Ann Gauger

Senior Fellow, Center for Science and Culture

Dr. Ann Gauger is Director of Science Communication and a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture, and Senior Research Scientist at the Biologic Institute in Seattle, Washington. She received her Bachelor's degree from MIT and her Ph.D. from the University of Washington Department of Zoology. She held a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, where her work was on the molecular motor kinesin.

Her research at Biologic Institute has focused on two areas: the limits of neo-Darwinism as a mechanism for change at the protein level, and evidence for the uniqueness of human origins. As Director of Science Communication, she is responsible for communicating the evidence for intelligent design to the wider public.

She serves as an editor of the journal BIO-Complexity, and her scientific work has been published in Nature, Development, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Genetic Regulation of Development, In Vitro, In Vitro Cell and Developmental Biology, BIO-Complexity, and Biological Information: New Perspectives. She has coauthored the book Science and Human Origins and appeared in the documentaries, Metamorphosis, Flight, and The War on Humans. Her web posts appear regularly on Evolution News and Views, and she writes for other on-line and print publications as well.

She and her husband of twenty-six years are proud parents of three young adults.

Archives

An Antidote to Despair

Ann Gauger
June 9, 2020
I am a biologist, a worker in a field with a sorrowful history of categorizing human beings by race, arranging them in a false hierarchy.

Honoring Phillip Johnson Pt. 4: Ann Gauger

Ann Gauger
February 24, 2020
On this episode of ID the Future, we hear biologist and Center for Science and Culture senior fellow Ann Gauger speaking at a gathering to honor the recently deceased Dr. Phillip Johnson, the Berkeley law professor known affectionately as the “godfather” of the intelligent design movement.

The Ultimate Recycler

Ann Gauger
December 16, 2019
Right now, within your bodies this little engine is cranking away. Without this machine, oxygen-dependent life could not exist.

New Gene Research: A Single-Couple Human Origin is Possible

Ann Gauger
October 30, 2019
On this episode of ID the Future, biologist Ann Gauger talks with host Andrew McDiarmid about new research challenging the common claim that the field of population genetics rules out a single-couple human origin. She and Stockholm University statistical mathematician Ola Hössjer have just published a paper in the journal BIO-Complexity modeling the scenario using a newly developed computer algorithm. The results, Gauger says, show that the genetic data does not rule out Adam and Eve.

Ann Gauger on Emerging Clues to Life’s Design

Ann Gauger
October 25, 2019
On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid shares biologist Ann Gauger’s recent article on emerging clues to life’s design, and how the “Darwinian Regime” tends to ignore them. One stubborn bit of biological evidence Gauger highlights is the fact that cells can’t make life-essential ATP, NAD, and other metabolic co-factors without having ATP, NAD, and the other co-factors there first. It’s a “daisy chain of causal circularity woven by what must be an intelligent designer,” Gauger comments. Or as she also puts it, “It’s chickens and eggs, all the way down.”

Why Scientific Materialism is No Match for Truth, Beauty, and Goodness

Ann Gauger
January 28, 2019
On this episode of ID the Future, David Klinghoffer speaks with Dr. Ann Gauger, biologist and Director of Science Communication for Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, about her recent article “The Transcendental Treasury of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness” at EvolutionNews.org. These abstract concepts don’t derive from the material world, yet we feel impoverished without them; they’re foundations of a life worth living. Materialistic evolutionary explanations for truth, beauty, and goodness fall flat. Some of them even reduce them to mere illusion. It takes a designer who knows truth, beauty, and goodness to explain what we all know: They’re really real.

Ann Gauger Defends a New Anthology Critiquing Theistic Evolution

Ann Gauger
July 18, 2018
On this episode of ID the Future, biologist Ann Gauger responds to a negative review of the new Crossway anthology Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique, arguing that parts of the review are confused and contradictory. For instance, Denis Lamoureux uses classic design language while denying design. He says design is all front-loaded so that random evolutionary processes can produce designed outcomes, thus changing the meaning of both “random” and “evolution.” He accuses ID of being theologically driven, apparently unaware that it’s theistic evolution that is theological. And he seeks to support faith through appreciation of the wonders of nature while insisting that appeals to evidence of design in nature somehow undermine faith.

New Book Refuting Theistic Evolution Puts Ape-to-Man Under the Microscope: Pt. 2

Ann Gauger
January 24, 2018
On this episode of ID The Future, we continue a series on human origins with biologist Ann Gauger, CSC Director of Science Communications. Gauger centers her discussion around a big new anthology from Crossway Books that she contributed to and helped edit, Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique. Today’s episode delves into chimp and human DNA. Really, how similar are our genomes? Do protein-coding stretches of DNA tell the whole story? And is there enough time for genetic mutations to build the novelties that separate humans all other primates?

A New Book Refuting Theistic Evolution Puts Ape-to-Man Under the Microscope: Pt. 1

Ann Gauger
January 17, 2018
On this episode of ID The Future, we begin a series on human origins with biologist Ann Gauger, CSC Director of Science Communications. Gauger centers her discussion around a big new anthology from Crossway Books that she contributed to and helped edit, Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique. Among the tenets of theistic evolution is the idea that humans evolved from a large population of ape-like creatures. But is that idea scientifically plausible? Today’s episode delves into the fossil evidence. Listen in as Gauger describes not a mere gap in the fossil record but a great gulf, between australopithecines (an ancient ape-like creature) and humans.

An Overview of Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical and Theological Critique

Ann Gauger
December 4, 2017
On this episode of ID The Future, biologist Ann Gauger, CSC Director of Science Communications, discusses a big new anthology she contributed to and helped edit, Theistic Evolution. Gauger discusses the reception that the new book recently received at the Evangelical Theological Society meeting, and gives an overview of the book. In her conversation with host Sarah Chaffee, the two home in on the anthology’s contribution from leading chemist James Tour and the problems that synthetic chemistry pose for modern evolutionary theory. Gauger also summarizes a nano-tech breakthrough Tour’s research team has made in cancer research.

Gauger: Is It Easy to Get A New Protein?

Ann Gauger
March 13, 2017
On this episode of ID the Future, Ann Gauger discusses a central argument used by evolutionary biologists to say it’s simple to get new proteins. Listen in to learn more about nylonase, and whether it shows that purely natural processes can produce biological information.