In this engaging narrative ("Signature in the Cell - DNA and the Evidence of Intelligent Design"), Stephen Meyer demonstrates what I as a chemist have long suspected: undirected chemical processes cannot produce the exquisite complexity of the living cell. Meyer also shows something else: there is compelling positive evidence for intelligent design in the digital code stored in the cell’s DNA. A decisive case based upon breathtaking and cutting-edge science.
— Dr. Philip S. Skell, National Academy of Sciences and Evan Pugh Professor at Pennsylvania State University, emeritus
New discoveries are revealing the increased superabundance in complexity of life at its basic level. It seems that the living cell more and more can be compared with the most advanced supercomputers, and as such, by analogy, it compels a reasonable consideration that maybe, just maybe, at some time in the very distant past, some thought was given to life's origin. — Anthony J. Sadar - The Washington Times
Newsweek, July 20, 1998, p. 48. Physicists have found signs that the cosmos is custom made for life and consciousness. It turns out that if the constants of nature—unchanging numbers like the strength of gravity, the charge of the electron and the mass of a proton—were the tiniest bit different, then atoms would not hold together, stars would not burn and life would never have made an appearance.”
“Molecular machines display a key signature or hallmark of design”
— Scott A. Minnich (Associate professor of microbiology at the University of Idaho)DNA And The Evidence For Intelligent design
In Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, Director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, shows that the digital code embedded in DNA points to a designing intelligence and helps unravel a mystery that Charles Darwin did not address: how did life begin? Meyer tells the story of the successive attempts to explain the origin of life and develops a case for intelligent design (ID) based on new evidence using the same scientific method that Darwin himself pioneered.
Putting his Ph.D. in Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University to work, Meyer explores and dissects current evolutionary theories of life to demonstrate that there is no existing naturalistic explanation sufficient to explain the molecular information found in the cell. Meyer proposes that intelligent design is a superior explanation for this information. However, Meyer shows that ID is not a mere negative argument against evolution as he explains the positive rationale for inferring intelligent design:
- “Our uniform experience affirms that specified information-whether inscribed hieroglyphics, written in a book, encoded in a radio signal, or produced in a simulation experiment-always arises from an intelligent source, from a mind and not a strictly material process.” (pg. 347)
- Regardless of one’s views on ID, Signature in the Cell (about the book) can be used as a tool for all readers to understand the logic of the design argument, which ultimately led Meyer to affirm the theory of intelligent design as the best explanation of digital information in DNA.
- Read Reviews Signature In The Cell & what many other scientists are saying.
Design Or Not Design?
An Example of Michael Behe's (professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University) "irreducible complexity" is the bacteria flagellum. With over 40 essential parts, the flagellum is a rotary motor used to propel a bacteria in liquid. Spinning up to 17,000 rpms, the motor is acid driven, liquid cooled and self-replicating.
In his landmark book, "Darwin's Black Box", Michael Behe introduced the notion of irreducible complexity as a challenge to neo-Darwinian theory:
"By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. " [page 39]
Why is irreducible complexity a challenge to Darwinian theory? In the "Origins of Species" Charles Darwin wrote: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." [Sixth Edition, New York University Press, page 154]
Biochemist Michael J. Behe sets forth a central concept of the contemporary design argument, the notion of “irreducible complexity.” Behe notes that living cells contain circuits, systems and machines that display complex, interdependent, and coordinated functions.
Such intricacy, Behe argues, defies the causal power of natural selection acting on random variation. Yet he notes that irreducible complexity is a feature of systems that are known to be designed by intelligent agents.
He thus concludes that intelligent design provides a better explanation for the presence of irreducible complexity in the molecular machines of the cell.
Discovery Institute
More subject articles
“Intelligent design or engineering played a role in the origin of the system”
Scott A. Minnich and Stephen C. Meyer Department of Microbiology, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID and Center for Science and Culture, Discovery Institute, Seattle, WA
The bacterial flagellum represents one of the best understood molecular machines. Comprised of 40 parts that self-assemble into a true rotary engine, the biochemistry and genetics of these systems has revealed an unanticipated complexity.
An essential component
to assembly is the subset of parts that function as a protein secretory pump to ensure and
discriminate that the correct number of protein subunits and their order of secretion is
precisely regulated during assembly.
Molecular machines display a key signature or hallmark of design, namely, irreducible complexity. In all irreducibly complex systems in which the cause of the system is known by experience or observation, intelligent design or engineering played a role in the origin of the system.
In light of this new information, some scientists have questioned whether the mechanism of mutation, natural selection, and time are sufficient to account for the origin of such machines. In any other context we would immediately recognize such systems as the product of very intelligent engineering.
We know that intelligent designers can and do produce irreducibly complex systems. We find such systems within living organisms. We have good reason to think that these systems defy the creative capacity of the selection/mutation
mechanism.
- Exquisite Complexity
- Intelligently Engineered
- Precisely Regulated
“Evidence for design runs deep throughout the cosmos, from physics to cosmology to DNA and biochemistry”
— Stephen C. Meyer, Philosopher of Science Ph.D., Cambridge Universitysitemap
