Quotes from Stephen C. Meyer

Thus, discovery of an embryo in the earliest stages of cell division shows beyond a doubt that Precambrian sedimentary rocks can, under the right circumstances, preserve soft-bodied organisms.

the Christian monastic Anthony the Abbot referred to "created nature" as a "book," one always at his "disposal" whenever he wanted "to read God's words.

In other words, they have failed to find the paleontological equivalent of the numerous finely graded intermediate colors (Pendleton blue, dusty rose, gun barrel gray, magenta, etc.) that interior designers covet.

that there are no biological forms left to discover. He means, rather, that we have good reason to conclude that such discoveries will not alter the largely discontinuous pattern that has emerged.

with the Darwinian view for yet another reason. The Chengjiang discoveries intensify the top-down pattern of appearance

with the Darwinian view for yet another reason. The Chengjiang discoveries intensify the top-down pattern of appearance in which individual representatives of the higher taxonomic categories (phyla, subphyla, and classes) appear and only later diversify into the lower taxonomic categories (families, genera, and species).

more reason to expect an opened lock in the case of an intelligently guided try than we would if the try was unguided

inwehnsdysk]ifhsnmcpew,m.sa Time and tide wait for no man. Clearly, there is a qualitative difference

There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows."19

natural selection explains "only the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest.

The functional design of organisms and their features would…seem to argue for the existence of a designer. It was Darwin's greatest accomplishment [however] to show that the directive organization of living beings can be explained as the result of a natural process, natural selection, without any need to resort to a Creator or other external agent."20

All this suggested to me that there are important distinctions to be made when talking about information in DNA. In the first place, it's important to distinguish information defined as "a piece of knowledge known by a person" from information defined as "a sequence of characters or arrangements of something that produce a specific effect." Whereas the first of these two definitions of information doesn't apply to DNA, the

It, [theistic evolution] therefore, contradicts the plainly theistic view of divine action articulated in the Bible, where God acts in his creation after the beginning of the universe. Indeed, the Bible describes God as not only acting to create the universe in the beginning; it also describes him as presently upholding the universe in its orderly concourse and also describes him as acting discretely as an agent within the natural order.

second does. But it is also necessary to distinguish Shannon information from information that performs a function or conveys a meaning. We must distinguish sequences of characters that are (a) merely improbable from sequences that are (b) improbable and also specifically arranged so as to perform a function. That is, we must distinguish information-carrying capacity from functional information. So

if God did not at least direct the process of mutation and selection (and/or other relevant evolutionary mechanisms), but instead merely sustained the laws of nature that made them possible, then it follows that he could not know and does not know, what those mechanisms would (or will) produce, including whether they would have produced human beings.

the kind of information that DNA contains, namely, functionally specified information.

Proteins build cellular machines and structures, they carry and deliver cellular materials, and they catalyze chemical reactions that the cell needs to stay alive. Proteins also process genetic information.

If a substantive chance hypothesis necessarily negates or nullifies explanations involving physical-chemical necessity and design, then the presence of a pattern necessarily negates chance.

How does the sequence of bases on the DNA direct the construction of protein molecules?

How do specific sequences in a four-character alphabet generate specific sequences in a twenty-character alphabet? Francis

In particular, the three-dimensional shape of a protein gives it a hand-in-glove fit with other equally specified and complex molecules or with simpler substrates, enabling it to catalyze specific chemical reactions or to build specific structures within the cell. Because of its three-dimensional specificity, one protein cannot usually substitute for another.

Darwin's Origin explained many classes of biological evidence with just two central organizing ideas. The twin pillars of his theory were the ideas of universal common ancestry and natural selection.

For Newton, as for Boyle and Descartes, there were laws of nature only because there had been a [Divine] Legislator.

Darwin read Lyell's magnum opus, The Principles of Geology, on the voyage of the Beagle and employed its principles of reasoning in On the Origin of Species. The subtitle of Lyell's Principles