DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design
Signature in the Cell is a defining work in the discussion of life’s origins and the question of whether life is a product of unthinking matter or of an intelligent mind. For those who disagree with ID, the powerful case Meyer presents cannot be ignored in any honest debate. For those who may be sympathetic to ID, on the fence, or merely curious, this book is an engaging, eye-opening, and often eye-popping read” — American Spectator
Named one of the top books of 2009 by the Times Literary Supplement (London), this controversial and compelling book from Dr. Stephen C. Meyer presents a convincing new case for intelligent design (ID), based on revolutionary discoveries in science and DNA. Along the way, Meyer argues that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution as expounded in The Origin of Species did not, in fact, refute ID. If you enjoyed Francis Collins’s The Language of God, you’ll find much to ponder—about evolution, DNA, and intelligent design—in Signature in the Cell.
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1 DNA, Darwin, and the Appearance of Design
Chapter 2 The Evolution of a Mystery and Why It Matters
Chapter 3 The Double Helix
Chapter 4 Signature in the Cell
Chapter 5 The Molecular Labyrinth
Chapter 6 The Origin of Science and the Possibility of Design
Chapter 7 Of Clues to Causes
Chapter 8 Chance Elimination and Pattern Recognition
Chapter 9 Ends and Odds
Chapter 10 Beyond the Reach of Chance
Chapter 11 Self-Organization and Biochemical Predestination
Chapter 12 Thinking Outside the Bonds
Chapter 13 Chance and Necessity, or the Cat in the Hat Comes Back
Chapter 14 The RNA World
Chapter 15 The Best Explanation
Chapter 16 Another Road to Rome
Chapter 17 But Does It Explain?
Chapter 18 But Is It Science?
Chapter 19 Sauce for the Goose
Chapter 20 Why It Matters
Praises
“Meyer demolishes the materialist superstition at the core of evolutionary biology by exposing its Achilles’ heel: its utter blindness to the origins of information. With the recognition that cells function as fast as supercomputers and as fruitfully as so many factories, the case for a mindless cosmos collapses. His refutation of Richard Dawkins will have all the dogs barking and the angels singing.”
—George Gilder, author of Wealth and Poverty and Telecosm “A ‘must read’ for all serious students of the origin-of-life debate. Not only is it a comprehensive defense of the theory of intelligent design, it is a lucid and rigorous exposition of the various dimensions of the scientific method. Students of chemistry and biology at all levels—high school, undergraduate, or postgraduate—will find much to challenge their thinking in this book.”
—Alastair Noble, Ph.D., chemistry, former BBC education officer and Her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools for Science, Scotland
“The origin of life remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of modern science. Looking beyond the biochemistry of the problem and focusing instead on the origin and information content of the ‘code of life,’ Meyer has written an eminently readable and engaging account of the quest to solve this mystery. I recommend this book to laypeople and accomplished professionals alike.”
—Edward Peltzer, Ph.D., ocean chemistry, from Scripps Institution of Oceanography
“How does an intelligent person become a proponent of intelligent design? Anyone who stereotypes IDers as antiscientific ideologues or fundamentalists should read Dr. Meyer’s compelling intellectual memoir.”
—Dr. Marvin Olasky, provost, The King’s College, New York City, and editor-in-chief, World
“In this engaging narrative, 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 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, emeritus, at Pennsylvania State University
“In Signature in the Cell, Stephen C. Meyer gives us a fascinating exploration of the case for intelligent design theory, woven skillfully around a compelling account of Meyer’s own journey. Along the way, Meyer effectively dispels the most pernicious caricatures: that intelligent design is simply warmed-over creationism, the province of deluded fools and morons, or a dangerous political conspiracy. Whether you believe intelligent design is true or false, Signature in the Cell is a must-read book.”
—Dr. Scott Turner, professor of environmental and forest biology, State University of New York, and author of The Tinkerer’s Accomplice: How Design Emerges from Life Itself
“Signature in the Cell is at once a philosophical history of how information has come to be central to cutting-edge research in biology today and one man’s intellectual journey to the conclusion that intelligent design provides the best explanation for that fact. In his own modest and accessible way, Meyer has provided no less than a blueprint for twenty-first-century biological science—one that decisively shifts the discipline’s center of gravity from nineteenth-century Darwinian preoccupations with fossils and field studies to the computerized, lab-based molecular genetics that underwrites the increasingly technological turn in the life sciences. After this book, readers will wonder whether anything more than sentimentality lies behind the continued association of Darwin’s name with ‘modern biology.’”
—Dr. Steve Fuller, professor of sociology of science, University of Warwick, and author of Dissent from Descent
“The astonishing complexities of DNA have raised questions which the ruling scientific orthodoxy cannot begin to answer. As one of the scientists arguing for ‘intelligent design’ as the crucial missing link in our understanding of how life came to be, Steve Meyer guides us lucidly through that labyrinth of questions opened by discoveries in molecular biology on the frontier of scientific knowledge.”
—Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph
