Eric Hedin on the Intelligent Design of Sleep
Eric Hedin on the Intelligent Design of Sleep | ID the Future
Eric HedinWe’re asleep an average of about 26 years of our life! Most people have a sense that sleep is important, but many of us aren’t sure exactly why. Why is sleep so crucial to survival? And how did the processes of sleep emerge in living things? Could a gradual Darwinian process be responsible, or are the systems involved another instance of intelligent design? On this episode, host Andrew McDiarmid begins a conversation with Dr. Eric Hedin about the origin and intelligent design of sleep.
In Part 1, Dr. Hedin suggests that the evolutionary mindset operates as a major obstacle to the scientific understanding of sleep. From an evolutionary point of view, sleep is risky for the fitness of organisms. “Survival of the unconscious…the most unconscious person wins…that just doesn’t seem to fit at all with an evolutionary survival of the fittest paradigm,” says Hedin. In his review of the science literature on sleep, Hedin found that even Darwinist researchers admit that there has to be a really good reason for sleep for it to have been selected through an evolutionary process.
Dr. Hedin also unpacks what’s going on when we sleep. Though it’s simple to fall asleep and wake up, there’s a complicated set of processes involved that exhibit complex engineering design patterns and irreducible complexity, both key hallmarks of intelligently designed systems.
This is Part 1 of a two-part interview. Look for Part 2 next!
Dig Deeper
Read the articles by Dr. Hedin that inspired this interview:
Sleep: Designed For Our Good
https://evolutionnews.org/2023/12/sleep-designed-for-our-good/
Sleeping and Waking: A Designer’s Gift
https://evolutionnews.org/2023/12/sleeping-and-waking-a-designers-gift/
Eric Hedin
FELLOW, CENTER FOR SCIENCE AND CULTURE
Eric Hedin earned his doctorate in physics from the University of Washington and conducted post-doctoral research at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden in experimental plasma physics. He has taught physics and astronomy at Taylor University and Ball State University (BSU) in Indiana, and at Biola University in Southern California. He served as professor of physics at Biola University in California, and chaired the department of chemistry, physics, and engineering at Biola from 2019-2021. Since the fall of 2021, Dr. Hedin has taught physics part-time with Indiana Wesleyan University and speaks regularly at universities around the country with God’s Not Dead Events, led by Dr. Rice Broocks. Dr. Hedin is also an emeritus professor of physics and astronomy at Ball State University in Indiana.
