Can Mathematics Be Used to Detect Design in Nature? | with Dr. William Dembski

I Don't Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST

Dr. Frank Turek

Religion & Spirituality, Education, Christianity

4.8 • 5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2023

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How do we know that life is designed? Would it surprise you to know that it can be done mathematically? You see, things like biological systems, specified complexity, and probabilistic hurdles leave no reasonable explanation for life as we know it without a creator. But are atheists and skeptics willing and able to address these hurdles without attributing them to so-called "chance"?

In this week's podcast episode, Frank interviews Dr. William "Bill" Dembski, one of the founders of the modern-day intelligent design movement, who has an impressive academic background in philosophy, mathematics, and theology and sits on the Board of Directors at the Discovery Institute. In this thought-provoking episode, Bill and Frank team up to discuss the second edition of Bill's book (co-authored by Winston Ewert) 'The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities', which lays out the mathematical way to detect design in nature. During their conversation, Bill and Frank will answer questions like:

What is a design inference and what happens when you apply it to biology?
Why did Bill take a 10-year hiatus from his career in academia?
How did the use of mathematics to detect design expose the president of Stanford University as a cheat?
What do cells and DNA reveal about the complexity of life?
What are the challenges that materialists face when trying to explain the origin of life?
What are some of the flaws in Richard Dawkins' argument for 'Climbing Mount Improbable'?
What do monkeys and Shakespeare have in common?

As you'll hear in this episode, it isn't just a religious position that supports the existence of an intelligent designer. Objections to design, such as the argument from ignorance, are not valid when the design inference is applied correctly. How do we know that life is designed? Because the numbers just don't lie!

To view the entire VIDEO PODCAST be sure to join our CrossExamined private community. It’s the perfect place to jump into some great discussions with like-minded Christians while simultaneously providing financial support for our ministry.

You can also SUPPORT THE PODCAST HERE.

Purchase ‘The Design Inference’ (2nd Edition): https://a.co/d/bfwaDUT

Connect with Bill online: https://billdembski.com/

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Does truth exist?
0:03.0	Because you have faith, does that make this book true?
0:05.0	Does God exist?
0:07.0	So when someone says there is no truth, if you apply the claim to itself, what should you say?
0:13.7	Is that true?
0:15.5	They don't think Christianity's true.
0:18.6	They're talked out of it.
0:20.3	You know why they're talked out of it?
0:22.2	Because they've never been talked into it.
0:24.0	Cross-examining skeptical and apiistic view.
0:28.0	Welcome to cross-examine with Dr. Frank Turrick.
0:32.0	Ladies and gentlemen, if you in any way suggest that some sort of designer is behind what we see in nature, some people are going to call you intellectually lazy to insert
0:47.0	to assert design. They're going to say, that's a science stopper. You just need to give science more time.
0:54.4	And by the way, that's also an argument from ignorance.
0:57.0	It's a God of the Gaps argument. You're plugging God into a solution that you just haven't discovered yet.
1:07.0	We've done that before.
1:08.3	Why would you ever suggest that God has done something in nature when in fact we've said that before and so many times
1:16.8	we've walked away with egg on our faces saying that really wasn't God we found a
1:20.6	natural cause for it. And by the way isn't it just a religious position to
1:25.4	assert there's a designer? That's what people will say but today we're going to
1:30.5	see that none of those objections are true. There's actually a
1:33.7	mathematical way to discover whether something has been designed or just the
	...

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