are things formulations that needed to be cleaned up that were not uh entirely accurate i mean such as for instance there was a conditional independence condition in my book the design inference which ended up being unnecessary in characterizing this notion of specification but with the explanatory filter uh you know it seemed to me that this was from the start it was it was trying to get at this notion of specified complexity so it was a user-friendly uh you know a rational reconstruction of what we tend to do as we sort through these various explanatory options that we have broadly necessity chance and design and this chance can be not just flipping a coin but where you've got something like a natural selection process so it's chance and necessity working together uh and so you know it still seems to me to work there was one point in my writings where i said well i've largely dispensed with the filter because you know it's really getting out of specified complexity but that doesn't mean i repudiate it you know and uh i don't know i mean if i'm actually i got the rights back to the design inference from cambridge university press so i have a co-author somebody who is really at the very cutting edge of all these of where intelligent design is and so we're going to be doing a second edition i wanted to get that away from cambridge because uh turned out that when i when i published it it was the best-selling cambridge philosophical monograph at the time but they would not do the second edition in fact the editor there said uh even if you get it accepted at this side of the atlantic uh there are biologists on the syndicate normally the syndicate in the uk just rubber stamps whatever the people in the us say but they said he said in your case they're probably not going to do it so and that's what prompted me then to publish no free lunch with roman and littlefield so really for 20 25 years i i held off yeah it was published in 1998 the design influence so i held off uh even wanting to do something because i thought you know i just don't want to do it with cambridge but now that i've got the rights back uh you know i'd like to like to redo it now when i redo it you know i'll probably put the filter in there just just out of spite you know i mean you know no i mean you know that's not a good christian set of it but you know it you know it's it's fine you know it it it's limited in the sense that it gets at this specified complexity and even specified complexity is characterized there is more this kind of statistical reasoning but it's not an actual information theoretic quantity and that's what it's become at the hands of bob marx winston ewart and others uh as we've developed these ideas in terms of conservation of information so i mean a lot has happened since the early days you know since some of this original work of mine and so it's it's i think been made much more rigorous and powerful uh with information theoretic tools and so we have those now at our disposal and i want to get that into the second edition as well we're going to jump back to intelligent design stuff but i have more of a it's a personal question for you i've never asked you is you obviously two phds done the hard working behind intelligent design brilliant but in writing the book together and the way times we've interacted i think you're s you're a very gracious and kind person even though you're a bulldog fighting for ideas how have you maintained just what i think is a gentle spirit amidst some of the vitriolic attacks you've received from inside and outside the church yeah well you know maybe you're being too generous i mean you know if you talk to my wife certainly the first 10 years i think you'd say that uh that i didn't keep that calm demeanor uh you know and it's uh frankly it's uh it was it was tough on the family you know i was i was an angry man for a lot of the time you know and it was i think there was something in me it's like i'll show them i'll show them and you know the thing is when you deal with large institutions institutionalized ways of thinking they can wear you down you know so i think that happened to some degree and so i had to just get realistic about you know what i was facing how i was facing it what wasn't working i think another thing that took some real um you know some of the hard edges off was having a severely autistic son to this day he's non-verbal needs to be washed cleaned you know all this and he's now just moved into a community this is why we're back in texas and that's been a good good thing for him you know he's he's a happy happy kid uh he's gonna be 20 this week but um he's a twin his brother is perfectly normal and we've got a daughter who's also normal but uh you know so that's you know just dealing with that you know it's i mean you know for years my wife and i couldn't go to church together it would be she would go or he you know or i would go you know and it was somebody always had to be with him now i can take naps in the afternoon you know but it was often just couldn't you know you'd have to watch him because otherwise he can get into trouble you know so so you know i don't mean to say this is you know pity party or so you know i think we we deal with what we're given but it does shape us you know and so i think that has made you know put things in perspective you know so you get into some sort of you know argument with you know with an id critic you know and then you put it in perspective there and it's like what does that really mean you know and then you i think you just choose your battles more carefully and you know i mean there's there's a lot and i think the the pastoral epistles about you know by paul you know about the sorts of arguments and just not not getting into these sorts of shouting matches and discussions about things that really don't mean a whole lot and i don't mean to just say that intelligence that doesn't mean a lot i think it does i think for some people you know you know i think we'd be in much better shape in this culture if we thought that there was a design behind the world behind the human body that there was was a natural good for us you know they're things that are conducive to our benefits that we should practice those you know uh but um you know the idea of virtue you know being a good thing uh you know i think that that would all be that all i think follows in some ways from you know at least you know intelligent design broadly construed but um anyway so that that's i'm not sure that's a direct or that's a meandering answer but it's uh you know i think that's uh that probably says it you know and just i think also you know i think it was it was one thing when you know i was facing the naturalists the theological liberals if you will but i felt secure in my uh conservative christian base but when that unraveled for me i think something did turn there and i just said you know i i gotta get out of this for my own sanity and then i think that caused me to rethink a lot of where i am and what what i'm doing and really strive to you know just to put a lot of the anger aside and even that i mean that's much more recent thing you know anger's been an issue for me over the years it's uh hasn't gotten me into too much trouble but i came to the point where i just really had to had to clamp down on it and so it's uh you know so uh so yeah things are better life is better good thanks thanks for your honesty here's more of a uh id related question uh from world view detective he says if id were false how could you disprove it what would an undesigned universe look like yeah i mean that's that's an interesting question i mean at some level you can't disprove design i mean something that looks completely random could still have been carefully situated as such you know but uh but i think the issue with intelligent design is always detectability so can you detect the design that's there so i don't know i mean in a world where you've got all sorts of self-organizational processes that give rise to living things you know uh would that be a world where intelligent design doesn't play a role i mean you know i think i mean this is uh there was uh what was it the water babies uh there was a contemporary of darwin's who who thought that darwin had really given us a good idea and that basically he gave us a world in which creatures were creating themselves okay so there was this sort of self-creation going on uh so maybe i mean but even that i think would be remarkable you know if uh if natural selection actually you know i mean you know back in the 60s the thought was you know darwinian evolution proceeds so slowly in biology so if we can put it into a computer and get the computer to give us you know and evolve things you know then we can get some proof of it now the thing is evolutionary computing doesn't seem hasn't really produced anything that fantastic except in so far as we've put the design in there already in terms of objective functions i mean there's a lot of knowledge that has to go in there for this to work but you know i mean is there a possible world in which self-organization and evolutionary computing you know you you you run an evolutionary computing algorithm and you get a conscious intelligence out of it you know uh what is it you know uh avengers end game who's you know or the uh you know the you know or there's it's the the artificial intelligence that's helping iron man name escapes me uh jarvis that's it you know we get a jarvis out of it i don't know i mean you know but but it's uh i do wonder if that's even possible because i mean you know for my advantage uh you know com consciousness is not computation i don't think there's any evidence that consciousness is computation you know so i mean the sorts of terminator themes all this you know it's you know it makes for great science fiction but in the end i would say it's fiction so so i don't know i mean it's uh designed in some broad sense where god with purpose creates the world you know or something designer creates the brings it into existence organizes it because design is always about organization but where the that the pattern that allows design to be detected is not evident um uh you know is that possible i suppose you know but it's uh but you know it's it's a it's a hypothetical that i don't think we really have to deal with i mean i think you know one one thing that i have seen over and over again is as we learn more biology the complexities get greater and you know the sorts of things we need to explain uh seem to require more engineering feats and seem to be further and further beyond the remit of natural selection and naturalistic processes so uh so you know i'm i'm not getting the sense of you know i think often there's this sense that the scientific community wants to give that science is this juggernaut and place for faith is constantly being shrunk you know but if anything i'd say as knowledge increases the place for uh darwinian evolution to be successful is shrinking okay so okay i'm really there's a bunch of questions in here and i'm going back and forth between some of these trying to honor some of the questions um here okay here's one let's ask this uh in in all honesty and i guess this question is for me but i want you to weigh in on it do you think most scientists reject id because of social political reasons or is it really an issue of trying to make id convincing i guess at the heart of the question is why do you think id is has been rejected by a large number of scientists is it philosophically based is it the educational system what's at the heart of it from your your perspective the heart of it is i would say ignorance there's no incentive for them to really even engage the arguments i think most most scientists have not done that i remember uh in debating what was his name the first name of escapes was that at princeton he was a bio ethicist silver okay no not peter singer so i mean but a friend of his i think silver or silver and uh he was making just some totally unsubstantiated claims that basically at harvard they'd resolved the origin of life problem i was just trying to bamboozle the audience uh but uh you know he had it was clear that he hadn't read any of my stuff and it was just it was not necessary right because he knew i had to be an idiot for holding the views that i do so you know and i i've seen that mentality where it's just we we don't need to read your stuff we don't need to engage it because we know that you've got nothing on the ball you know so i think that's that's a large part of it and in fact there's there's perhaps even a danger if we engage your stuff too much if we if we read it you know then uh you know then our our associates might think that we've been infected with your ways of thinking so i think that's a large part of it i think there's just uh vast ignorance uh now among those who've engaged the material i think some you know i think they're they're doctrinaire materialists and so it can't be true you know there's got to be some sort of uh alternative naturalistic explanation you see this the same sort of mentality with miracles um anatole france uh a skeptic about 100 years ago he visited lord you know and saw all these crutches where people had which people left behind because they had been healed of a limp or whatever uh and then he had po the question is posed well why don't we see any wooden legs there but then he says you know even if we saw wooden legs like that would be an amputation that suddenly you know the leg has grown back uh he says uh in that case there'd still be a naturalistic explanation it's just like with crabs or other organisms which can regrow a limb you know it there had to be a natural way that this could have happened it's just we haven't figured it out yet you know and ditto for evolutionary theory if you're if you're a doctrinaire materialist there is no evidence that need convince you uh you know now you can flip it around you know if your doctrinaire you know theist you know are you going to remain committed to intelligence design but the thing is intelligent design is not required for the faith so you know i mean you've got something like a josh swami to us who who rejects it so um you know so it's uh i don't think there's there's a parody there but um you know so it's you know it's interesting how this this whole debate unfolds and some of the the the motions in it you know which pull us in different directions it's interesting you mentioned the incent the lack of incentive and the disincentive on the educational side are some of the things that you're now focused on because some of those are some of the barriers preventing people from even engaging these arguments um let me ask you this one of the things that changed in my time in this discussion is the kind of the a greater rise of theistic evolution known as evolutionary creation i'm curious as a whole what you make of this and one of the shifts that i've seen is back the time when we wrote our book together in 2008 it felt like a lot of the key voices in theistic evolution were saying we don't need historic fall we don't need a historical atom like they were willing to say science tells us we must give up certain theological beliefs and that was a huge red flag for me now there's quite a few saying you know what we can have a historical fall we can have historical adam and coming up with some creative ways to wed evolutionary theory with historic christian doctrine is that welcome to you as a part of the conversation does that concern you tell me your thoughts as you look on kind of the rise of that movement yeah well you know i i wrote a book called the end of christianity and it was the idea was to you know was supposed to be in counterpoint to some of the atheists that were writing at the time god delusion end of faith sam harris and others so they um so we we had uh you know so and in that book the end of christianity i raised the possibility that you know if you don't uh that one way because i basically take a retro-addictive view of the fall that the fall happens in space-time but that it affects history going backwards so it's kind of a backward causation it's it's uh uh you know it it's it's a it's speculative theology i mean it's trying to make sense of what's how how can you keep natural evil as a consequence of the fall basically of moral evil and so i speculate in there also that if you don't if you've got evolution you could use evolution as a story to get to adam and eve and then basically adam and eve are put into this perfect situation the garden and then they sin you know and so you can you can tell an evolutionary story so i'm i'm not uh you know i think it's it's it's a way of making sense of things uh you know and i think you know is it can you maintain christian orthodoxy i'd say broadly you know i mean i think the you know it quite there's a question of you know does christian orthodoxy commit you to six 24-hour days you know in the creation you know how much latitude do you allow yourself the reason i don't go there though is that i'm not an evolutionist i just don't think the evidence supports large-scale you know dramatic changes in biology by some sort of you know gradual evolutionary process especially when you start going to these higher taxonomic levels certainly phyla but orders classes things like that when you're lower level species genus you know i could see a fair amount of evolutionary change there but i i just don't see the evidence you know i i look at the cambrian explosion i look at what's what's there and that's you know look i in in some ways you know i could be an intelligent design guy and an evolutionist not a darwinian evolutionist mike beefy and i think i you know would have made life easier for me in some ways but uh for me it's it's just i just don't see the evidence for it and you know and it's not enough i mean my temperament is not such well this theory is just so too beautiful not to be true you know well if the evidence isn't there you know i don't really care about how appealing it is you know it doesn't persuade me you know and so i see discontinuities in the fossil record i don't see them being bridged you know i don't think it's that there's an absence of transitional fossil forms it's just you know it seems to me that the fossil record is pretty good when you do statistical analyses of how much of the fossil record is preserved it seems to be quite extensive especially at higher taxonomic levels and it's uh you know so i i just i just don't think it happened you know and that's uh so that that's why i don't go there but i think it is an option and i think you can but you know i do think if you're going to be theologically orthodox uh you you do need a historical adam and eve and you need natural evil in some ways as a consequence of moral evil so it's the fall of adam and eve is responsible for natural evil it's not that you know as carl giberson would put in that this is in line with what you were saying where the state of the art was in the 2000 up to 2008 that basically evolution is a selfish process so it's it's going to lead to selfish beings so it's that the problem is already inherent in nature and in the evolutionary process and that's why we get to where we are and have the problems we do it seems to me that that's that's totally incompatible with christian faith i mean at that point you know there's there's no place for redemption uh because i mean basically we've you know god has conditioned us to be that way it's not that we've consciously rebelled against god and it seems to me that sort of it's in the rebellion that our sin is found and where our redemption must lie as well so you've written a number of very uh influential and academic books on intelligent design knowing what you know now if you went back to kind of beginning of the movement and my introduction as far as i remember to the intelligent eye movement was the unlocking the mystery of life dvd which must be a couple decades old or so by now with you and myers and bihi and i was fascinated by the movement and at that point it was really some of the ideas were being formulated if you went back that couple decades knowing kind of the arguments and life experience that you have now what would you do differently oh i don't know these these hypotheticals are really hard to deal with um okay you know you know i think there was one of the things that hurt us the most was this dover v kits miller case you know and i think just uh you know i ended up being even an expert witness in it you know i you know it was the the economist schumpeter when he was making an analogy here when he was asked why are you helping the austrian government because they're socialists and he says if a patient is going to commit suicide at least let a doctor be there with him you know so i think that was my my attitude you know help help the thomas moore law center you know uh you know help them through as they commit suicide but uh you know i think i think we should have been much more forceful not to not to to help there and to get that case off the off the books but you know but i don't want to say that you know that was that was the turning point but they were you know i think uh i think another thing though was i mean the sort of conflation between maybe this this will probably speak to your question you know i'm just kind of thinking on my feet here uh but i think the conflation of the cultural agenda implications of intelligent design versus the scientific program and discovery institute i think you know was involved with both i mean you know their center for science and culture is um you know is is where the intelligent design work gets done i was a fellow there for many years uh you know it was originally called the center for the renewal of science and culture you know and it's when you bring those two together and there's reason to bring them together how do you get the science funded when the nsf is national science foundation nih and all these funding agencies think you're crazy you know well you're gonna have to raise money but how do you do it you know please give us money for pure scientific research that's going to help the christian faith or you know we're going to we're going to help you know we're going to get intelligent design taught in the schools you know we're going to do these these politically and culturally and legally incorrect things to advance these ideas and we're going to also get the science moving forward and i think that conflation ended up hurting us because i think a lot of scientists who might have been more inclined to to go with us maybe you know uh we're look seeing this also as a political movement and then i think shying away from it so i think that was another thing so maybe you know that and then kits miller i think that that takes that's still pretty early in the whole deal i mean or the first 15 years that that's interesting to in some ways it almost gave cover to the critics who said this is religiously motivated creationism even though i don't think that was ultimately true and a fair critique of id maybe it gave some credence in their mind to help dismiss it because of that that's that's an interesting thought well you know you consider how much money has been given to intelligent design discovery institute from its inception you know i think 1996 is when i would say that's when the the id program there begins so that's 25 years roughly uh you know i would say the money they've seen is probably a fraction of what the noah's ark exhibit has gotten or the the creation museum you know outside cincinnati i mean you know it's it's you know and again you know how do you raise money for this how do you support the science uh if you're not getting the money from the nsf and other i mean you know things that you know it's not just that i mean i know uh one extremely bright scientist who is getting money from discovery uh in a very fine school and uh he is i mean he told me in person that he's not in the national academy of sciences because he signed this dissent from darwin post you know so two guys they basically said you know no you're not making it and i think now he's had uh trouble getting funding whereas it had never been a problem from the government organization so he's having to get it through discovery you know so it's uh there's you know there you know talk about cancel culture i mean all the sorts of things i'm seeing where people are just outraged and surprised these days i've seen this for 20 25 years you know man that's that's rough stuff so let me ask it this way since we're here what advice would you give to younger scientists who want to do id research today in light of our cancer culture yeah well i mean i would say get into the best schools you possibly can work extremely hard i mean strive to be excellent at what you do and keep a low profile um you know try not to compromise yourself i mean that's that's difficult you know because let's say you get your phd your junior faculty and now you're asked to vote you know on some incoming faculty you know and it might be somebody who's an id person you know and then it's like uh you know what what do you do do you vote against because you know the the the people there are saying hey you know we've got to keep uh got to keep these crazies out uh so at what point do you blow your cover you come out of the closet i think that's that requires discretion wisdom practical wisdom but uh you know but i think if you want to contribute to the field you're going to need to become experts in an aspect that's relevant uh and then um you know put your head hand to the plow but also realize uh it's it's gonna be tough because we don't i think we still don't have that critical mass it's not like you know i mean the i the ideal thing is you know i i thought to myself that someday you know i come to the place where i could be part of a department and you know just have a set of colleagues where we can talk about these ideas uh but that never happened i mean it's uh you know it was it was always there there was always friction always tension about these things you know they uh you know so it's uh you know to to get to that critical mass it's happened in some controversial fields like you know you've got george mason mason university you've got a free market uh austrian school of economics that that is well represented there and you know and so that and that's happened on in in some economics programs but intelligent design it's still very much a minority and isolated view you have you know you don't even have so much pockets from what i can see in the us as individuals at various campuses who are working in the area sympathetic but have to keep their head down and so uh you better be prepared uh you know to have some lonely moments try to keep in touch with uh people uh by zoom or whatever you know preferably heavily encrypted you know and uh you know just and press press ahead i might have you squeeze a little bit towards the middle of the camera there if you don't mind perfect there we go well i know there's a lot of people that want to know what you're up to today and you send me a link to this book that you're writing that just fascinated me i was like wow bill dempsey's written a book on the fastest picture ever so hold up the book just so people can see i think you maybe have a copy right there and tell us it's called dolco what is the story behind this book yeah well uh dalco is steve dolkowski he was born in 1939 died this year of covid uh he had been suffering from dementia alcohol induced dementia for many years but in 1957 he was 18 and all the major leagues clubs there were 16 at the time uh in the american league in the national league were looking intently at him and he baltimore snapped him up uh he was unexceptional in his physical look i mean he was five eleven hundred and seventy pounds nothing about him would have got gotten you to think that he had this amazing uh fastball but even from uh as an eighth grader his dad could no longer really catch him because he was so fast and he was hearing the ball actually buzzing and this was just a phenomena that you know when people you know on his high school days were watching him they not only was the ball moving extremely fast but there was this buzzing sound and so he had some phenomenal successes like in high school he pitched back to the back no hitters with 20-plus strikeouts but then the the reason he remained in my minor league ball all his career was that he was exceptionally wild also he had about the same number of walks as strikeouts and so he could you know he could have 18 strikeouts and still lose eight to three you know and this was this was continuing first six years in minor league ball and then it was finally in 1963 that he seemed to get a handle on it and uh he was pitching against the yankees he struck out roger maris i think he struck out perhaps even the side there and he was doing very well seemed to have gotten his control issues in hand and then he blew out his elbow and we don't know it's probably ucl tear and and then after that he never seemed to quite recover his speed and you know but uh it's it's a remarkable story um you know it's tragic and yet uh you know people who saw him pitch uh they're estimating i mean cal ripken senior caught him uh thinks that he was hitting 115 miles an hour uh you know the the very fastest that anybody's been clocked and it's indirectly it was ryan in i think the early 70s right now we can't we get the speed basically from the release point but they got it close to the close to the bag and then had to extrapolate back and so with nolan ryan they think 108 but cal ripken as i said thinks it was he was getting up to 115. our thesis is that he had to get at least 110 if he was going to be better than uh bob feller nolan ryan thing is son sam mcdowell who's considered the possibly the fastest mlb pitcher uh not milb minor league but mlb of the 60s wrote the forward and he saw dalco doing his side work in the miners in 1961 he said the guy was just amazing it was just incredible the speed that he had he says he's convinced delco threw a lot harder than he did and people who've seen feller ryan others say delco was faster and some a lot faster so it's uh it's a it's a fascinating story i got on this you know i just have an interest in pitching of a son who who pitches and um so it's it's been an interest of mine and so i was looking for some dalco memorabilia and that's when i got in touch with a pitching coach who's also a world-class photographer has done uh photography for national geographic in new york times and so we just hit it off and we said hey this story has not been told it's perhaps the great last great untold story and then we got a third author and we we wrote it and so we're actually up for a casey award which is the big baseball book award uh i mean it's it's going to be decided i think uh in the next month or so so fingers crossed you know if we can you know we might get it but anyway it was a fun book took a lot of work a lot of archival work you know just going through old newspaper archives uh trying to piece together also there's so much mythology that's about around him and just teasing that apart from what was real so anyway it's a fascinating story i hope it eventually leads to a screen play because i think it would be it could could be a great great story there and by the way um nuke lelouch in the movie bull durham dalco was the inspiration for nuke lelouch in that that film so if you've seen that you already you have some connection with dalkowski well hold it up one more time dalco just so people can can see it sounds like an absolutely fascinating book uh does not look like what you would think a picture would look like to throw 110. that's basically a bit of a break from intelligent design yeah a fun break well tell us we're going to wrap up because i want to respect your time but is there anything else you are up to right now that you just want folks to know that you're doing yeah um you know i've thought about this because i try not to say too much about what i do in educational technologies but there is a website that people might be interested in which is doing academic rankings uh differently uh and i think then they're using some technology that i helped develop so it's called academic academicinfluence.com so academicinfluence.com uh you know check it out i mean it's basically the idea is you look at people in terms of their academic influence and from there you use that to induce rankings of schools and disciplinary programs and so it's a very rich site i think if you start using some of the tools i think you'll be fascinated with it and so i've i can say that i've had some role in uh creating those tools that that is fascinating you're a rare scholar who also has this entrepreneurial side about you so i'm always fascinated to hear what you're up to what book you're writing what site you're developing doing doing great work personally in biola we really appreciate the work that you're doing maybe someday we can get you on campus to teach a class because you know we have an apologetics program but also a master's in science and religion and your friends paul nelson and stephen myers and john bloom regularly teach that program so maybe someday i'll be pulling you to come out and do a weekend well let me let me just say this my my son will who's the pitcher he's he goes to cal tech so i have reason to come out your way okay so once covet is finally done i will pass that on to the powers that be that would be we would love to host you that'd be a treat on so many levels um i know megan is listening she's hosting this for us take a note i see she said thank you all for being here take a note and let's contact dr dempsky and get him to teach a class in the future our students would absolutely love it those of you listening know that we have a master's program in apologetics top ranked it's now officially becoming i'm not sure if you heard this or not yet bill but is officially completely online starting this spring which is pretty awesome and we have the masters in science and religion where we study especially the issues that we've been talking about if you're not ready for a master's degree we have certificate program and if you look below in the notes we've got some uh discount code free we will help work through some of these issues with you and don't forget to hit subscribe tomorrow i'm going to be talking with michael cohen and gary habermas two of the leading uh proponents and experts on the resurrection in the world i know mike is a co-author of yours bill and talking about a new book that is just coming out in a couple weeks really asking questions where is the state of the evidence for the resurrection what are the best evidences and some of the questions we asked tonight how is this conversation changed over time well i want to uh let all of you go to honor your time hang on for just a minute bill don't don't disappear yet but thanks so much for tuning in hope everyone has a great great evening

Channel: Sean McDowell

Views: 12,536

Keywords: science, intelligent design, darwinism, evolution, movement, dembski, update, reflections, naturalism, methodological, design

Id: oSJ6farA09Y

Length: 61min 35sec (3695 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 18 2020