Casey Luskin

Casey Luskin is a scientist and an attorney with graduate degrees in science and law, giving him expertise in both the scientific and legal dimensions of the debate over evolution. He holds a PhD in Geology from the University of Johannesburg where he specialized in paleomagnetism and the early plate tectonic history of South Africa. He earned a law degree from the University of San Diego, where he focused on First Amendment law, education law, and environmental law. His B.S. and M.S. degrees in Earth Sciences are from the University of California, San Diego, where he studied evolution extensively at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and conducted geological research at Scripps Institution for Oceanography. Dr. Luskin has been a California-licensed attorney since 2005, practicing primarily in the area of evolution-education in public schools and defending academic freedom for scientists who face discrimination because of their support for intelligent design (ID).

In his role at Discovery Institute, Dr. Luskin works as Associate Director of the Center for Science and Culture, where he helps direct the ID 3.0 Research Program, and assists and defends scientists, educators, and students who seek to freely study, research, and teach about the scientific debate over Darwinian evolution and ID. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture.

In 2001, Luskin co-founded the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Center, a non-profit helping students to investigate evolution by starting "IDEA Clubs" on college and high school campuses. Casey and the IDEA Club movement he co-founded were featured in the April 27, 2005 cover story of the journal Nature.

Dr. Luskin has lectured widely on ID at university campuses and conferences on four continents, and has coauthored or contributed to multiple books. In 2006, he coauthored Traipsing Into Evolution: Intelligent Design and the Kitzmiller v. Dover Decision, a detailed critique of the first court ruling to assess the constitutionality of teaching ID in public schools. In 2012, he coauthored Science and Human Origins, reviewing fossil and genetic evidence which challenges human/ape common ancestry. He is coauthor of Discovering Intelligent Design, the first comprehensive introductory intelligent design curriculum, published in 2013. He co-edited with William Dembski and Joseph Holden The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos, which won an honorable mention in World magazine's 2021 "accessible science" book of the year awards. Luskin has also contributed to the volumes Intelligent Design 101: Leading Experts Explain the Key Issues; Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Theological, and Philosophical Critique (Crossway, 2017); The Praeger Handbook of Religion and Education in the United States; Dictionary of Christianity and Science (Zondervan, 2017); Science and Faith in Dialogue (Aosis, 2022); Signature of Controversy; The Unofficial Guide to Cosmos; Debating Darwin's Doubt; More than Myth; and the award-winning God and Evolution.

Dr. Luskin has published in technical science, legal, and religion journals, including Journal of Church and State; Montana Law Review; Geochemistry, Geophysics, and Geosystems; South African Journal of Geology; Hamline Law Review; Religions; Liberty University Law Review; Trinity Law Review; University of St. Thomas Journal of Law & Public Policy; Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design; and BIO-Complexity. He also contributed to The Archaean Geology of the Kaapvaal Craton, Southern Africa (Springer Nature, 2019) and Ancient Supercontinents and the Paleogeography of Earth (Elsevier, 2021).

Luskin has published in, and/or been quoted in, hundreds of radio, TV, Internet, print, podcast, and other media sources, including the NY Times, LA Times, Nature, Science, U.S. News & World Report, NY Post, Washington D.C. Examiner, Human Events, The Blaze, The Stream, The Federalist, The Daily Wire, Christianity Today, CNS News, The Christian Post, BeliefNet, Touchstone, World, Epoch Times, Townhall, Christian Science Monitor, Coast to Coast AM, Daily Dose of Wisdom, NPR, CNN.com, Sean McDowell Show, Premier Christian Radio (with Justin Brierley), Socrates in the City (with Eric Metaxas), Cross Examined with Frank Turek, The Andrew Klavan Show, C-SPAN, and Fox News. For years he was a senior editor at Salvo Magazine, and Luskin is a regular contributor to Science and Culture Today (formerly Evolution News) and the ID the Future Podcast.

Casey is a Christian with a Jewish background. His special interests include geology, science education, biological origins, and environmental protection. He and his wife reside in the Seattle region, where they enjoy hiking, camping, kayaking, sailing, and other outdoor activities.

Archives

Intelligent Design Bears Good Scientific Fruit in the Study of ‘Junk DNA’

_{Casey Luskin
September 20, 2026}

For decades, many scientists have confidently dismissed the vast majority of the human DNA as useless evolutionary garbage. Yet a recently published scientific paper in Cell, one of the world’s most prestigious biology journals, declares a “paradigm shift” against the idea that huge portions of the human genome are merely “junk DNA.”

The Missing 20 Years: What Designer Science Left Out

_{Casey Luskin
September 16, 2026}

Is the intelligent design movement a short-lived phenomenon that has come and gone? Or is its steady and consistent growth evidence of a flourishing scientific program? On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid concludes his conversation with Dr. Casey Luskin about his critique of a recent book called Designer Science that portrays the ID movement as a short-lived political, cultural, and religious phenomenon that has produced little new research in the last two decades. In Part 2, Luskin turns to another major problem: Designer Science almost entirely ignores the last twenty years of ID scientific research and novel arguments. As the book gets retracted by the publisher, Luskin corrects the record in this conversation. This is Part 2 of a two-part conversation.

Fact-Checking Designer Science: Casey Luskin on ID History Errors

_{Casey Luskin
September 14, 2026}

Is intelligent design dying out or just warming up? On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid welcomes Dr. Casey Luskin to a new and improved podcast studio for a sit-down, in-person conversation! Today, Dr. Luskin discusses a recent book called Designer Science that portrays the ID movement as a short-lived political, cultural, and religious phenomenon. Luskin reveals some egregious errors in this purported comprehensive history of ID. First, a made-up quote from Michael Behe used to support one of the book's major premises. Second, some glaring omissions, including a number of scientific breakthroughs and developments from ID scientists in the last two decades. This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation. Look for Part 2 next! Also available in video format on our YouTube channel!

Steady and Consistent Growth: The Real Story of Intelligent Design

_{Casey Luskin
August 31, 2026}

Snowballs start small. But they grow steadily over time, and after a while they really start to get large and pick up speed.

Positive and Near-Positive Aspects of Designer Science

_{Casey Luskin
August 30, 2026}

In C. W. Howell’s mind, intelligent design is still recovering from the Dover trial, and if there’s evidence to the contrary, he doesn’t want to see it.

C. W. Howell in Context: A Brief History of Histories

_{Casey Luskin
August 29, 2026}

One positive aspect: Howell rightly observes that some other would-be histories of ID, especially those by written by critics, are “polemical” and “activist.”

Is Intelligent Design the Root of All Science Skepticism?

_{Casey Luskin
August 28, 2026}

As author C. W. Howell puts it, various ID proponents have sometimes committed the thought crime of “doubting the science consensus outside evolution."

Fighting a Battle That’s Over, and ID Won, Designer Science Omits Key Portions of ID’s History

_{Casey Luskin
August 27, 2026}

I want to be fair to Howell, but I also want to be fair to my colleagues who have worked hard developing and publishing new ID arguments over the past 20 years.

NYU Press Book Makes Fake Behe Quote a Linchpin of Its Case Against Intelligent Design

_{Casey Luskin
August 26, 2026}

It’s quite a chain of errors, from the ACLU to Judge Jones to C. W. Howell. Each makes it worse than the one before.

Scientists Creating “Artificial Life” in Their Labs Promise World-Changing Benefits — but Are They Playing God?

_{Casey Luskin
August 17, 2026}

Scientists recently buzzed over SpudCell, a “synthetic cell” bioengineered to mimic the functions of living cells. Assembled in the lab from biomolecules such as proteins, lipids and DNA, SpudCell promises many potential therapeutic benefits. But are we, like Dr. Frankenstein, playing God?

Postcard from Budapest: Intelligent Design Is Growing in Europe

_{Casey Luskin
August 16, 2026}

I started with a brief explanation of what ID theory is and how it works and then went through about a dozen examples of ID research.

Fossil Explosions Persist, and Other Confirmations of Intelligent Design

_{Casey Luskin
August 12, 2026}

From 2016 until his tragic death in 2025, Bechly made many important contributions to ID literature on the topic of fossil explosions in the history of life.

Thirty Years of Intelligent Design Predicting the Unexpected Genome

_{Casey Luskin
August 11, 2026}

Jonathan Wells’s review was important, but it only scratches the surface of information in biology outside of the DNA.

Enzymes in Bacteria and Archaea Are So Dissimilar There Must Be “Two Origins of Life”

_{Casey Luskin
August 11, 2026}

Don’t get distracted by wondering how the extreme heat near a vent (a toasty 750° F or more inside the vent) wouldn’t quickly break down organic molecules.

On the 30th Anniversary of the CSC, Let’s Take Stock of Intelligent Design

_{Casey Luskin
August 10, 2026}

Third Way and EES thinking shows that mainstream science is moving on a compass heading that is right in the direction of intelligent design.

Paper Promotes “Weirdest Theory Yet” for the Cambrian Explosion

_{Casey Luskin
August 6, 2026}

First the Oxygen Theory, now the Feces Theory. But how much experience do we really have with feces creating new genetic information?

Darwin’s Black Box at 30: The Evidence Wins!

_{Casey Luskin
August 3, 2026}

Macrobiological features have been cited as irreducibly complex, including animal joints and the trap mechanisms of carnivorous plants, even the cell itself.

Why Aliens Won’t Solve the Origin of Life on Earth

_{Casey Luskin
July 29, 2026}

Does invoking aliens to explain the origin of life on Earth solve the problem of biological information, or does it simply kick the can down the road? On this ID The Future, enjoy the second half of a conversation with geologist Dr. Casey Luskin and his wife, science educator Kristin Marais, as they discuss intelligent design, evolution, and alien life with host Daniel Ray on the Apologetics Profile podcast. In Part 2, the conversation shifts from the theoretical framework of intelligent design to the physical and biological hurdles that challenge both Darwinian evolution and the search for extraterrestrial life. Dr. Luskin also discusses the professional risks and academic pressures faced by scientists who dare to suggest that the design evident in nature may be actual design from an actual designer. The conversation wraps with a surprising conclusion: that the possible future discovery of alien life would actually be the ultimate disproof of Darwinism, pointing instead to a common design blueprint shared across the cosmos.

New Peer-Reviewed Paper Provides a How-To Manual for Using ID to Guide Research

_{Casey Luskin
July 29, 2026}

The paper explains what the theory of intelligent design is and how it can be used to generate testable scientific predictions, or “expectations.”

Signs of Intelligence: ID, Evolution, and the Search for Alien Life

_{Casey Luskin
July 27, 2026}

If alien life were to be discovered elsewhere in the cosmos, would it be evidence of intelligent design or blind evolutionary forces? On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid brings you the first half of a recent conversation with geologist Dr. Casey Luskin and his wife, science teacher Kristin Marais, that originally aired on the Apologetics Profile podcast. The conversation explores the scientific theory of intelligent design, and in particular, the intuitive ways we recognize patterns in life, from forensic science to archaeology. This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation. We're grateful to the producer of Apologetics Profile for permission to share this conversation at ID The Future.