Geoffrey Simmons

Geoffrey Simmons (BS in biology, coursework completed for MS in microbiology, University of Illinois; M.D., University of Illinois Medical School; Internship and Residency in Internal Medicine, LAC-USC Medical Center; Boarded in Internal Medicine since 1974) is a retired internist in Eugene, Oregon, as well as an author, lecturer, and Fellow of Discovery Institute. Former Governor of the American Academy of Disaster Medicine (AADM) and a member of the Board of Governors of the Sacred Heart Medical Center's Emergency Preparedness Committee, he is the author of six novels and of the books What Darwin Didn't Know (Harvest Publishers, 2004) which has had ten printings and was translated into Spanish, as well as and Billions of Missing Links (Harvest Publishers, 2007). He has lectured on disaster preparedness on radio and television as well as at many neighborhood associations and high schools, and has been a medical correspondent for KABC in Los Angeles and KPNW in Eugene, a guest on the Steve Allen show, and has made numerous radio appearances related to his writings.

Archives

Doctor’s Diary: I Couldn’t Put Plato’s Revenge Down

_{Geoffrey Simmons
May 17, 2025}

I rarely read a book as quickly as I read this text, and I virtually never read a book twice.

Doctor’s Diary: No Such Thing as a Coincidence

_{Geoffrey Simmons
December 3, 2024}

I find coincidences everywhere I look, all the time. Consider a simple blade of grass. One could write a long treatise about the simultaneous goings-on therein.

Doctor’s Diary: Are Flaws in Our Design Responsible for Bad Things Happening to Good People?

_{Geoffrey Simmons
September 9, 2024}

When I lecture, I typically discuss intelligent design as if it were a near-perfect process creating inexplicably complicated living entities.

Doctor’s Diary: A Truly Fantastic Voyage!

_{Geoffrey Simmons
July 17, 2024}

The old movie mostly dealt with the brain, lung, heart, blood vessels (all at the tissue level) and a few scattered cells.

Doctor’s Diary: The Other Intelligent Designer(s)?

_{Geoffrey Simmons
March 1, 2023}

Who thought of a clotting cascade just in case there’s bleeding? Who thought of an antibody system?

Doctor’s Diary: There’s Nothing Funny About Evolution

_{Geoffrey Simmons
June 21, 2022}

Is a sense of humor a byproduct, an accident, or was it installed on purpose? For better health? There definitely seems to be a purpose.

Doctor’s Diary: Till Death Do Us Part

_{Geoffrey Simmons
November 12, 2020}

When I was in charge of the Emergency Room at Los Angeles County Hospital, I saw many instances of near-death trauma, yet there was little complaint about pain.

Doctor’s Diary: The Wonder of Your Body’s Genetic Instructions

_{Geoffrey Simmons
October 5, 2020}

Imagine the New York Public Library cutting every manual in half daily, or more often, and sending every month entire halves to a library in London.

Doctor’s Diary: No “Butts” About It

_{Geoffrey Simmons
September 15, 2020}

An anthropologist writes that the evolution of bipedal-walking primates was primarily caused by the shifting of select bones and muscles in the pelvis.

Doctor’s Diary: Evolution in the Country of the Blind

_{Geoffrey Simmons
August 27, 2020}

Fans of H. G. Wells are probably familiar with his 1904 short story, “The Country of the Blind.”

Doctor’s Diary: Evolution’s Countless Chicken-and-Egg Conundrums

_{Geoffrey Simmons
August 5, 2020}

It turned out last week that scientists have been wrong for 350 years about how sperm swim.

Doctor’s Diary: Jack of All Trades

_{Geoffrey Simmons
June 11, 2020}

Changes in the world of medicine strongly show that a master architect has been at work.

Doctor’s Diary: Fear Is a Gift from Our Designer

_{Geoffrey Simmons
May 24, 2020}

As a physician, I have cared for many patients who were fearful. Often with good reason, but not always.

Coronavirus Response: Design in Nature and Medical Science

_{Geoffrey Simmons
April 27, 2020}

On this episode of ID the Future, internal medicine specialist Dr. Geoff Simmons speaks with host Andrew McDiarmid about his recent Evolution News article on the body’s response to the coronavirus, our immune system. It comprises an enormously complex enterprise with adaptive memory for millions of pathogens and the ability to keep on learning more. Researchers study it to learn how to create vaccines for diseases like COVID-19. Their work is one of intelligent design from start to finish. But, Simmons says, we ought to recognize that it starts with studying systems in our bodies that are even more intelligently designed. One might object that if our immune system were intelligently designed, it would be utterly immune to all pathogens, but such an objection makes theological or …

Doctor’s Diary: Our Remarkable Healing Processes and the Coronavirus Infection

_{Geoffrey Simmons
April 15, 2020}

There are several ways to fight this pandemic besides social isolation, wearing masks, and proper hand-washing.

Doctor’s Diary: On Designed Obsolescence

_{Geoffrey Simmons
March 9, 2020}

Dying actually begins at conception. From the moment of conception the directions for a person’s demise are passed on to every cell.

Doctor’s Diary: The Ultimate Engineer

_{Geoffrey Simmons
February 28, 2020}

The 4-4-4 rule says that we would perish without oxygen for four minutes, water for four days, or food for four weeks.

Can Evolution Create Mind? Can We?

_{Geoffrey Simmons
January 13, 2020}

On this episode of ID the Future, host Andrew McDiarmid and physician and Discovery Institute fellow Dr. Geoffrey Simmons concludes their three-part conversation about Simmons’ new book Are We Here to Recreate Ourselves? The Convergence of Designs. Our own arrival is impossible to explain through evolution, he says, in view of the incredible complexity of our neurological system, and all that had to develop simultaneously with it. The origin of thinking and consciousness itself is hard to explain in evolutionary terms, he argues. Our drive to recreate ourselves leads to a question, though, one Simmons discusses late in the conversation: will we be able ourselves to create truly thinking humanoid robots? …

Dr. Geoffrey Simmons On Human Design — and Re-Creating It in Robots

_{Geoffrey Simmons
January 8, 2020}

On this episode of ID the Future, author and physician Geoffrey Simmons joins host Andrew McDiarmid in a wide-ranging discussion of his new book, Are We Here to Re-Create Ourselves: The Convergence of Designs. From the foresight needed in the design of eyes, to our stereoscopic and redundant hearing systems, to the mysteries of design in the nervous and circulatory systems, signs of engineered design are everywhere in the human body. And humans are mimicking some of those designs now through humanoid robots, which we’re making ever more like ourselves — in appearance, that is. Will robots ever experience empathy or other feelings, or develop a genuine sense of humor? Will robots have souls? Simmons offers his opinion on the matter, and sounds a cautionary note: as robots …

Geoffrey Simmons on Patterns of Design in Human Life

_{Geoffrey Simmons
December 23, 2019}

On this episode of ID the Future, physician Geoffrey Simmons speaks with host Andrew McDiarmid about his new book Are We Here to Recreate Ourselves? The Convergence of Design. There’s a pattern in our re-creating ourselves, Simmons says, even in the artifacts we create, but especially in human reproduction. He sees clues of design in in the processes of reproduction, in development, and in the many complex events in the lungs and vascular system that make childbirth possible. There’s even evidence of intentionality behind aging and death, says Simmons. In sum, Simmons argues, careful observations across many decades have shown that we never see such complex and foresight-rich processes created except by the working of mind or intelligence; it just doesn’t happen any other way. …