Physicist Eric Hedin: Information Processing as a Hallmark of Life

Intelligent Design the Future

Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture

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

4 • 993 Ratings

🗓️ 18 August 2025

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What if life isn’t just a collection of molecules bumping around? What if every living thing, from a single cell to a human being, is doing something much more surprising—processing information and communicating in complex, purposeful ways? On this episode of ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid begins a two-part conversation with Dr. Eric Hedin, a physicist and author who’s been asking bold questions about the hidden patterns of life. He’s argued recently that the way living systems handle information—and communicate—is more likely evidence of intelligent design, not blind, undirected processes. This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation. Source

Transcript

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0:00.0	ID, The Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
0:10.9	What if life isn't just a collection of molecules bumping around?
0:15.6	What if every living thing from a single cell to a human being
0:19.0	is doing something much more surprising, processing
0:22.5	information, and communicating in complex, purposeful ways. Welcome to ID the Future. I'm your host
0:29.3	Andrew McDermid. Today, my guest is Dr. Eric Hedin, a physicist, an author who's been asking
0:35.3	bold questions about the hidden patterns of life.
0:39.1	He's argued recently that the way living systems handle information and communicate
0:43.9	is more likely evidence of intelligent design, not blind, undirected processes.
0:50.3	Dr. Hedin is Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy at Ball State University in Indiana.
0:56.1	He is author of the book, Canceled Science, What Some Atheists Don't Want You to See.
1:01.2	He speaks at universities around the country and writes regularly on the evidence for
1:05.4	intelligent design at Evolution News and Science Today at EvolutionNews.org.
1:12.5	Eric, welcome back to the podcast.
1:14.5	Thank you very much, Angie.
1:15.6	It's great to be with you again.
1:21.8	Well, our conversation today dovetails nicely with a chat that you and I recently had on the podcast about why life is the most unnatural thing in the universe.
1:26.2	I love that conversation, And I love that idea
1:28.8	about life just being really, really rare and really, really, therefore, unnatural. One of the
1:35.8	takeaways I got from our conversation was this. A universal principle of nature is that natural
1:41.7	processes always take the shortest possible path in the shortest amount of time to the lowest available equilibrium state.
1:50.0	And if we didn't have the unique ability to metabolize environmental energy, we'd be unable to push against those laws of physics.
	...

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