"Signature In the Cell" by Stephen C. Meyer

Above: "Signature In the Cell - Stephen C. Meyer - 508 Pages.

Specified information (as opposed to random, "junk," or "Shannon" information) can only come from a mind, says Meyer. And so it is, he says, for the most complex, specified, information sequences known to man: DNA

I completed reading this book today.

This book presents the case for intelligent design as the source of the origin of life...the first living cell...on earth. "Signature in the Cell" is not a religious tract. Meyer's argument for intelligent design (ID) is based on revolutionary discoveries in science and DNA. The book was named as one of the top books of 2009 by The Times Literary Supplement (London). "Signature in the Cell" has been reviewed favorably by many notable evolutionary biologists.

"Signature in the Cell" shows how all the current data points to a non-naturalistic origin of life. Meyer takes us through the history of origin of life research from before the discovery of DNA in the 1950's to the time of book publication, 2009.

DNA contains complex, systematically organized information. It hasn't been so long ago that scientists thought cells were fairly simple, but they are now discovering that within the most simple living cell resides an amazingly complex factory-like system. DNA is the information rich signal giver in the very complex cell structure .

The essential message of Meyer's book is this: the amount of information required to run the operation of each cell is staggering... so much so that the probability of even the simplest living cell and its DNA information center arising by chance is beyond the realm of possibility. The evidence indicates, rather, that there is a designer responsible for the creation of life on earth.

Meyer notes..."molecular biologists were discovering that living cells had been using something akin to machine code or software all along. To quote the information scientist Hubert Yokcey, 'The genetic code is constructed to confront and solve the problems of communication and recording by the same principles found... in modern communication and computer codes'... How did these digitally encoded and specifically sequenced instructions in DNA arise? And how did they arise within a channel for transmitting information?"

In early chapters, Meyer discusses chance. Chance was, for years before the information richness and complexity of DNA was appreciated, the universally accepted explanation on how life on earth first came about.

With the recently found knowledge of the incredible complexity of information rich DNA, chance is losing ground as a credible explanation for life's beginning.

Meyer explains how the probability is extremely remote - as in one in 10 to the fortieth power - that life/DNA arose by chance out of some primordial soup.

Imagine disaggregating the words of Melville's novel "Moby Dick" and throwing them into a barrel. How many times would you have to up-end and empty the barrel contents on the ground before the words came out according to the original novel? The chance/probability of a specified, functional DNA molecule arising randomly from "primordial soup" is infinitely less than it is for the full reconstitution of "Moby Dick."
If one gets nothing out of Meyer's book other than a fascinating tutorial on the complexity of purposeful, information rich DNA, probability and chance theory over time, the book is well worth the read.

In later chapters Meyer debunks current feeble attempts to keep orthodox chance and chance related hypotheses of life's origins viable. This wasn't so difficult to do as most evolutionary biologists today admit that there is as yet no solid explanation of how life on earth came about.

Meyer argues that the best explanation for life's origins, when one follows the science, is that an intelligence outside of the evolutionary process is responsible for the origination of the highly complex, specified, sequences of the information found in DNA.

Specified information (as opposed to random, "junk," or "Shannon" information) can only come from a mind, says Meyer. And so it is, he says, for the most complex, specified, information sequences known to man: DNA.

In later chapters, Meyer, who has a PhD in science philosophy from Cambridge University, discusses how opponents of intelligent design theory, despite the weakness of their own natural arguments for life's beginnings, have defined ID as being outside the area of legitimate scientific inquiry.

Meyer notes that many of ID's detractors cite creationism as the reason to exclude ID from scientific legitimacy. Creationists' linking of claims of design to the Christian Bible, say these detractors, renders intelligent design as illegitimate... and not science.

Meyer is a practicing Christian, but, he notes that the conclusions reached so far regarding how DNA came to be rest on legitimate scientific inquiry. ID, says Meyer, has nothing to say about the nature of, or identity of, the designer.

It is interesting how, today, there are many other areas of scientific inquiry, which, like ID, are currently suppressed due to their challenge of social science, cultural or scientific orthodoxy:

1. The Cambrian Explosion - There are no precursor fossils for the most extensive array of species ever noted in the history of life on earth. The Cambrian Explosion occurred over a period of roughly five million years, 500 million years ago. There have been no suitable explanations to describe how the Cambrian animals came from a common ancestor per Darwin's claim. Can we depend on Darwinian orthodoxy to be comprehensive as an explanation for life on earth? Still, any speculation about causes for the Cambrian Explosion that omits Darwin is off limits in the world of orthodox scientific inquiry.

2. Human Evolution - Social scientists have long claimed that the notion of "race" is a fiction. All humans have the same DNA, they say. Yet, human migration from Africa over the last thirty thousand years has resulted in at least three major racial groupings: Euro/Caucasian, Far Eastern, and African.

Recent studies on the human genome have shown that human evolution, over the last thirty thousand years, is recent, copious, and REGIONAL. That is to say, contrary to social science dogma, there are different races and there are different genetically programmed proclivities from one race to the other.... ie. IQ levels... susceptibility to socialization.... tendencies toward violence etc.

Many of the new discoveries about human evolution fall into taboo areas as determined by social science. Notwithstanding, despite the closed mindedness of current social science orthodoxy, can we continue to ignore and suppress scientific truth?

3. Climate Change - Scientific orthodoxy says man-made CO2 is the primary reason for the earth's warming atmosphere. Anthropogenic CO2 dogma stipulates that man's production of CO2 needs to be reduced to ward off climate warming conditions which will lead in the short term to life extinction.

Other inputs into complex climate study, like the sun's impact on climate, are off limits... taboo.... in the anthropogenic CO2 alarmist world. Notwithstanding, those who seriously study the sun, and the entirely predictable motions of the earth relative to the sun, are warning of the possibility of an imminent, decades-long slide into global cooling.

Stifling legitimate debate on climate, to exclude climate inputs such as the role of the sun, inhibits finding the truth...a denial of science.

4. Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) - Cultural orthodoxy says that GMO designed food is harmful. This has been scientifically disproven, not to mention that GMO discoveries have enabled significantly increased food production to feed a growing world population. Those who wish to ban GMO food deny science.

5. Killing off unwanted human offspring - Cultural orthodoxy allows for humans to kill off their unwanted offspring. Science, however, notes that a child in the womb, with a beating heart, is a fully formed human being. Those who wish to institutionalize legal killing of unwanted human offspring deny science.

There have been studies showing that at any given time over the last one hundred fifty years half of what we claim to know is false. In the very least, this history of knowledge uncertainty should cause us to have a degree of skepticism, if not humility, about what we think we know and an acknowledgment that there is much we don't know. We are not smart enough to suppress legitimate avenues of scientific inquiry because we are so sure of convenient cultural, social science, and "science" orthodoxies.

Despite it being outside the boundaries of so-called scientific orthodoxy, "Signature in the Cell" is a great book to read to advance the discussion on how life was formed. It is good to see the book's high level of acceptance - penetrating the walls of dogma - by a growing array of highly regarded scholars, notwithstanding efforts of the naysayers to suppress it.