Physicist Eric Hedin was one of the speakers at our Dallas Conference on Science and Faith. His speech, which you can see now, stands out in a number of respects. Arguments for intelligent design can be framed in many different ways, depending on the field and the personality of the scientist. Some commenters on our YouTube channel said things to the effect that they wish more physics students had professors like Dr. Hedin, and I can see why.

He emphasizes the limits to our physical universe — in time and material. There are limits to what random processes can do even in this massively large and old cosmos — the generation of life being the foremost boundary. As Hedin puts it, “nature cannot overcome the gargantuan information barrier between non-life and life.” Life with its “radiant beauty” defies naturalistic explanations.

Hedin notes the tragedy of going through college without ever being prompted to consider the implications of those limits — what he called, in the title of the course at Ball State University that got him canceled, “The Boundaries of Science.” As he recounts in his book Canceled Science: What Some Atheists Don’t Want You to See, Jerry Coyne and the litigious Freedom from Religion Foundation took offense at the course, and wildly misrepresented what Hedin was doing. Coyne, a tenured University of Chicago biologist with nothing to lose, sought to squash the untenured professor with an entire career to lose. It was classic, loathsome bullying.

This is a novel and even poetic presentation, and a highly personal one — Hedin spends time explaining how he processed his experiences through his reading of Scripture. In the end he was not squashed, as you’ll see.