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

What does it take for life to exist?

Here some tell the story. Once a place in the universe has the right conditions,

the right physics and chemistry, life can readily

arise. And those same favorable conditions of physics and chemistry will then more or less

inevitably lead to a great diversity and variety of living organisms. Indeed, in our earthly

environment, life is so ubiquitous, we can easily take it for granted, and we might even

be tempted to think it's easy to generate and

maintain life. But what's really required for life to exist beyond the physics and the chemistry?

Hello, I'm Eric Anderson, and joining us on the show today is Dr. Howard Glickman to discuss

what's actually required for life and some of the remarkable engineering challenges that have to be

solved in order to maintain a living organism such as ourselves. Dr. Glickman practices palliative medicine and has been a long time

contributed to the debate over evolution and intelligent design. He's also co-author of the

wonderful recent book, Your Designed Body. In addition to being just an all-around great guy,

I should add. So welcome, Howard. Thanks. Eric, it's great to be here with you today. So, Howard, we often talk about the fine-tuning of the cosmos to enable life as evidence for design. We talk about the fine-tuning of our local environment, having a habitable planet in the habitable zone, and myriad other conditions required to have a life permitting environment.

And so some people even design proponents might be tempted to think that once you've got all these carefully coordinated conditions in place,

then the hard part's done, that life can inevitably move forward based on this favorable mix of physics and chemistry.

But as I understand you, you're saying not so fast. And I'm

glad you were able to participate in our recent conference on engineering and living systems,

which we held in Denton, Texas. And in your presentation, Howard, at the conference, you mentioned

that even these highly favorable conditions of the cosmos and of physics, even if their design,

aren't going to naturally lead

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