Bad Design, or Ultimate Engineering? Two Views of Biology

Abby Hafer, aging, anatomy, arteries, bad design, biology, constraints, decay, Duke University, engineered systems, Engineering, European Space Agency, Evolution, evolutionary biologists, evolutionary mechanism, foresight, Francois Jacob, fungi, genetic flaws, heart, Human Errors, human technology, Intelligent Design, Jerry Coyne, joints, lubrication, Nathan Lents, reproduction, Richard Dawkins, Steven Vogel, suboptimal design, survival, The Greatest Show on Earth, The Not-So-Intelligent Designer, The Origin of Species, theistic design, tinkering, unintelligent design
An intelligent designer can employ foresight to envision a solution well beyond anything in existence at the time, and then set about making that a reality. Source
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How Life Leverages the Laws of Nature to Thrive

albumin, blood, capillaries, cell death, Darwinian narrative, death, dying, Engineering, Eric Anderson, hormones, Howard Glicksman, ID The Future, Intelligent Design, laws of nature, life, liver, living systems, Medicine, minerals, physics, Podcast, proteins, Steve Laufmann, water, Your Designed Body
Left to their own devices, the natural result of physics and chemistry is death, not life. So how are we still breathing? Source
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The Ingenious Cellular Structure that Keeps Us Alive

biology, cell's, chemical balance, chemicals, Darwinian theory, Energy, Engineering, Eric Anderson, friction, heat transfer, Howard Glicksman, human body, ID The Future, intelligent cause, Intelligent Design, matter, Medicine, organisms, physicians, Podcast, Steve Laufmann, system of systems, systems engineers, Your Designed Body
In the “just so” stories of the Darwinian narrative, these engineering solutions simply evolved. They emerged and got conserved. Voila! Source
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AI Dependence Makes Us Dumber, but That’s Not the Worst Thing About It

Andrew McDiarmid, Artificial Intelligence, baked salmon, ChatGPT, Chicago Tribune, Complexity, Computational Sciences, computer assistance, Copilot, createdness, Creativity, Engineering, Gemini, Grok, human exceptionalism, humans, living systems, Nikolai Berdyaev, salmon, scientists
I realized this when I found myself, not for the first time, asking Grok to remind me again how long to bake salmon at 400 degrees. Source
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Could Genetic Mutations Be Non-Random? New Evidence for Mutational Bias

Africa, African sleeping sickness, APOL1, Daniel Melamed, diseases, Engineering, Evolution, genes, genetic mutations, genetics, genomes, germline genome, haploid, heterozygotes, HindIII, homozygotes, Intelligent Design, Israel, malaria, MEMDS, mutation DNA, Mutation Enrichment followed by Maximum Depth Sequencing, mutation frequency, mutations, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, randomness, restriction enzyme, sperm, sperm DNA, Trypanosoma brucei, University of Haifa, wild-type DNA
The researchers examined the emergence of a mutation in the human APOL1 gene that confers protection from African sleeping sickness. Source
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Sexual Reproduction: Engineered for Success

Bayesian reasoning, Charles Darwin, Darwin's Black Box, egg, Engineering, Evolution, evolutionary theory, fertilization, forethought, goal, human reproduction, ID The Future, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, irreducibly complex systems, Jonathan McLatchie, Michael Behe, natural selection, Podcast, purpose, seminal fluid, sexual reproduction, sperm, sperm capacitation
I continue a three-part discussion with Dr. Jonathan McLatchie on why sex is the queen of problems for evolutionary theory. Source
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Remembering Bernie Widrow, a Great Engineer and a Wise Scientist

ADALINE, Adolf Hitler, algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, Bell Labs, Bernard Widrow, Boeing, Claude Shannon, Computational Sciences, copper, copper plating, Earl Sannard Herald, electrical engineering, electroplating, Engineering, English, Frank Rosenblatt, French, IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal, IEEE Neural Networks Pioneer Medal, Japanese, Least Mean Squares, MADALINE, Marcian Hoff, National Academy of Engineering, Neural Networks, neurons, pennies, Science in Action, Seattle, silver nitrate, speech recognition, Stanford University
Widrow called his learning machine a neural network because it was loosely based on the 1943 McCulloch-Pitts model of the biological neuron. Source
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Systems Biology and Intelligent Design: A Natural Fit

AmiGO, biological networks, biology, computers, coordination, Darwinian evolution, data networks, datasets, E. coli, Engineering, Gene Ontology, genomics, glycolysis, Intelligent Design, Introduction to Systems Biology, isoforms, Joel Bader, Junk DNA, living systems, long non-coding RNAs, metabolomics, molecular biology, Molecular Systems Biology, mRNA, mutations, optimal design, optimism, proteins, proteomics, reductionist biology, Rube Goldberg, Ruedi Aebersold, smartphones, Systems Biology, Technology, transcription network, transcriptomics, Uri Alon, Yuri Lazebnik
In December 2025, Molecular Systems Biology marked its 20th anniversary with a special editorial that reflects on the field’s development since 2005 (Bheda et al. 2025). Systems biology is an approach to studying living systems that assumes hierarchical, top-down design. The piece, authored by the journal’s editors and several contributors, shares personal perspectives on where the field stands today — and where it is headed. Ruedi Aebersold, the first contributor, states, “the first 20 years of MSB were grand; the next 20 years will be grander.”  I too am optimistic about the field’s future. My optimism comes specifically from how powerfully top-down design has succeeded in giving us the complex systems of the modern world. Top-down design prunes the vast search space of possibilities through an Read More › Source
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Casey Luskin on the Rising Tide of Intelligent Design Research

biological features, biological traits, body plans, Casey Luskin, Christmas, common ancestry, complex parts, discoveries, Engineering, Evolution, evolutionary biology, functionality, genome, genome sequencing, ID The Future, Intelligent Design, Junk DNA, Neo-Darwinism, organs, origin of life, orphan genes, predictions, purpose, Research, teleology, tide, trees of life, universe
Any scientific theory for the origin of life and the universe is only as strong as its research program. For intelligent design, this is good news. Source
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Year in Review: Demonstrating the Power of the Intelligent Design Framework in Biology

anatomy, biologists, biology, biomimicry, blood flow, brain, CELS, Conference on Engineering in Living Systems, design reuse, Emily Reeves, Engineering, Engineering Research Group, engineers, genetic profiles, genetic variation, genome architecture, Gerald Fudge, glycolysis, Intelligent Design, James Clayton Prize, James Johansen, living systems, Macroevolution, Michael Egnor, Microevolution, modularity, optimality, pathology, physicians, physiology, Research, robustness, Stuart Burgess, systems engineering, Texas A&M, theory of biological design, Windkessel
Our scientists and engineers have further laid the foundation for a comprehensive and actionable theory of biological design. Source
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