Douglas Axe

Douglas Axe is the Rosa Endowed Chair of Molecular Biology at Biola University, the founding Director of Biologic Institute, the founding Editor of BIO-Complexity, and the author of Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed. After completing his PhD at Caltech, he held postdoctoral and research scientist positions at the University of Cambridge and the Cambridge Medical Research Council Centre. His research, which examines the functional and structural constraints on the evolution of proteins and protein systems, has been featured in many scientific journals, including the Journal of Molecular Biology, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, BIO-Complexity, and Nature, and in such books as Signature in the Cell and Darwin’s Doubt by Stephen Meyer and Life’s Solution by Simon Conway Morris.

Archives

Biologists: Cell is Factory Complex of Engineered Design

_{Douglas Axe
April 20, 2026}

You might find this hard to believe, but back in Charles Darwin’s day, the cell was thought of as little more than a piece of jelly. Thomas Henry Huxley called it a “simple, homogenous globule of undifferentiated protoplasm.” But today, thanks to discoveries in molecular biology, we’ve discovered the cell is something far more astonishing. And that begs a crucial question: if the cell is infinitely more than Darwin envisioned, can a Darwinian process really explain its origin, and how it came to produce the diversity we see in life? On today's ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid begins a two-part conversation with molecular biologist Dr. Douglas Axe and biochemist Dr. Michael Behe, two experts featured in the new movie The Story of Everything. Over two episodes they'll discuss their participation in the movie and unpack some of the insights they share in it. We're also sharing some exclusive clips from the movie!

Axe’s Not-So-Secret Guide to Making Cookies and Dragonflies

_{Douglas Axe
December 8, 2021}

This ID the Future brings in protein scientist Douglas Axe to discuss his contribution to a new book, The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith. Axe and host Casey Luskin discuss Axe’s thinking on the design intuition, the evidence that it’s triggered almost universally in small children when they observe things like dragonflies or fresh-baked cookies, and why he’s convinced that this intuition is a rational one rooted in our true sense of what sorts of things require know-how for their creation. For those who retort “Science!,” Axe has some of that to offer as well. As he tells Luskin, he led an experiment at a lab in Cambridge, England, on the abilities and limits of an enzyme to evolve. The research findings on this protein, beta-lactamase, were published in …

Can New Proteins Evolve?

_{Douglas Axe
October 8, 2021}

What enables a long chain of linked amino acids to perform highly specific molecular functions with machine-like precision?

Confronting Joshua Swamidass on Confrontation

_{Douglas Axe
July 22, 2021}

Swamidass got it wrong, and it’s perfectly appropriate for me to confront him on that. I wasn’t talking about any approach to human argumentation at all.

New Douglas Axe Intelligent Design Course: A Sneak Peek

_{Douglas Axe
April 21, 2021}

Today’s ID the Future offers a 20-minute sneak peek at a new online course: Douglas Axe Investigates Molecular Biology and Intelligent Design. In this podcast excerpt from the course, Dr. Axe explains why Darwinism’s idea of evolution through a series of small stepping stone mutations meets several serious problems, why the need for cleverness is inescapable for creating clever things, and how his published work in the Journal of Molecular Biology shows that the Darwinian mechanism is helpless to construct new functional protein folds, never mind whole new organisms. In the full course, he investigates proteins and how they work, the genetic code, gene recruitment, population genetics, natural selection, and much more. Along the way, he explains why natural selection cannot explain …

Protein Scientist Douglas Axe at the Dallas Area Science and Faith Conference

_{Douglas Axe
February 3, 2020}

On this episode of ID the Future, guest host Jonathan Witt sits down with molecular biologist Douglas Axe at the recent Dallas Science and Faith Conference. Axe, author of Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed, had his research on protein folds published in the Journal of Molecular Biology, work showing that random mutations are not up to the task of building fundamentally new protein folds from old, a finding that poses a major challenge to modern evolutionary theory. After all, if evolution can’t build something as basic as a new protein fold, how could it build whole new organs and body plans in the history of life? But Witt presents Axe with an objection: Axe couldn’t possibly have tested more than the tiniest fraction of a fraction of all the …

Of Statues and Sponges — Progress in My Conversation with a Theistic Evolutionist

_{Douglas Axe
February 11, 2019}

Only by sheer coincidence would blind factors produce such remarkable things, and coincidence is never that lucky.

Keeping the Debate Over Undeniable on Track

_{Douglas Axe
January 14, 2019}

Hans Vodder is a friend with whom I’ve been enjoying an unfolding discussion for well over a year.

Why the Conclusion that Life Is Designed Really Is Inescapable

_{Douglas Axe
December 12, 2018}

For theists to eschew the claim that life is designed is puzzling, because nothing seems to force them to adopt that counterintuitive stance.

Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Intelligent Design?

_{Douglas Axe
October 3, 2018}

The problem these efforts face in the lab is exactly the problem faced by Darwin’s evolutionary mechanism in the wild.

Evolution by Blind Guidance Is Really Just Unguided Evolution

_{Douglas Axe
September 21, 2018}

As a theistic evolutionist, Hans Vodder thinks God may well have used Darwinian evolution to create the full diversity of life.

Two Views of Evolution, and Why They Don’t Mix

_{Douglas Axe
June 22, 2018}

If he chose to, could God use a sandstorm to turn a block of marble into a representation of the human form that would put Michelangelo’s David to shame?

Undeniable Intuitions and Unbelievable Coincidences

_{Douglas Axe
May 2, 2018}

Any appeal to accidental processes to accomplish an unbelievable coincidence is really just an appeal to unbelievable coincidence.

Why Certainty Doesn’t Always Require Accuracy — A $5 Lesson in Probability

_{Douglas Axe
March 6, 2018}

As our dialogue continues, I think I’m starting to understand your position more clearly.

Losing the Forest by Fixating on the Trees — A Response to Venema’s Critique of Undeniable

_{Douglas Axe
February 6, 2018}

I was asked recently to take part in an online symposium. The journal Sapientia, published by the Carl F.H. Henry Center, invited four theistic evolutionists to review my book.

The Calculation-Free Design Intuition and the Calculations That Validate It

_{Douglas Axe
December 18, 2017}

From childhood, we all naturally ascribe things like spiders and hummingbirds to a “God-like designer.” But are we right to do this?

Challenge to a Critic of the Design Intuition: How Do You Explain Your Own Use of It?

_{Douglas Axe
November 17, 2017}

Previously, I questioned a theistic evolutionist's claim that we can’t rule out chance as an explanation for something unless the probability of chance working can be calculated accurately.

You Don’t Need a Calculator to Know Some Things Just Can’t Happen

_{Douglas Axe
October 2, 2017}

This is the seventh part of my ongoing conversation about Undeniable with theistic evolutionist Hans Vodder.

The Unmistakable Imprint of Purpose — Response to a Theistic Evolutionist

_{Douglas Axe
September 15, 2017}

We instantly spot the fruits of fertile imaginations by spotting their characteristic functional coherence. Dragonflies. Smartphones. Nuclear power plants.

A “Natural” Adjustable Wrench? More Conversations with a Theistic Evolutionist

_{Douglas Axe
July 21, 2017}

Somehow, without any calculation at all, we’re all certain that geological processes can’t make a wrench.