Signature in the Cell

Last updated
Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design
Signature in the Cell.JPG
Cover of the first edition
Author Stephen C. Meyer
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Subject Intelligent design
Publisher HarperOne
Publication date
June 23, 2009
Media typePrint (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages624
ISBN 0061472786
Preceded by Darwinism, Design and Public Education  

Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design is a 2009 book about intelligent design by philosopher and intelligent design advocate Stephen C. Meyer. The book was well received by some within the conservative, intelligent design and evangelical communities, but several other reviewers were critical and wrote that Meyer's claims are incorrect.

Contents

Summary

According to Meyer, historical sciences seek to establish past causes of events using three criteria: (1) that a proposed cause was present, (2) that independent evidence establishes that the proposed cause can indeed produce that event, and (3) that there is an absence of evidence of other possible causes. In his view, the first form of life would have been a functioning, self-replicating, and protein-synthesizing system of DNA and proteins, and as such an information-rich system. Meyer believes that chemical evolution, chance, and chemical necessity have not been proven capable of producing information-rich systems, and that intelligent design is therefore the best explanation for the emergence of life on this planet. He argues that definitions of science that would preclude intelligent design from being a science also preclude many other fields, already established as science, from being science. Meyer believes the designing mind is the God described by the Christian religion. He acknowledges that this may affect the motivations behind his theory. [1]

Reception

The book has been well received by some within the conservative, intelligent design and evangelical communities. [2] [3] [4] [5] It was not reviewed by scientific journals or popular science magazines. [6]

Philosopher Thomas Nagel submitted the book to the "2009 Books of the Year" supplement for The Times . [7]

Stephen Fletcher, chemist at Loughborough University, responded in The Times Literary Supplement that Nagel was "promot[ing] the book to the rest of us using statements that are factually incorrect." [8] Fletcher explained that, "Natural selection is in fact a chemical process as well as a biological process, and it was operating for about half a billion years before the earliest cellular life forms appear in the fossil record." [8] In another publication, Fletcher wrote that "I am afraid that reality has overtaken Meyer’s book and its flawed reasoning" in pointing out scientific problems with Meyer's work by citing how RNA "survived and evolved into our own human protein-making factory, and continues to make our fingers and toes." [9]

Darrel Falk, co-president of the BioLogos Foundation and a biology professor at Point Loma Nazarene University, reviewed the book and used it as an example of why he does not support the intelligent design movement. [10] In 2010 the BioLogos Foundation published Meyer's response to Falk. The response criticizes Falk's characterization of Meyer's credentials as well as the lack of any evidence from Falk that the premise of his book is faulty. [11]

The American Scientific Affiliation, a Christian organization of scientists and others, published a detailed analysis of the book's assertions by their executive director, physicist Randall Isaac. [5] [6]

Steve Matheson, a developmental biologist at Calvin College (an institution of the Christian Reformed Church), wrote an analysis critical of the book. [6] [12] In a post on The Panda's Thumb , Richard Hoppe concluded that the book failed to make a strong case for ID. [6]

The Discovery Institute published a collection of responses to critics edited by David Klinghoffer. [13]

Related Research Articles

Intelligent design Pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God

Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins". Proponents claim that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, and is therefore not science. The leading proponents of ID are associated with the Discovery Institute, a Christian, politically conservative think tank based in the United States.

Michael Behe American biochemist, author, and intelligent design advocate

Michael J. Behe is an American biochemist, author, and advocate of the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design (ID). He serves as professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and as a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. Behe is best known as an advocate for the validity of the argument for irreducible complexity (IC), which claims that some biochemical structures are too complex to be explained by known evolutionary mechanisms and are therefore probably the result of intelligent design. Behe has testified in several court cases related to intelligent design, including the court case Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District where his views were cited in the ruling that intelligent design is not science and is religious in nature.

Center for Science and Culture

The Center for Science and Culture (CSC), formerly known as the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC), is part of the Discovery Institute (DI), a conservative Christian think tank in the United States. The CSC lobbies for the inclusion of creationism in the form of intelligent design (ID) in public-school science curricula as an explanation for the origins of life and the universe while trying to cast doubt on the theory of evolution. These positions have been rejected by the scientific community, which identifies intelligent design as pseudoscientific neo-creationism, whereas the theory of evolution is overwhelmingly accepted as a matter of scientific consensus.

Intelligent design movement

The intelligent design movement is a neo-creationist religious campaign for broad social, academic and political change to promote and support the pseudoscientific idea of intelligent design (ID), which asserts that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." Its chief activities are a campaign to promote public awareness of this concept, the lobbying of policymakers to include its teaching in high school science classes, and legal action, either to defend such teaching or to remove barriers otherwise preventing it. The movement arose out of the creation science movement in the United States, and is driven by a small group of proponents.

Stephen C. Meyer American author, educator and advocate of intelligent design creationism

Stephen C. Meyer is an American author and former educator. He is an advocate of intelligent design, a pseudoscientific creationist argument for the existence of God, presented with the claim that it is "an evidence-based scientific theory". He helped found the Center for Science and Culture (CSC) of the Discovery Institute (DI), which is the main organization behind the intelligent design movement. Before joining the DI, Meyer was a professor at Whitworth College. Meyer is a Senior Fellow of the DI and Director of the CSC.

Teach the Controversy Discovery Institute campaign to promote intelligent design

"Teach the Controversy" is a campaign, conducted by the Discovery Institute, to promote the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design, a variant of traditional creationism, while attempting to discredit the teaching of evolution in United States public high school science courses. The campaign claims that fairness and equal time require educating students with a 'critical analysis of evolution' where "the full range of scientific views", evolution's "unresolved issues", and the "scientific weaknesses of evolutionary theory" will be presented and evaluated alongside intelligent design concepts like irreducible complexity presented as a scientific argument against evolution through oblique references to books by design proponents listed in the bibliography of the Institute-proposed "Critical Analysis of Evolution" lesson plans.

Intelligent designer Hypothetical willed and self-aware entity that the intelligent design movement argues had some role in the origin and/or development of life

An intelligent designer, also referred to as an intelligent agent, is the hypothetical willed and self-aware entity that the intelligent design movement argues had some role in the origin and/or development of life. The term "intelligent cause" is also used, implying their teleological supposition of direction and purpose in features of the universe and of living things.

Darrel R. Falk is an American biologist. He is Professor Emeritus of Biology at Point Loma Nazarene University and is the past president and a current senior advisor with BioLogos Foundation, an advocacy group that emphasizes compatibility between science and Christian faith.

The Sternberg peer review controversy concerns the conflict arising from the publication of an article supporting pseudoscientific intelligent design creationism in a scientific journal, and the subsequent questions of whether proper editorial procedures had been followed and whether it was properly peer reviewed.

Michael John Denton is a British-Australian proponent of intelligent design and a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. He holds a PhD degree in biochemistry. Denton’s book, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, inspired intelligent design proponents Phillip Johnson and Michael Behe.

<i>Darwinism, Design and Public Education</i>

Darwinism, Design and Public Education is a 2003 anthology, consisting largely of rewritten versions of essays from a 1998 issue of Michigan State University Press's journal, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, edited by intelligent design activists John Angus Campbell and Stephen C. Meyer, neither of whom are scientists. The book is promoted as being a "peer-reviewed science book", however in reviewing it Barbara Forrest notes that:

Nineteen of the twenty-seven essays are by ID creationists and their supporters, not one of whom is a working evolutionary biologist. Among the eight pro-evolution essays, only four are by scientists. Of those, only two are by evolutionary biologists. There is a preponderance of humanities scholars; some, like rhetorician John Angus Campbell, are ID proponents while others are pro-evolution.

David Klinghoffer is an Orthodox Jewish author and essayist, and a proponent of the pseudoscientific idea of intelligent design. He is a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute, the organization that is the driving force behind the intelligent design movement. He was a frequent contributor to National Review, and a former columnist for the Jewish weekly newspaper The Forward, to which he still contributes occasional essays.

Timeline of intelligent design

This timeline of intelligent design outlines the major events in the development of intelligent design as presented and promoted by the intelligent design movement.

<i>The Edge of Evolution</i>

The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism is an intelligent design book by Discovery Institute fellow Michael Behe, published by the Free Press in 2007. Behe argues that while evolution can produce changes within species, there is a limit to the ability of evolution to generate diversity, and this limit is somewhere between species and orders. On this basis, he says that known evolutionary mechanisms cannot be responsible for all the observed diversification from the last universal ancestor and the intervention of an intelligent designer can adequately account for much of the diversity of life. It is Behe's second intelligent design book, his first being Darwin's Black Box.

The BioLogos Foundation

The BioLogos Foundation is a Christian advocacy group that attempts to reconcile evolution with the idea of God. It was established by Francis Collins in 2007 after receiving letters and emails from people who had read his book, The Language of God. The primary audience was Christians, but Collins also sought to engage with skeptics and seekers invested in science.

Francis Collins American geneticist and director of the National Institutes of Health

Francis Sellers Collins is an American physician-geneticist who discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases and led the Human Genome Project. He is director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, United States.

Natural genetic engineering (NGE) is a class of process proposed by molecular biologist James A. Shapiro to account for novelty created in the course of biological evolution. Shapiro developed this work in several peer-reviewed publications from 1992 onwards, and later in his 2011 book Evolution: A View from the 21st Century. He uses NGE to account for several proposed counterexamples to the central dogma of molecular biology. Shapiro drew from work as diverse as the adaptivity of the mammalian immune system, ciliate macronuclei and epigenetics. The work gained some measure of notoriety after being championed by proponents of Intelligent Design, despite Shapiro's explicit repudiation of that movement.

DNA Polymerase V is a polymerase enzyme involved in DNA repair mechanisms in bacteria, such as Escherichia coli. It is composed of a UmuD' homodimer and a UmuC monomer, forming the UmuD'2C protein complex. It is part of the Y-family of DNA Polymerases, which are capable of performing DNA translesion synthesis (TLS). Translesion polymerases bypass DNA damage lesions during DNA replication - if a lesion is not repaired or bypassed the replication fork can stall and lead to cell death. However, Y polymerases have low sequence fidelity during replication. When the UmuC and UmuD' proteins were initially discovered in E. coli, they were thought to be agents that inhibit faithful DNA replication and caused DNA synthesis to have high mutation rates after exposure to UV-light. The polymerase function of Pol V was not discovered until the late 1990s when UmuC was successfully extracted, consequent experiments unequivocally proved UmuD'2C is a polymerase. This finding lead to the detection of many Pol V orthologs and the discovery of the Y-family of polymerases.

<i>Biochemical Predestination</i>

Biochemical Predestination is a 1969 book by Dean H. Kenyon and Gary Steinman which argued in support of biochemical evolution.

References

  1. ↑ Meyer, Stephen (2009). Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design. New York: HarperCollins.
  2. ↑ Peterson, Dan (September 2009). "Blown Away". American Spectator .
  3. ↑ Peterson, Ken (6 October 2009). "Signature in the Cell". Spectrum .
  4. ↑ Times Review, The Times.
  5. 1 2 Isaac, Randy. "Signature in the Cell". ASA Book Discussion. American Scientific Affiliation (ASA). Retrieved 1 May 2014.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
  6. 1 2 3 4 Hoppe, Richard B. (24 April 2010). "Two analyses of Meyer's 'Signature in the Cell'". The Panda's Thumb . Retrieved 1 May 2014.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
  7. ↑ "2009 Books of the Year". The Times .
  8. 1 2 Fletcher, Stephen (2 December 2009). "TLS Letters 02/12/09". The Times Literary Supplement (letter to the editor). Retrieved 2010-03-28.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
  9. ↑ Fletcher, Stephen (3 February 2010). "TLS Letters 03/02/10". The Times Literary Supplement (letter to the editor). Retrieved 2010-03-28.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
  10. ↑ Falk, Darrel (28 December 2009). "Science & the Sacred: Signature in the Cell" (blog). BioLogos Foundation . Retrieved 2009-12-28.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
  11. ↑ "Response to Darrel Falk's Review of 'Signature in the Cell'" (blog). BioLogos Foundation. 28 January 2010.
  12. ↑ Matheson, Steve. "Book Reviews". Quintessence of Dust. Retrieved 1 May 2014.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
  13. ↑ Klinghoffer, David, ed. (2011). Signature of Controversy. Discovery Institute. ISBN   9780979014185.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.