On a new episode of ID the Future, host Eric Anderson sits down with Australian biologist and MD Michael Denton to discuss his new book, The Miracle of Man: The Fine Tuning of Nature for Human Existence. As Denton notes, throughout the Middle Ages, humans were viewed as central to the cosmic scheme of things. But this anthropocentric view began to fall out of favor in the 16th century, and few if any scientific discoveries in the subsequent two centuries offered any apparent aid or comfort to the view.

That, however, isn’t the end of the story. According to Denton, even as Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution by natural selection seemed to be draining from the idea what little life remained in it, discoveries in chemistry, physiology, and physics were emerging. Playing on the title of Stephen Meyer’s recent book, it was the return of the man hypothesis — revitalizing the outlook that placed man at the center of the cosmos, not in a physical way, as before, but in a far more important metaphysical sense.

Denton says that the case that nature is fine tuned for intelligent creatures such as ourselves — land-going, air-breathing bipeds capable of controlling fire and developing new technologies — is today stronger than ever, and getting stronger. The Miracle of Man brings together the key lines of evidence as never before. Find the book, and advance praise for this capstone work, here. Download the podcast or listen to it here.