Reviews for Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design

The average rating for Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-10-17 00:00:00 Scott Lavelle Stephen Meyer is a very articulate author, who understands the subject of DNA and the researches into the origin of life very well. Unfortunately, he does not understand the very basis of the philosophy of science. He received a Ph.D. from University of Cambridge. How did this happen? He must have learned there how to fool his professors with fast talk and glib glosses with subtle illogical arguments. The first third of this book is an excellent overview of the discovery of DNA, and descriptions of how DNA conveys information. The remainder of the book, unfortunately, makes totally unsubstantiated claims that Intelligent Design is the best theory that accounts for the origin of life. Meyer defines Intelligent Design as an idea that living things are best explained by a rational agent, a guiding intelligence, rather than an undirected process. This very definition is faulty, as it makes it sound like an either-or proposition. Can't the origin of life be explained as the result of a natural process, that is not totally random, much like evolution by natural selection? Meyer describes many computational and chemical explanations for the origin of life, and (rightly) shoots them all down. But why does he ignore Conway's game of life--which generates a huge, specific complexity out of random initial conditions and a few very simple rules? It is an excellent metaphor for biological life. It serves as as "analogy for the counter-intuitive notion that design and organization can spontaneously emerge in the absence of a designer." (Wikipedia) The philosopher Daniel Dennett used the analogyto illustrate the possible evolution of consciousness and free will. Meyer lists the five requirements for an idea to become a scientific theory. He describes a number of criticisms that Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory, because it does not meet the criteria. Then, Meyer shoots the criticisms down, large using the "what-aboutism" approach. Meyer is wrong in using "what-aboutism" as a counter-criticism, because his arguments simply do not dig deeply enough into the criticisms. One of the criticisms of Intelligent Design, is that it simply pushes back the problem. "If an intelligent agent designed life, then who or what designed the designer?" Meyer addresses this criticism with what I call a "what-aboutism". Meyers explains that if you ask who carved the sculptures on Easter Island come about, would you ask, "yes, but who designed the sculptors?" Of course you wouldn't ask that question, because we know that the sculptors were ordinary human beings. But, if you say that the origin of life is explained as a supernatural intelligent designer, then that deserves a lot more explanation. Two of the requirements for a scientific theory are that it must be testable and falsifiable. But Meyer misunderstands these requirements. A theory that makes super-duper claims must have super-duper evidence to back it up! For Intelligent Design to be a legitimate scientific theory, it must make multiple predictions that can be tested--and if the predictions are not found to be true, they must falsify the theory. But no such predictions are made. Yes, Intelligent Design can EXPLAIN the origin of life--but that does not prove it to be valid. Intelligent Design can EXPLAIN anything and everything. Yes, but Meyer would say that no other extant scientific theory can explain the origin of life. Well, in ancient times, there was no scientific theory that could explain the origin of rainbows. Therefore a super-powerful super-natural agent must be responsible for rainbows. Does that make sense? No--scientists simply have not been able to explain the origin of life. The origin of life, and the source of consciousness are two very difficult questions that scientists are still researching, and they probably will continue for a long time. But theorizing that a supernatural intelligent agent is at work requires more than glib reasoning. It requires a LARGE NUMBER of scientific experiments, each of which is designed to potentially DISPROVE the theory. And each experiment must FAIL to disprove the theory. The book sounds so much like the "god of the gaps". When creationists attempt to disprove evolution, they point to gaps in the fossil record. To a scientist, the origin of life is just a big gap, waiting to be closed.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-08-25 00:00:00 Bert Anselin This is a very long book (a tome?) and I don't have the time or energy to review it well. I doubt most of those who give it a one star rating, here and at Amazon, have even read it. Their "reviews" just seem like they're forced. They just have to get something off. The word I've made up to describe these types is: designophobe. This book is a scaled down version of the author's doctoral dissertation at Cambridge on the question of the "DNA enigma." That is, how the information properties of the DNA came about. But reading a doctoral dissertation would be quite the chore for most readers. So Meyer offers his argument in the form of a kind of detective autobiography. He takes us with him from his undergraduate days up to and beyond (at times) his Cambridge days, carrying us along with him on his search to unravel the DNA enigma. In the process he discusses virtually every explanation of how the information arose. Almost every theory has other scientists that disagree with the theory. Meyer ultimately shows how none of them can explain the DNA enigma. I admit I am not a scientist and so I can't really judge the arguments according to the technicalities. But from what I can judge, Meyer's case seems very strong. That's all I can do. I'm not a specialist and I can only listen to what the sides say and make up my mind (or withhold judgment). Almost all scientists admit that DNA is akin to an algorithm that might be used to design a computer. Not only that, the combinations of proteins etc., are functionally specified. So we have a clear case of information of a type that rules out a lot of explanations of its origin. Meyer did not argue god-of-the-gaps nor did he claim that mere complexity implied design. He also showed how people tell chance events from designed ones and the constraints employed to do so. He pulled from all manner of non-Christian (though that caveat shouldn't need to be given) information and probability theorists here. Meyer also did a good job showing various types of ways to "do science". He used distinctions given by (again, non-Christians) scientists and philosophers of science, such as the distinction between historical and operations science. He showed that many scientists did not any or much original laboratory work (Watson and Crick, for example) and yet produced results that could be called "science". Overall, I thought the book was good. The argument was good (having been accepted by one of the most prestigious and intellectually rigorous universities, Cambridge, once should expect this) and the way he told the story was well-done. But weighing in at over 500 pages, the book definitely needs more than one read (which I know not of the harsh reviewers have done!). The argument would probably work best as part of an cumulative case argument. Indeed, a cumulative case design argument (fine-tuning, proper function of cognitive faculties, Thomistic teleological arguments, etc).