Read Darwin Doubt The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design Stephen C Meyer Books

Product details Paperback 560 pages Publisher HarperOne; Revised ed. edition (June 3, 2014) Language English ISBN-10 0062071483

Darwin Doubt The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design Stephen C Meyer Books Reviews

• Comment on “Darwin’s Doubt,” by Stephen C. Meyer
  
  I highly recommend reading this book. it isn't an easy read, but very interesting and well worth reading with an open mind.
  
  When Darwin wrote his famous 1859 treatise on the Origin of Species, there were two issues he glossed over 1.) The origin of the first living cell, and 2.) The so-called Cambrian, or Silurian, explosion of complex animals. At the time, he, and scientists in general, knew nothing about the details of the functioning of a biological cell, but believed that life somehow originated in the chemical soup that supposedly existed early in the earth’s history. He also acknowledged that the sudden emergence of the Cambrian era animals cast great doubt on his theory of evolution through random mutations and natural selection over long periods of time. However, he expected that later discoveries of fossils would show ancestors of the Cambrian animals in earlier geological strata.
  
  Since Crick and Watson deduced the structure of DNA in 1953, based on then-recent work of many biological scientists, science has come to understand that the work of DNA, RNA, and other molecular structures in a living cell is based on highly complex functionally specific code. In his earlier book, “The Signature in the Cell,” Dr. Meyer, citing the work of many modern biological scientists, mathematicians and others, showed that for such complexity to have arisen by chance arrangement of the nucleotide building blocks of life would have required many times the number of available chances in the life of the universe. The post log to the latest edition addresses the criticisms that have been written on that earlier work.
  
  In this book Dr. Meyer addresses Darwin’s Cambrian doubt and builds on his earlier book by pointing out the even greater complexity (by many orders of magnitude) of the specified information required to arrange cells into complex animal body plans, such as the 20 or so new phyla found in the Cambrian layers. Even with deep sea drilling, deep drilling on land and in other forms of exploration, scientists have yet to discover any significant fossils of the supposed ancestors of the Cambrian animals. Dr. J.Y. Chen, a Chinese paleontologist and an expert on the Cambrian era fossil deposits discovered in China, was once asked when presenting his findings at the University of Washington if he wasn’t worried about contradicting Darwin, quipped, “in China we can criticize Darwin, but we can’t criticize the government. In the United States, you can criticize the government, but you can’t criticize Darwin.”
  
  As Dr. Meyer points out in this book, “Scientists attempting to explain the origin of life must explain how both information-rich molecules and the cell’s information-processing system arose.” As he further notes, “Whenever we find functional information—Whether embedded in a radio signal, carved in a stone monument such as the Rosetta Stone, etched on a disk, or produced by an origin-of-life scientist attempting to engineer a self-replicating molecule — and we trace that information back to its ultimate source, invariably we come to a mind, not merely a material process.”
  
  In “Darwin’s Doubt” Dr. Meyer examines the various theories that attempt to explain the geologically sudden emergence of so many new, fully formed animal body plans, and shows that each theory, however subtly, postulates pre-existing information-rich sources of data upon which their theory is based. For example, scientists have discovered entities called developmental gene regulatory networks (dGRNs) that play a key role in the development of a grown animal from an embryo. Studies have determined that simple random individual changes in the dGRN will destroy the organism. Any changes in one part must be coordinated with changes in the other parts, which again requires an enormous infusion of new information. After examining the many theories that scientists have proposed and demonstrating essentially the same flaw in each of them (i.e., the supposition of a pre-existing source of the complex information required), Dr. Meyer concludes that intelligent design is the only explanation that meets the necessary scientific criteria to truly explain the origin of life and the complex form in which all life exists today. In arriving at that conclusion, he uses the same scientific method used by Charles Darwin and most other scientists trying to understand historical events; that is, the abductive method of inference to the best explanation based on currently known processes. In this case, the known process is that complex, functionally specified information is, in our everyday experience, created only by an intelligent agent. Since no scientific theory has yet been proposed that shows any means other than design by an intelligent agent, Dr. Meyer argues that intelligent design is the best, most scientific explanation available today. This is especially true since all of the other purportedly materialistic naturalistic theories that have been proposed start off by assuming the prior existence of the vast amounts of complex specified information necessary to the existence of any life form. They fail to explain where that information came from in the first place. Intelligent design, and only intelligent design, explains the origin of vast amounts of functionally specified information.
• If you are a thinking person and you have ever doubted the existence of God, this book will give you a lot to think about.. Evolution has been debunked for what it really is, a theory, not scientific fact. Thinking people can now know that there is a creator and we no longer have to believe we evolved from nothing starting with a "Big Bang" and continuing by chance. I do not know about anyone else, but I prefer to think I was created and not evolved from a lower form of life on planet earth. I also know that there are many who do not believe or think as I do. All I say is, read the book before you judge.
• This is a sequel to Stephen Meyer's first in this area, "Signature In The Cell." It is a continuation of the hypothesis of Intelligent Design in the creation of life on this planet, highlighting the increasing number of problems found in Darwin. Darwin, BTW, was quite aware that his theory of evolution did NOT address the ORIGIN of living cells, only their evolution in response to changing environments and other impacts of nature. Make no mistake, this is not a text of opinion or hypothesis ... it is based on factual evidence found in molecular and chemical biology. The fact is that Darwin's theory of natural selection can do nothing to explain the origin of a life form nor the source of novel variation. All natural selection can do is to "select" various traits that already exist. How did that life form spring into existence in the first place? THAT is the question! The fact is that Darwin, dead now for 137 years, had NO IDEA about the tremendous growth in the biological sciences since his theory was first published. He did not know about the magic -- and the power -- that lies in every living cell, about the operations of the literally millions of sub-cellular organisms, including the workings of RNA and DNA. Meyer simply argues for a more comprehensive theory of the origins of life based on modern science. I urge anyone interested in this fascinating field READ THIS BOOK!
  Linda Kerth, Ph.D.
• The more scientists learn about the complexity of life, the more difficult it is to believe in Darwin's theory of evolution. This book presents a compelling case for examining intelligent design as a more plausible source of information in DNA than mutations and selection. It is easy to understand and enjoyable to read.