I.D. The Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.

Welcome to ID the Future. I'm your host, Andrew McDermid.

Today, I welcome back philosopher of biology, Paul Nelson, to share some more stories of his experiences

with our longtime colleague Dr. Jonathan Wells, who recently passed away at 82 years old.

Dr. Wells was one of the first fellows at Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture,

and his contributions to the Intelligent Design Movement over the last 25 years have been instrumental.

In case you don't know him, Dr. Nelson is a senior fellow of Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture

and an adjunct professor in the Master of Arts Program in Science and Religion at Biola University.

He is a philosopher of biology who has been involved in the intelligent design

debate internationally for three decades. After Paul received his BA in philosophy, with a minor

in evolutionary biology from the University of Pittsburgh, he entered the University of Chicago,

where he received his PhD in 1998 in the philosophy of biology and evolutionary theory.

In the first half of our conversation together, Paul talked about how he first met Jonathan back in 1991.

He took us back to a famous early meeting in ID history that brought together many of the ID theorists you likely know and love today,

Mike Behe, Steve Meyer, Bill Dembsky, Doug Axe, and of course Jonathan Wells himself.

Paul also related some of his adventures with Jonathan,

including a conference on the origin of animal body plans at Indiana University in 1994,

and a memorable trip to southern China in 1999.

So let's jump back into the conversation now.

Paul has just finished relating their adventures in China, and I ask him next if he could tell

back in 1999 that Jonathan's famous book, Icons of Evolution, was just on the horizon.

And it was the following year that Icons of Evolution was published,

...