This is instructive. Douglas Axe of Biologic Institute has challenged “Science Guy” Bill Nye to engage in a friendly discussion about evolution and intelligent design. Above is a brief video conversation with Dr. Axe, author of Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed. Axe defines intelligent design, an alternative to Darwinian evolution, and describes a better future where biologists are allowed to think about life conceptually.

In other words, science should not be forbidden from considering the possibility that life begins as a concept, that is then instantiated in the material world. He also contrasts ID with creationism, which, much like materialism, begins with a scientifically arbitrary premise and tries to justify that in scientific terms. ID, on the other hand, considers the evidence free of preconceived ideas about what it should find.

Now watch this from Bill Nye, author of Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation. Fine, they’re not literally side by side — that wouldn’t fit in the frame of a post here at Evolution News.

He’s attacking “creationism,” which he identifies with “denial of evolution.” He seems to have in mind everyone who doubts the explanatory power of evolutionary theory. He gives no substantive argument against such doubts, but is content to advance the usual fantastic equation of every species of evolution skepticism, whether from creationist Ken Ham or molecular biologist Doug Axe.

Nye goes on to scare-mongering about how evolution “denial” threatens us all. It “holds everybody back,” but especially kids:

We need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers. We need engineers that can build stuff….In another couple of centuries, that worldview, I’m sure, won’t exist.

The irony is almost too much to bear. To think of life as engineering is the intellectual possibility that Axe offers to readers. He gives permission, as a matter of science, to weigh the evidence that a living, breathing, flying crane is as much a product of careful and inspired design as an origami crane.

To think of life conceptually frees science from handcuffs and leg irons, the artificial constraints of rigid materialism. My goodness, wouldn’t you love to hear a conversation between Axe and Nye on which perspective is the real “science stopper”?

By the way, this is kind of amusing. You can click on and play the two videos simultaneously. Unless someone succeeds in getting Axe and Nye together to talk in the same venue, as Doug Axe has suggested, that may be the closest you come to hearing them chat.

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