Product Description

One hundred fifty years ago, Charles Darwin revolutionized biology, but did he refute intelligent design (ID)? In Signature in the Cell, Stephen Meyer argues that he did not.

Much confusion surrounds the theory of intelligent design. Frequently misrepresented by the media, politicians, and local school boards, intelligent design can be defended on purely scientific grounds in accordance with the same rigorous methods that apply to every proposed origin-of-life theory.

Signature in the Cell is the first book to make a comprehensive case for intelligent design based upon DNA. Meyer embarks on an odyssey of discovery as he investigates current evolutionary theories and the evidence that ultimately led him to affirm intelligent design. Clearly defining what ID is and is not, Meyer shows that the argument for intelligent design is not based on ignorance or "giving up on science," but instead upon our growing scientific knowledge of the information stored in the cell.

A leading proponent of intelligent design in the scientific community, Meyer presents a compelling case that will generate heated debate, command attention, and find new adherents from leading scientists around the world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #660 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-23
• Released on: 2009-06-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 624 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780061472787
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"Signature in the Cell is a defining work in the discussion of life's origins . . . the powerful case Meyer presents cannot be ignored in any honest debate. . . [T]his book is an engaging, eye-opening, and often eye-popping read" (American Spectator )

From the Back Cover
Meyer tells the story of the successive attempts to solve this mystery of DNA and argues that fundamental objections now exist to the adequacy of all purely naturalistic or materialistic theories. The book then proposes a radical alternative based upon developments in molecular biology and the information sciences: it proposes the design hypothesis as the best explanation for the origin of the information necessary to produce the first life. SIGNATURE IN THE CELL will not merely provide a critique of evolutionary theories. It also shows that, based on our uniform and repeated experience-the basis of all scientific reasoning about the past-there is a strong positive case for intelligent design. From our experience we know that intelligence alone produces large amounts of information. Thus, the book shows that the argument for intelligent design from DNA is not based on ignorance or a desire to “give up on science,” but instead upon just the opposite: our growing scientific knowledge of the inner workings of the cell and our experience-based knowledge of the cause-and-effect structure of the world. For just this reason the argument for design can be formulated as a rigorous and positive scientific argument-specifically one called “an inference to the best explanation.” The book shows, ironically, that the argument for intelligent design from DNA is based on the same method of scientific reasoning that Darwin himself used.

About the Author

Dr. Stephen C. Meyer received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in the philosophy of science. A former geophysicist and college professor, he now directs the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle. In 2004, Meyer ignited a firestorm of media and scientific controversy when a biology journal at the Smithsonian Institution published his peer-reviewed scientific article advancing intelligent design. Meyer has been featured on national television and radio programs, including The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, CBS's Sunday Morning, NBC's Nightly News, ABC's World News, Good Morning America, Nightline, FOX News Live, and the Tavis Smiley show on PBS. He has also been featured in two New York Times front-page stories and has garnered attention in other top-national media.

Customer Reviews

More Wooden Nickels Minted By Creation Science
Let's engage in a thought experiment. Imagine that the following are all true: (1) you're an uncompromising, through-and-through atheist; (2) professionally, you're a scientific heavyweight specializing in a highly technical area of biology (say, molecular genetics); (3) you're 100% up-to-date and conversant with state-of-the-art evolutionary theory; (4) you're a thoroughgoing skeptic about the Theory of Evolution, convinced that it's dead wrong for techical reasons that you're unquestionably qualified to exposit; (5) you're powerfully inclined to write a book providing a cogent negative critique of evolutionary biology. Got the picture?

To what audience, then, will your book be addressed? The general public? Remember no. (2) above. As a professional with a theoretical axe to grind about the received views of your colleagues, why would you address your compunctions about those views mainly to such out-of-the-loop persons as your dry cleaner or a bagger at the local supermarket? Back to nos. (1) and (4) above: as an atheist, you have absolutely NO hidden ideological aggendum; you're merely convinced, for exclusively scientific reasons, that the Theory of Evolution is just plain wrong.

Since you're not an utter numbskull, you take out a moment for some agonizing reappraisal. Once you've thoroughly mulled over the matter, it dawns on you that the natural audience for your book is the community of other professional biologists. You're a PRO, right? Now remember no. (4) above: your scruples against the Theory of Evolution devolve from a deep understanding of the subject's most intricate technicalities. So, having unshaken confidence in your anti-evolution stance, why wouldn't you write as compelling a book as possible to persuade THE OTHER PROFESSIONALS IN YOUR FIELD that they're gravely mistaken about the prevailing theory? Given stipulations (1) - (5) above, it's highly unlikely that you wouldn't. The upshot: you'd almost certainly write a TECHNICAL book addressed to an audience of PROFESSIONAL BIOLOGISTS; and such a book will be 'way over the heads of lay readers.

Oh, yes, and finally, because you're an unflinching atheist, you won't argue from the falsity of evolutionary theory to any conclusions about the involvement of supernatural agency in the natural world. You're a PRO, right? So your book'll be all business: technical science for technical scientists---not a word about "intelligent design," the Biblical account of creation, God, werewolves, Sarah Palin, or anything else of the kind. This completes our thought experiment.

And what have we learned? Presumably, that an ATHEISTIC professional scientist will have no motivation to lard up a technical critique of evolutionary biology with anything from which religious fundamentalists can directly draw comfort. Because the falsity of evolutionary theory neither RULES OUT nor LOGICALLY ENTAILS the reality of divine creation, an atheist is very, very unlikely to inject the subject of divine creation into a critical appraisal of the theory's conceptual and evidential foundation. Moral of the story: DON'T EXPECT TO FIND ANY REFERENCES TO "INTELLIGENT DESIGN", SUPERNATURAL AGENCY, OR THE BIBLE IN A GENUINELY SCIENTIFIC TECHNICAL CRITIQUE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY.

Corollary to the above moral: Any critique of evolutionary theory which draws favorable conclusions about "intelligent design", etc. has been written by a theist for an audience of scientific laymen.

"For crying out loud!" you screech, features twitching insanely as you bite large chunks out of your thighs in a frenzy of impatience. "Why couldn't the guy have just SAID so in the first place?"

A fair question. Answer: the above parable better enables unbiased parties to savor the rich, heady absurdity of protests by True Believers against the incontrovertibly sound and ought-to-be-thunderously-obvious point that anti-evolution books advocating for divine creation aren't on the level scientifically. Paradigm case: Stephen C. Meyer's SIGNATURE IN THE CELL: DNA EVIDENCE FOR INTELLIGENT DESIGN, p. 4 of which rolls out the following bald-faced lie: "Yet I knew that the modern theory of intelligent design was not developed as a legal strategy, less still as one to abet creationism."

Numerous books and articles expose in gory detail the conspiracy of religious fundamentalists to use the so-called "Intelligent Design Hypothesis" as a "wedge" to replace orthodox science in the public school curriculum with lessons taken straight out of the Biblical Book of Genesis. Take a look at Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross, CREATIONISM'S TROJAN HORSE: THE WEDGE OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN (Oxford University Press, 2007).

The conspiracy's sordid history is summarized briefly in Robert T. Pennock, "Science and Religion", THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY, David L. Hull and Michael Ruse, Editors (Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 414 - 415: 'In 1987, the Supreme Court ruled in EDWARDS v. AGUILLARD that creation science was not science but was disguised religion.... Quickly adapting to this loss, creationists changed their terminology. ...[M]anuscripts...dropped the term "creation science" in 1987 immediately after the EDWARDS decision and replaced it with the term "intelligent design". ...The intelligent design movement is most characterized by what it called "the Wedge", a strategy devised by Phillip Johnson, a law professor.... The Wedge was also a metaphor they used to speak of how they would split apart the materialist, naturalist worldview of science so they could replace it with their theistic science. When lobbying for their view to be taught in the public schools, they continued the old creation science claim that ID [intelligent design] was based entirely in science and was not religious.' Sound like anybody we know?

Meyer's SIGNATURE IN THE CELL is kissing-cousins to Fazale Rana's THE CELL'S DESIGN: HOW CHEMISTRY REVEALS THE CREATOR'S ARTISTRY (Baker Books, 2007). Both volumes adopt a forensic approach straight out of the Phillip E. Johnson playbook. And both books illustrate how the Intelligent Design Hypothesis is nothing more than the age-old Argument From Design swathed in pseudo-scientific gobbledygook. Stripped of its phony-baloney, quasi-scientific packaging, the Argument From Design boils down to a simple-minded "Gee, whiz!" maneuver.


ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN (AFD)

Premise: Wow! Just look at a living cell's complexity, at the concinnity of its structure. Surely this CAN'T be the result of random processes or blind forces of nature.

Therefore,

Conclusion: It's the work of an intelligent Creator.


The AFD is Creation Science's only AFFIRMATIVE argument, and it doesn't take an expert logician to appreciate that right from the get-go its premise begs the question against the possibility that life originated without a creator's deliberate agency.

No matter how strenuously Meyer protests to the contrary, his SIGNATURE IN THE CELL is patently one more volume of Creationist crappola. NONE of these books offers anything beyond the AFD as a positive basis for believing in divine creation. Most of the text, in every instance, is devoted to discrediting ANYTHING in science that contradicts Scripture. When you get right down to it, the great bulk of what passes for Creation Science is really Creation ANTI-Science.

Would the possession of an impressive curriculum vitae make Stephen C. Meyer a credible spokesman for Creationism? 'Fraid not: there IS no such thing.

Remember: no matter WHAT credentials he or she might present, a Creation Scientist is no more a REAL scientist than a plastic Jesus is the real Jesus.

Unintelligent Creationist Rubbish
For "intelligent design" read "creationist myths". Evolution is a fact. This is just fundamentalist christian propaganda in a lab coat and not science at all.

Where's the science
This is typical creationist tripe. In fact, the exact same arguments were used by Behe almost 15 years ago. Anyone who understands science knows why this book is simply not science. There are no predictions, there are no experiments.

Popular books are all very well... the one thing that I cannot abide is a religious organization (Discovery Institute) promoting the destruction of Amazon's rating system by sending e-mail requesting positive reviews of a book. In other words, the author and fellow IDers don't believe the book can stand on its own merits and is requesting help.

Someone, anyone, point out one (1) experiment done in the book that supports intelligent design and describe in detail why that evidence supports intelligent design and why it does not support evolution (the real theory, not the strawman that the Discovery Institute claims is evolution).