Stephen C Meyer - News

Signature in the Cell, A "Wise Defense of Intelligent Design

2010-08-19T17:21:52Z

Now that it's out in paperback, Stephen Meyer's book is getting more attention and a wider audience. Today Professor Anthony J. Sadar has a thoughtful review of Signature in the Cell in the Washington Times, where he writes:

In "The Blind Watchmaker," atheist Richard Dawkins proclaimed, "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." Now, with the paperback release of Stephen C. Meyer's "Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design," theists can rejoin with, "Meyer made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled theist." Indeed, in his book, Mr. Meyer begins the chorus by stating that "as a Christian theist, I find this implication of intelligent design 'intellectually satisfying.' " But, to suppose that "Signature in the Cell" is a book that argues for intelligent design (ID) from a religious or even metaphysical perspective is to suppose badly. For this book makes a strong case for ID as a rigorous scientific argument for the origin of life - at least as rigorous and scientific as any purely materialistic explanation such as neo-Darwinism.

]]> methodological equivalence of Darwinian evolution and intelligent design, and no wonder, for Prof. Sadar sees good pedagogy in teaching both sides:

On a practical note, this fall at Geneva College, I will be teaching a course on "ID and Evolution," using the most accessible information available that makes the case for both ID and evolution. For course "textbooks," I have selected "Signature in the Cell" for the ID perspective and Richard Dawkins' latest book, "The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution," to defend the evolution position. I expect the course will achieve what most if not all college courses hope to achieve: an opportunity for students to gain perspective on an important topic and use critical thinking skills to judiciously evaluate contemporary ideas.

Kudos to Prof. Sadar for exposing his college students to the full debate and letting them "gain perspective" and "use critical thinking skills." Prof. Sadar's class should be interesting; his review certainly is, and you can read the whole thing here.

Signature in the Cell: The First Year

2010-08-17T22:10:08Z

Over the course of a year, Stephen C. Meyer's Signature in the Cell has made a powerful impact for intelligent design, reaching a wide audience with its cutting-edge science. From making Amazon.com's best-seller list for science books in 2009 to being named one of Times Literary Supplement's Top Books of the Year, Signature in the Cell is a work that fittingly earned its author WORLD Magazine's "Daniel of the Year." Watch the video below for more.

What are the origins of the information found in DNA?

2010-08-12T15:38:33Z

In this new video, Dr. Stephen Meyer explains the historical scientific method and how it applies to the origin of the information that makes life possible. It's the question facing origin of life researchers: where does the information come from?

Dr. Meyer on Evidence 4 Faith

2010-07-30T19:30:10Z

Dr. Stephen Meyer was recently on the radio show Evidence 4 Faith discussing his book, Signature in the Cell. Listen here.

What is the key thing that needs to be explained in origin of life research?

2010-07-14T17:10:04Z

Dr. Stephen Meyer explains the importance of biological information in origin of life research, as discussed in his groundbreaking intelligent design book Signature in the Cell. Watch here in high resolution.

What do Signature in the Cell and iPod Nanos have in common?

2010-07-14T04:54:24Z

You could win one. Or the other. Or both. First, Anyluckyday.com is giving away five copies of Stephen Meyer's book today only, which you can check out here, where they have a video and more information. All you have to do is leave a comment for your chance to win! If you already have your copy of Signature in the Cell, tell your friends about their chance to get it for free. Second, if you want to win a brand new iPod Nano head on over to Signature in the Cell and subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Nota Bene, to be entered to win. If you're already a subscriber you can still enter there as well. Be sure to invite your friends and family to subscribe so they have a chance to win as well.

Is Intelligent Design Science?

2010-07-09T14:37:40Z

Dr. Stephen Meyer thinks so.

Can DNA Prove the Existence of an Intelligent Designer? An Interview with Stephen Meyer

2010-07-07T15:20:10Z

Biola Magazine this month features an insightful interview with Stephen Meyer about intelligent design and his book Signature in the Cell.

In the growing movement known as intelligent design, Stephen Meyer is an emerging figurehead. A young, Cambridge-educated philosopher of science, Meyer is director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute -- intelligent design's primary intellectual and scientific headquarters. He's also author of Signature in the Cell, a provocative new book that offers the first comprehensive DNA-based argument for intelligent design. On May 14, Meyer gave a lecture at an event hosted by Biola's Christian apologetics program in Chase Gymnasium, where he made his case that the origin of the information needed to create the first cell must have came from an intelligent designer. Biola Magazine sat down with Meyer while he was at Biola and asked him to elaborate on evolution, the scientific merit of the theory of intelligent design and the uncanny similarities between DNA and computer programming.

Continue reading . . . .

We Hold Some Truths To Be Self Evident

2010-07-04T15:01:02Z

When we celebrate our country's independence on July 4th, the day may resonate with many Americans more powerfully than in other recent years. The nation's political mood is increasingly, well, independent. Voters are fed up with incumbent politicians and reigning political parties. This accounts for the unlikely bestselling books that keep shooting up out of what might seem like nowhere--previously obscure biographies of the Founders that pose fundamental questions about the role of our government and what direction the nation is headed. In a welcome development, Americans want to refresh their acquaintance with the sources of our rights as citizens. Yet there is one source, more basic than any other, that so far has not received the attention it deserves. I refer to the idea that there is an intelligent creator who can be known by reason from nature, a key tenet underlying both the Declaration of Independence--and, curiously, the modern and controversial theory of intelligent design. The birth of our republic was announced in the Declaration through the pen of Thomas Jefferson. He and the other Founders based their vision on a belief in an intrinsic human dignity, bestowed by virtue of our having been made according to the design and in the image of a purposeful creator. As Jefferson wrote in the Declaration, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." If we had received our rights only from the government, then the government could justifiably take them away. Jefferson himself thought that there was scientific evidence for design in nature. In 1823, he insisted so in a letter to John Adams: "I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition." Contemplating everything from the heavenly bodies down to the creaturely bodies of men and animals, he argued: "It is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion." With such thoughts in mind, he wrote the Declaration, asserting the inalienable rights of human beings derived from "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." Is Jefferson's belief still credible in light of current science? The decades following Darwin's publication of Origin of Species saw the rise of "social" Darwinism and eugenics, which suggested that the Jeffersonian principle of intrinsic dignity had been overturned. Taken to heart, Darwin's view of man does undermine the vision of the Founders. As evolutionary biologist George Gaylord Simpson explained, Darwinism denies evidence of design and shows instead that man is the product of a "purposeless process that did not have him mind." Fortunately, discoveries in modern biology have challenged this perspective and vindicated Jefferson's thinking. Since 1953, when Watson and Crick elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule, biologists have increasingly come to recognize the importance of information to living cells. The structure of DNA allows it to store information in the form of a four-character digital code, similar to a computer code. As Bill Gates has noted, "DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we've ever created." No theory of undirected chemical evolution has explained the origin of the digital information in DNA needed to build the first living cell on earth. Yet we know from repeated experience--the basis of all scientific reasoning--that information invariably arises from minds rather than from material processes. Software programs come from programmers. Information--whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book, or encoded in radio signals--always comes from a designing intelligence. So the discovery of digital code in DNA points decisively back to an intelligent cause as the ultimate source of the information in living cells. The growing evidence of design in life has stunning and gratifying implications for our understanding of America's political history--and for our country's future. On the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the evidence for "Nature's God," and thus for the reality of our rights, is stronger than ever.

Stephen Meyer Describes Intelligent Design As Used in Signature In The Cell

2010-06-30T19:42:50Z

What a Difference a Year Makes: Signature in the Cell Now Available in Paperback

2010-06-23T21:52:07Z

Several years in the making, the book arrives just as the information age is coming to biology and scientists are delving deeper into the mystery of the origins of life. In Signature in the Cell Dr. Meyer lays out a radical new and comprehensive argument for intelligent design that readers will likely never have encountered before, and which materialist scientists cannot counter.

That was written in this space exactly one year ago today when Signature in the Cell: DNA and Evidence for Intelligent Design arrived in book stores and since then has been named a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year, an Amazon.com best-selling science book and began to change the shape of the debate over intelligent design. Now, it is available in paperback. Since it's publication some things have changed and some haven't. ]]> completely failed to rebut Meyer, and have been largely ineffective in persuading people that they have any substantive response to the issues that are raised in SITC. Like Darwin's Black Box, The Design Inference, and The Privileged Planet before it, SITC has advanced the case for intelligent design in ways that materialists and ID skeptics just can't answer. As we've pointed out before,

critics of intelligent design often try to dismiss the theory as not worth addressing, as a question already settled, even as being too boring to countenance. Then they spend an amazing amount of energy trying to refute it.

So, to defend the ideas in SITC, last month we produced the digital book Signature of Controversy which has already been downloaded 6,300 times. SOC is an anthology of essays responding to criticism of SITC by such noted writers as David Berlinski, Jay Richards, Richard Sternberg and others. A second, updated and expanded edition will be available later this year. Contrary to what you might think, the majority of responses to SITC have been positive. In December, World magazine named Stephen Meyer as their person of the year due in large part to the publication of SITC. Positive reviews have appeared in a wide variety of publications from The American Spectator to The Journal of the International Society of Philosophical Enquiry to the Midwest Book Review. And, more on the way in the next few months. Similarly, in the past year a number of prominent scientists and scholars have endorsed the book.

Dr. Philip S. Skell, National Academy of Sciences and Evan Pugh Professor at Pennsylvania State University, emeritus
Dr. Norman C. Nevin, OBE, BSc, MD, FFPH, FRCPath, FRCP (Edin), FRCP Emeritus Professor in Medical Genetics, Queen's University, Belfast
Dr. Scott Turner, Environmental and Forest Biology, State University of New York
Alastair Noble, Ph.D. chemistry, former BBC Education Officer and Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools for Science, Scotland
Dr. James Le Fanu, author of Why Us? How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves

Overall, Signature in the Cell has been a stunning success, not least because it has got all the Darwinists contorting themselves into knots trying to dismiss its evidence based arguments. Seeing them lose so much sleep over a book they claim doesn't matter is rich.

Colson's Breakpoint Touts Meyer on Synthetic LIfe

2010-06-21T22:56:35Z

Last week we highlighted Stephen Meyer's article More Than Matter and Energy which was the basis for a Breakpoint Commentary by Chuck Colson. LIsten in here.

Believing Life's 'Signature in the Cell' an Interview with Stephen Meyer

2010-06-18T19:08:27Z

Click play to watch Meyer's interview on the evidence for intelligent design, which aired Friday, June 18, on The 700 Club.

Stephen Meyer's New Essay on Craig Ventner's Claims To Have Created Life In The Lab

2010-06-14T19:18:02Z

Stephen Meyer has just published a new essay about Craig Ventner's recent claims to have created synthetic life. Not so quick, Meyer says.

A biologist in California has summoned headlines around the world, some distressed and some celebratory, by supposedly doing in reality what Dr. Frankenstein did in fiction: giving life to lifeless matter. The Vatican worries that, by swapping artificial DNA for the real thing in a simple bacterial cell, Dr. Craig Venter is "playing God." But most voices from the media welcome his success. Bioethicist Arthur Caplan applauds the end of the myth that life is "sacred, special, ineffable." According to Caplan, Venter has shown that life can be readily produced from its material parts, thus refuting "the argument that life requires a special force or power to exist." Others have called Venter's achievement "a complete victory for materialism," predicting that many atheists will cite it as evidence that life can arise without a divine creator. But are these assessments correct? Did Venter create life artificially? Did he show that life can arise without help from an external agent? In fact, he did neither. Not so fast...

Read the full piece here.

Stephen Meyer Reframes Christianity Today's Question on Intelligent Design

2010-06-11T21:56:49Z

In the May issue of Christianity Today, the magazine's Village Green section posed the following question to Stephen Meyer, as well as to theistic evolutionist Karl Giberson and young earth creationist Marcus Ross. How can the intelligent design movement gain academic credibility? Below is Meyer's response. You can download a PDF with all of the responses here

Asking what advocates of intelligent design must do to gain credibility in the academy is a bit like asking a man when he stopped beating his wife. Such a question makes a prejudicial assumption. When queried about his history of spousal abuse, an innocent man should say, "I don't concede the premise of your question." Similarly, I would suggest that behind the Village Green question lurk some false assumptions. Indeed, the question seems to presuppose three things: the scientific community is uniformly opposed to the theory of intelligent design; the theory needs majority support in the academy to be credible; and there is good reason--such as lack of supporting evidence--for hostility toward the theory within academia. First, the scientific community is not uniformly opposed to ID. My recent book on the subject received enthusiastic endorsements from many scientists not previously known as advocates of ID, such as chemist Philip Skell, a National Academy of Sciences member, and Norman Nevin, one of Britain's top geneticists. Further, many longstanding advocates of intelligent design are themselves science professors at mainstream universities and, therefore, already part of the academy. Second, as the recent scandal surrounding global warming suggests, the "consensus" of scientists can often be wrong. What matters is not consensus but evidence. And the evidence for ID is strong. In Signature in the Cell, for example, I show how the information that runs the show in cells points decisively to intelligent design. DNA stores instructions for life functions in the form of a four-character digital code. Based on our experience, we know that systems possessing such information invariably arise from minds, not material processes. We know that software comes from programmers. We know that information--whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book, or encoded in a radio signal--always comes from an intelligent source. So the discovery of a digital code in DNA provides compelling evidence of a prior designing intelligence. Third, those who reject ID within the scientific community do so not because they have a better explanation of the relevant evidence, but because they affirm a definition of science that requires them to reject explanations involving intelligence--whatever the evidence shows. Imagine an archaeologist confronted with the inscriptions on the Rosetta stone, yet forced by some arbitrary convention to ignore the evidence for intelligent activity in the information those inscriptions contain. That is similar to the response of many evolutionary biologists who reflexively reject the theory of intelligent design as unscientific by definition, despite the evidence of intelligent activity in the information encoded in DNA. Thus, to keep building a scientific research community, we ID advocates must expose the prejudicial rules of reasoning that preclude consideration of our theory, and keep explaining ID's strong foundation in evidence. We must also address our arguments to open-minded younger scientists and show how ID opens up many important research questions that Darwinian thought has long suppressed.