We’re asleep an average of about 26 years of our life! Most people have a sense that sleep is important, but many of us aren’t sure exactly why. Why is sleep so crucial to survival? And how did the processes of sleep emerge in living things? Could a gradual Darwinian process be responsible, or are the systems involved another instance of intelligent design? On a new episode of ID the Future, I begin a conversation with Eric Hedin about the origin and intelligent design of sleep.

Dr. Hedin suggests that the evolutionary mindset operates as a major obstacle to the scientific understanding of sleep. From an evolutionary point of view, sleep is risky for the fitness of organisms. “Survival of the unconscious…the most unconscious person wins…that just doesn’t seem to fit at all with an evolutionary survival of the fittest paradigm,” says Hedin. In his review of the science literature on sleep, Hedin found that even Darwinist researchers admit that there has to be a really good reason for sleep for it to have been selected through an evolutionary process.

Hedin also unpacks what’s going on when we sleep. Though it’s simple to fall asleep and wake up, there’s a complicated set of processes involved that exhibit complex engineering design patterns and irreducible complexity, both key hallmarks of intelligently designed systems.

Find the podcast and listen to it here. This is Part 1 of a two-part interview. Look for Part 2 next!

Dig Deeper

Read the articles by Dr. Hedin that inspired this interview:

• “Sleep: Designed For Our Good“
• “Sleeping and Waking: A Designer’s Gift”