Signature in the Cell: Exploring the Evidence for Intelligent Design in DNA

AmazonUserFromCanada123: The podacsts and talks are so enlightening, I just had to buy the book. This is the science philosopher I have been looking for all my life. Finally, someone who can explain in a logical and well thought out and well-researched manner, the science behind intelligent design. As a computer programmer, I immediately connected my writing computer code to the DNA which is genetic code but is vastly superior and far more complicated than any man-made computer code. As a young computer coder, I kept thinking that I'm looking into the mind of God when I saw the genetic code.

Canada on Sep 30, 2023

Amir Suhail Wani: This is an interesting, informative and invigorating book, culling facts from different disciplines of human knowledge. You may disagree with the overall argument and the import of the book, but you are surely going to learn a whole lot of things from it.

India on Sep 27, 2023

Simon Packer: This book has quite wrongly been dismissed and ridiculed by many people who have seemingly not bothered to engage with it in any depth at all. Such is the power of orthodoxy, blind conformity and academic authority. Or rather, perhaps, authoritarianism in academia. It would be ironic if science succumbs to something like fascism. It is not hard to see why some of the decisions over the ID movement have been made, particularly the Dover trail, but ironically they are the result of superficial engagement with truth-seeking. Space for free thought is the casualty.
Stephen Meyer gives a decent but not exhaustive run through of the history of the scientific method, and the cellular biochemistry relating to DNA expression. He also expounds digital data, information capacity and the tricky bit, detecting and highlighting the specified information content symptomatic of a conscious intelligent agent. He successfully turns a well known Richard Dawkins analogy on its head by showing, amongst other things, that minimal complexity is indeed a valid and relevant argument here. Actually with unguided and unplanned takes on evolutionary biology I'd say it can only be encroached on by...

United Kingdom on Sep 23, 2018

Nelson C: Fantastic book, could not recommend highly enough!

In 2005, the famous Dover trial took place. It examined the scientific validity of Intelligent Design and found it wanting. Numerous detractors of the theory sought to show why ID did not meet the requirements of a proper scientific theory. The result being that Judge John E Jones III ruled: "ID is not Science". Besides the patent absurdity of a judge - with no scientific or philosophical background - ruling on such a matter which is clearly beyond the scope of his authority, this was still seen as a win for the Scientific Establishment. But is that still so today?

Since that time, the ID think tank known as the Discovery Institute has thrived amidst the vicious criticism it has received. They have also taken to responding to the critics and their claims that ID is not science, having done so in numerous articles and books published by their various supporters. One prominent defender of ID is Dr Stephen C Meyer, a Philosopher of Science who attained his Ph.D. at Cambridge University . He wrote in his 2009 book 'Signature in the Cell': "Historians and Philosopher's of Science... do not agree about how to define...

Canada on Sep 08, 2016

Hansston: I read “Signature in the Cell” by Stephen Meyer. What a fantastic journey through his mind as he shepherded the idea of making “intelligent design” an acceptable explanation for the origin of life in the scientific community. (This was the man who they talked about taking away his doctorate because he didn’t really believe the answers he had to put on tests in order to pass). It was this article that I read about a dean of philosophy, Thomas Nagel, who had been convinced to give up his Darwinian faith after reading Stephen’s book that got me to pick it up and read it.

The world has always been viewed through history by leading scientists and philosophers concluding “that behind the exquisite structures of the living world was a designing intelligence”. This all changed with Darwin. Natural selection and mutations would now become the explanations of how we came to be. The discovery of DNA by Watson and Crick would present a dilemma to the scientific world: what is the origin of the biological information in DNA?

Meyer gives us a history of evolutionist attempts to explain the origin of life. One section entitled “Oparin to the Rescue” tells of us...

United States on Dec 20, 2013

Tony Garland: Having spent most of my career working in applied science (electrical engineering, software engineering), it was the recognition of control-systems in nature (e.g., the flight of the hummingbird, dragonfly, and butterfly) and the design required to make them viable which, in part, led me to eventually reject the Darwinism in which I was inculcated from my youth and to seek a more viable explanation for our origin. This, in turn, led to a reexamination of the Bible - which I had thoroughly rejected in my earlier years - and my eventual arrival as a convinced creationist and born-again Christian at the age of 34.

Since the question of origins figured so importantly in my unexpected conversion, upon initially becoming a Christian I had a fairly extensive library on the related subjects. However, as I grew in my time as a Christian, I came to understand my primary calling to be that of understanding and teaching the Bible itself. Thus, over time, my focus shifted away from science/apologetics and increasingly toward the Scriptures.

Yet, over the years, I have maintained a healthy interest in the subject of origins and apologetic evidence that the world around us reveals...

United States on Oct 24, 2010

Lloyd To: The author (following Darwin) describes his book as "one long argument". And it is long - the main body of the text occupies over 500 pages - but the chapters are well sewn together to maintain continuity of the argument.

After an interesting and informative preamble of many pages, the main argument focuses on the discovery of the double helix as the repository of biological information, and the highly complex but tightly coordinated system involved in mapping each nucleotide triplet in a gene to an amino acid in the corresponding protein. This is the "Signature" of the title.

The author describes the many theoretical models that have been devised to explain the origin of this, based variously on chance, necessity, or a combination of both. He exposes fatal weaknesses in all of them. Attention is drawn to an important principle that is ignored by those who propose models based on necessity: information production is stifled by law-governed processes. Logically, contigency is a prerequisite for producing information-rich systems.

Some blithely assert that since highly improbable events occur all the time, life could have arisen by chance. But probability...

United Kingdom on Apr 13, 2010