Biologists have long recognized that many organized structures in living organisms—the elegant form and protective covering of the coiled nautilus; the interdependent parts of the vertebrate eye; the interlocking bones, muscles, and feathers of a bird wing—“give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Before Darwin, biologists attributed the beauty, integrated complexity, and…

One of my first encounters with this question took place in college physics class. My lab group was assembling an experiment on circular motion and figuring out what to measure using the messy pile of equipment on the lab bench. We got it set up, made our measurements of radius, velocity, etc., then did some…

“Is purposive, intelligent design detectable by the scientific investigation of nature?” My brief answer to this would be, “I don’t know.” However, since you probably want something more substantial, I need to explain my position. My answer will be both theological and scientific (and yes, the question of Intelligent Design can be a scientific question)….

First, my sincere thanks to everyone who took the time to read and comment on my book, and to Hans Madueme for organizing this exchange. In his well-known book The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins asked, “Were we [humans] designed on a drawing board . . . our parts assembled by a skilled engineer?” Here, beneath…

As a chemist, I turn naturally to the evidence of the past that is amenable to geochemical or biochemical analysis, and integrate that with other lines of evidence. This evidence tells a story with order and even direction. Geology, Biology, and the Story of Data The rocks give a timeline showing how the environmental chemistry…

This book rehearses familiar arguments for Intelligent Design; namely, that some things are too improbable or complex to have arisen by evolutionary (natural) mechanisms. There is essentially nothing new here, though instead of discussing the bacterial flagellum, or the eye or the immune system or any other complex biological system (for the whole of biology,…

Is purposive, intelligent design detectable by the scientific investigation of nature? Surely, the answer to this question is an unambiguous “yes.” If we learned anything from Archdeacon William Paley on natural theology, if you come across a watch in the wilderness, you can be damn sure that it didn’t just happen. Someone, somewhere, thought it…

Lining the coast of France at Normandy are magnificent white cliffs. Carved into those cliffs by countless waves crashing into them over many millennia are multiple arches. Monet and many other painters have found themselves drawn to painting this striking coastline. The painting to the right was produced out of the mind of Monet. We…

The natural sciences may be the most powerful achievement of the human mind. The eradication of polio, the feats of biotechnology, astronomy’s insights into the gaping universe, all of these modern wonders and a host of others are the fruit of scientific research. We are all beneficiaries of this remarkable gift, we rely on medicine,…

I admit that when I received the invitation to review this book, I was unfamiliar with Axe and his work, though I have since learned that he has been on our campus from time to time and engaged with both faculty and students here. I want to be clear from the outset, however, that I…

Doug Axe and I share a number of similarities: we both profess faith in Jesus Christ; we both did our graduate training in cell/molecular biology in the late 1990s and early 2000s; we both rejected and opposed evolution during that time; and we both embraced the ideas of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement as a…

Chance or God? This is perhaps the central theme of the science-religion interaction in evolutionary biology. Most people—even hardnosed atheists—agree that the natural world looks as if it were designed. The question is, what is the explanation of that apparent design? The central argument of Douglas Axe’s book, Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our intuition that…