Signature In The Cell

This week's edition of the Unbelievable? podcast featured a discussion with Stephen Meyer regarding his book Signature in the Cell.  Meyer has been a leading proponent of the Intelligent Design movement, which this blogger has posted on extensively.

In the Signature in the Cell, Meyer attempts to make the case that the information in our cells points to a designer because our experience with information shows that it always comes from a mind.  Wikipedia's entry on Stephen Meyer presents the entire dubious history of Meyer within the Intelligent Design movement, with the following highlights concerning the Signature in the Cell:

Fletcher explained "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."^[37] 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."^[38]

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.^[39]  Falk concluded, "If the object of the book is to show that the Intelligent Design movement is a scientific movement, it has not succeeded. In fact, what it has succeeded in showing is that it is a popular movement grounded primarily in the hopes and dreams of those in philosophy, in religion, and especially those in the general public."^[39]

This blogger continues to be amazed at the persistence of Intelligent Design proponents in the face of exposure to contrary facts to their assertions.  This certainly is consistent with virtually all anti-science ideologies mentioned elsewhere in this blog.