ID The Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.

Is the famous Panda's Thumb evidence of unguided evolutionary processes, or is it a masterpiece of engineering and the result of intelligent design?

Welcome to ID the Future. I'm your host, Andrew McDermid.

Well, today, continuing my conversation with retired geneticist Dr. Wolf Eckart Lernick

as we discuss his new paper reviewing the debate over the panda's thumb.

Giant pandas have an elongated wrist bone, the radial sesamoid,

that allows them to handle and eat bamboo with great dexterity.

Some claim it's an imperfectly and inefficiently formed structure

that is clear evidence of evolutionary processes at work.

Others call it one of the most extraordinary manipulation

systems in the mammalian world and clear evidence of engineering. So, which is it? Well, that's the

topic of our conversation today. Now, in case you don't know about Wolf Eckard Lernick,

here's a few basics. Mathematician and ID

theorist Granville Sewell has described Dr. Loonick as an intelligent design pioneer. That's because

for over 50 years, Dr. Loonick has been offering robust criticism of Darwinian theory and advocating

for intelligent design. He argued for intelligent design in his 1971

master's of science thesis at the Free University of Berlin. His faculty advisor there, the director

of the botanical gardens and botanical museum of Berlin, had high praise for his thesis.

Finally, the director said, a master's thesis in which a young man turns decidedly against

a sacred cow, neo-Darwinism, or the theory of dissent in general, and demonstrates the

sore points of a doctrine, which for most minds is thought of not just as a theory, as a great

synopsis, but as an impeccable and almost

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