Are life and the universe products of chance, necessity, or design? In anticipation of a new updated second edition of his seminal book The Design Inference, out this coming week, ID the Future features Rice University synthetic organic chemist James Tour and intelligent design pioneer William Dembski concluding a discussion about the origin and role of information in living things. Here in Part 2, Dr. Dembski tackles questions from Dr. Tour’s audience on topics like information theory, probability theory, the origin of life, evolution, the multiverse hypothesis, and Dembski’s contributions to the theory of intelligent design. 

Proponents of an evolutionary explanation for life and the universe often credit natural processes with a seemingly unlimited amount of time and boundless creativity. But the discovery in the 20th century that the universe had a beginning showed that evolution does not have unlimited resources. Dembski has calculated a universal probability bound — the finite limit of available resources and opportunities in the history of the universe — and argues that the complexity of the living cell, the foundational unit of all life on Earth, is leaps and bounds beyond the reach of chance. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Dig Deeper

• This is Part 2 of a two-part conversation that originally aired on Dr. Tour’s Science & Faith podcast and is shared here with permission. Listen to Part 1.
• Pre-order the new edition of The Design Inference.
• Watch Dr. Dembski discuss the successes of the modern intelligent design movement in the last quarter century: