Marcos Eberlin and Jonathan Wells on Life’s Problem-Solving Engineering

Intelligent Design the Future

Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture

Science, Life Sciences, Society & Culture, Philosophy, Astronomy

4.3 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 26 December 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

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Summary

On our latest visit into the ID The Future archive, we stumbled on this little gem: a 2019 conversation between ID pioneer and biologist Dr. Jonathan Wells and distinguished Brazilian chemist Marcos Eberlin. The occasion for the chat was the publication of Dr. Eberlin's book Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose. A member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Eberlin is a world leader in the field of mass spectrometry. His book was endorsed by three Nobel laureates. In this first of two conversations, Eberlin speaks to the scientist’s duty to follow the evidence where it leads, and explains how the incredible problem-solving engineering involved in just one structure, the cell membrane, may lead one to the conclusion that a mind planned it in advance. It's nice to hear Dr. Wells's voice again. We lost our good friend and colleague in 2024 at the age of 82. In case you missed our series of interviews remembering Wells, find the links below. This is Part 1 of a two-part interview. Look for Part 2 in a separate episode.

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0:00.0	Welcome to ID the Future, a podcast about intelligent design and evolution.
0:14.1	Hello, this is Jonathan Wells for ID the Future.
0:18.7	I'm here today with Marcus Eberlin. Marcus is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences
0:25.2	and holds a PhD in chemistry from the University of Campinas. After postdoctoral work at Purdue,
0:33.5	he founded the Thompson Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, and it grew into a highly distinguished lab, and supervisors, has supervised, some 200 graduate and postdoctoral students, scientists who today work as researchers and professionals all around the globe.
0:49.8	The former president of the International Mass Spectrometry Foundation and winner of the prestigious
0:56.2	Thompson Medal in 2016, Dr. Eberlin is recognized worldwide as one of the most productive
1:03.3	mass spectrometrists ever, having published close to 1,000 scientific articles.
1:09.7	So, Marcos, welcome.
1:12.0	Oh, it's a pleasure to talk to you about the book and my experience with foresight.
1:20.1	Before getting into the book itself, I noticed that there are some very glowing endorsements of it,
1:25.7	three of them from Nobel Prize winners. Would you like
1:29.1	to say anything about those? Oh yeah, the book has received endorsements from three Nobel laureates,
1:36.4	one from chemistry, physics, and medicine. And this seems to be unique. I myself never read a book with such high quality of endorsements.
1:48.9	And this is also extraordinary if you consider that people tend to believe that all scientists,
1:56.3	at least the well-qualified scientist, they are all evolutionists. Yet three noble laureates
2:04.4	read my book, were confronted by the evidence, and there, to publicly endorse the book,
2:12.4	that's amazing, isn't it? And it shows that the message from the book is really strong, that the evidence are
2:20.9	speaking loudly. I'm really glad that we got those endorsements. So, Marcos, why is the idea
2:29.9	of foresight so important to you in Origins' science?
2:35.0	Well, Jonathan, when you studied life and the universe also, you see there are solutions,
2:43.4	and those solutions are there to solve really big problems.
	...

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