Why Intelligence is Necessary to Explain Nature’s Functional Information

Intelligent Design the Future

Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture

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

4.3 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2026

⏱️ 32 minutes

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Summary

We already have a well-established law that shows us how order can decrease in a physical system. But is there a law that explains an increase in order? Scientists have been looking for "nature's missing law" for a while, and while they might be asking the right questions, their training in a bottom-up reductionist framework is leading them to the wrong answers. On this ID The Future, mathematician and philosopher Dr. William Dembski continues a four-part conversation with host Andrew McDiarmid about his work on the law of conservation of information and its implications for theories that attempt to explain the origin of life and the universe. This is Part 2 of a four-part conversation.

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0:00.0	You know, so I think what they're doing is they're looking for some sort of positive result.
0:05.0	This is how we can do it without intelligent design, without intelligence.
0:10.0	And what I would say is, no, you can't do it that way.
0:17.0	And so conservation of information ends up, as I'm developing it, this law of conservation of information, it's not a positive law that says, oh, yeah, this is how you get it.
0:27.7	It's rather, this is how you can't get it.
0:31.0	And so you better look elsewhere.
0:36.0	ID, the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
0:42.5	All of us have a built-in intuition to detect the hallmarks of intelligent design.
0:48.3	And that intuition also allows us to understand why you can't get something for nothing in this life.
0:56.0	But in recent decades, some scientists are claiming why you can't get something for nothing in this life. But in recent decades,
1:02.4	some scientists are claiming that you can get a whole lot from nothing, the entire universe and all of biological life, to be exact. It's been said that the fundamental unit of life is the cell,
1:08.8	or the atom, or even the quark. Actually, it's information. And
1:14.7	information isn't free. There's a cost attached. And my guest today has developed a mathematical
1:20.6	way to measure that cost and make sure it gets accounted for whenever it's applied. Welcome to
1:27.0	Idy the Future. I'm your host, Andrew McDermott.
1:30.1	Today, I continue my conversation with Dr. William Dembski, mathematician and philosopher, as we
1:36.1	impact his new monograph on the Law of Conservation of Information. Dr. Dembski, in case you don't know him,
1:42.9	he's a founding and senior fellow with Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, and a distinguished fellow with the Institute's Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.
1:53.8	He's a graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he earned a bachelor's in psychology and a doctorate in philosophy.
2:01.3	He also received a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1988
2:05.7	and a Master of Divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1996.
2:12.3	He has held National Science Foundation graduate and postdoctoral fellowships.
	...

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