I. D. The Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design. Does the Pandas Thumb refute intelligent design?

I'm Casey Luskin with Id of the Future

and today we have on the show with us

Dr Stephen Dilly, he is academic Mentoring Centers Coordinator and Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute,

and he holds a PhD in philosophy from Arizona State University.

He was also a professor of philosophy at State Edwards University in Austin, Texas for 14 years.

So Steve, thank you so much for joining us again on the show today.

Yeah, great to be back, Casey. So Steve, last year you published, this was 2023, you published a peer-reviewed paper in the journal

Religions titled, God Gould and the Pandas Thumb, where you critique the famous arguments from the Harvard

Paleontologist Stephen J. Gould that the Pandas Thumb sometimes called a

pseudo-Thumb is a poorly designed structure that refutes design and points to evolution.

And the Panestom argument, of course, is an example of what we call disteliology.

The idea that there are certain features of nature that cannot be explained by design and therefore blind material causes are the only way to explain them.

And we've encountered and faced these kinds of distilliological arguments numerous times over the

years. In fact I find it interesting Steve that one of the most popular anti-ID blogs out

there decided to name itself the Pandas thumb and I think this reflects the

fact that many ID critics think that what they believe are quote-unquote

poorly designed features like the pandas thumb somehow refute intelligent design. But in your paper you tackle

the argument from Gould that the pandas thumb was poorly designed and you really dissect

it on philosophical, theological, and even scientific levels.

It's a very nice paper.

We'll link to it from the podcast description here.

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