It’s the latest debate from Unbelievable, courtesy of Justin Brierley!

The MP3 file is here.

Details:

William (Bill) Dembski is an American mathematician, theologian and professor of Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, TX. He debates the issue of ID with atheist Lewis Wolpert, Emeritus Professor of Biology at University College London.

For Bill Dembski see http://www.designinference.com/ or his blog http://www.uncommondescent.com/

For Lewis Wolpert’s Wikipedia profile see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Wolpert

Intro:

• Bill Dembski’s religious background (Catholic-raised atheist/agnostic, later Protestant)
• Dembski’s view of the interface between science and religion
• Lewis Wolpert’s religious background (Jewish-raised atheist)
• Wolpert’s view of whether God exists

First half:

• Dembski explains the mathematical foundations for detecting design
• Wolpert asks whether designs can emerge without intelligence
• Dembski asks whether anything in biology could be like SETI signals
• Wolpert says that it is impossible to recognize design in biology
• Dembski asks whether the Darwinian hypothesis is falsifiable
• Wolpert says that it is never warranted to rule out chance as an explanation
• Dembski says that you can set limits on what chance can do within a certain time
• Wolpert says that chance can do anything regardless of time, etc.
• Dembski says, what about the work of Doug Axe published in the peer-reviewed JMB?
• Wolpert says those calculations must be wrong!
• Dembski says then you’re just a dogmatic reductionist
• Wolpert agrees that he is a dogmatic reductionist

Second half:

• Dembski explains why intelligent is not repackaged creationism
• Dembski explains why intelligent design isn’t an argument from ignorance
• Dembski talks about whether evolutionary mechanisms can create more information
• Wolpert asks whether chemistry requires intelligent design too
• Dembski says that there is a fine-tuning argument for cosmological constants too
• Wolpert agrees that the origin of life is unexplained naturalistically
• Wolpert asks if everything after the origin of life is explained
• Dembski says that there are still problems like the Cambrian explosion
• Wolpert asks Dembski if anything could falsify intelligent design
• Dembski gives an example of something that could falsify intelligent design
• Dembski asks whether naturalistic explanations of life are falsifiable
• Wolpert asks whether intelligent design affects the way that people do science
• Dembski asks whether it is possible that the resources of naturalism are adequate to explain life
• Wolpert says that you can’t explain anything in nature as the result of intelligence
• Dembski says that it happens all the time in other sciences like engineering
• Wolpert says that he doesn’t want a Designer
• Dembski says we should just follow the evidence and who cares what people on either side want

And then there are closing speeches.

I am not sure if I had anything to do with this, but I did send Justin Bill’s e-mail address recently. I’m pretty happy that Justin managed to get Bill and Lewis to debate on this topic. Justin says that Bill will be back next week! He’ll be discussing his new book “The End of Christianity” which is about the problem of evil.

Did you miss Lewis Wolpert’s last debate with the professor of nanotechnology?

UPDATE: Justin says that it was indeed my e-mail that helped him to contact Bill, and what’s more we should expect a show that features Stephen C. Meyer soon, too!