Dr. Meyer discusses the information revolution and the challenge it presents for Darwinism with Michael Medved, expounding the argument for intelligent design from information.
Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:06):
And now America’s number one show on pop culture and politics. This is the Michael Medved show. And
Michael Medved (00:15):
Another great day in this greatest nation on God’s green earth, where so many of the great issues facing this nation, you hear on the side of change on the side of Obama aneurysm, the frequent chorus you will hear is science says, the scientists say we are following science. That was certainly the case with the huge cap and trade bill that was rammed through the house of representatives on Friday, still a chance to beat this thing. And I hope people will be involved. You hear this regarding the so-called healthcare reform, the takeover of our private medical system by government supervised and run and financed healthcare. And you hear that regarding so many things. Science is settled science. Okay. But what about those instances in which science is wrong? It’s the nature of science. Isn’t it to go back to look again, to reconsider, to provide different and better answers.
Michael Medved (01:11):
And that is going on right now concerning the origins of life for years and years and years. Well, I saw Fantasia and you saw in there that, uh, there are sort of a, uh, volcanoes and their oceans, and then there’s some lightning strikes and boom, it hits the water. And all of a sudden there’s a little paramecium and some kind of little thing that grows up. It was illustrated with Stravinsky’s Rite of spring and Fantasia. So it must be true. Well, not so fast. There is a, a new book that provides a tremendously useful service, lots and lots of people understand that Darwin doesn’t explain everything, even though we all celebrated his birth. We’re about to celebrate the publication of origin of species, even though all of that had a tremendous impact. It’s interesting to talk about it. It doesn’t provide final answers to everything. But people have always said, if not Darwin, then what. The new book, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent design answers by providing the what the a, the author is my friend, Dr. Stephen Meyer.
Michael Medved (02:22):
Stephen, congratulations on the book. It’s great to be with you, Michael. Thank you. So what are the things that your book does? And let me, let me explain, first of all, that you have a PhD, you’re a have your doctorate from Cambridge university, your academic credentials are impeccable. You’re not coming at this as some kind of a tobacco juice drooling, missing teeth, mud flap, no nothing. You’re, you’re somebody trained in the sciences and specifically in the philosophy of science. What are the new discoveries, the new breakthroughs that have begun to shake what had been something of a consensus about unaided, random Darwinian?
Stephen C. Meyer (03:06):
Well, the key thing is what you would call the information revolution and it’s come to biology. It started in the 1950s with Watson and Crick discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule and, uh, what Crick called the sequence hypothesis in which he proposed that for the four chemicals along the spine of the DNA molecule, that function exactly like alphabetic characters in a written language or digital characters in a, in a machine code. And it took a number of years for crux hypothesis to be confirmed by subsequent experimentation. Since then we’ve had the human genome project. And since then something called the encode project that has revealed that not only do we have digital code inside the living cell, but we owe that that digital code is structured and organized, uh, in much the same way we, uh, use code in a high tech digital computer.
Stephen C. Meyer (03:54):
There’s an operating system in the cell. There’s a spellcheck in the cell. There’s a files within folders, a way of organizing information like our hierarchical filing system in our laptops or on our desktops. So, the information revolution is coming in full flower to biology, and it’s challenging the idea that life could have arisen in that way. You described with the chemicals, arranging themselves in a mindless undirected way. What we know about information from our experience is that it always comes from an intelligent source, whether we’re looking at a section of hieroglyphics or a section of machine code or a newspaper headline, we trace information back to its source. We always come to a mind, not a material process. So the discovery of information and to complex information processing system inside the cell is strong evidence of a prior designing intelligence,
Michael Medved (04:43):
The new book, and it is a very substantive new book, it will change many minds. It is called Signature In the Cell: DNA and the evidence for intelligent design. The author is dr. Steven Meier of the discovery Institute. Uh, Steven, uh, let’s, let’s go back to this and make it absolutely clear. You talk about the information, this code that is written into all living things. There’s nothing comparable, uh, written into rocks or metals or inanimate objects.
Stephen C. Meyer (05:20):
Absolutely. It’s completely distinct. In fact, the only other place in the universe where we know of this effect is, uh, is in our own human technology, our own human expression of thought in the form of writing or a digital code. And that we, we have a machine codes that we write a couple of just, you know, observations that we’ve got local heroes here. Bill Gates has said the DNA is like a software program only much more complex than any we’ve ever created. Leroy hood. The biotech genius, uh, describes it as a digital code. This is not controversial. This is part of the facts of modern molecular biology.
Michael Medved (05:55):
And what would you say in the is that the universe contains matter? People know about that stuff. Uh, it contains energy, but that this information which only involves living things in the universe, that’s another element that isn’t either matter or energy.
Stephen C. Meyer (06:14):
Yeah. Well, if information runs the show in biology and inform, it’s a back to the cricks sequence hypothesis, it’s not the physical or chemical properties of those four digital characters, those four chemicals they’re called basis in the DNA molecule. It’s their specific arrangement in accord with a convention that directs the cell to build all the proteins and protein machines. We have something very analogous here in the Seattle area over at the Boeing plant. It is called CAD cam computer assisted design and manufacturer. We’ve got code in a machine that is sent to a translation device that converts that to a machine code, which in turn, then directs the construction of machinery to build a say, put the rivets on a, um, on the, uh, uh, the building of, uh, of the wing of a plane in just the right place. So we, in our own high tech world use information to manufacture things that’s what’s going on inside the cell.
Michael Medved (07:06):
Do people say when you challenge them with this, it, if, if information didn’t come from an intelligent designer, from a force that you would feel comfortable calling God, if information didn’t come from an intelligent designer, where did information originate?
Stephen C. Meyer (07:22):
Well, that’s a big part of the argument of the book. I look at the different proposals that have been made since the 1950s, when the information revolution first began to break into biology. And there are some models that are based on churches and share chance. Some that, uh, invoke natural laws are forces of chemical, physical, and chemical interaction. Some that try to combine the two in various ways, some that invoke natural Darwin Darwin’s idea of natural selection, but that’s obviously non-starter because natural selection, isn’t, uh, a force to be reckoned with until you actually have life that can reproduce itself. So I, I have, uh, several chapters on each of these various proposals and argue that all of them fail. And in fact, that’s not controversial either. If you get into the research, uh, or into the field of the people working on this, uh, it’s pretty well accepted that there is no undirected materialistic explanation for the origin of the first life. In Ben Stein’s film last year, Expelled, at the very end Richard Dawkins, who’s not known for his restraint in advocacy for evolutionary theory. Candidly admitted to Ben on camera that no one knows how life first began from the standpoint of it.
Michael Medved (08:26):
He entertained the idea that it might’ve been a visitor from outer space.
Stephen C. Meyer (08:31):
Yeah, it was interesting because he actually used the title of the book. He said it was a, there could be a signature of intelligence, he said, uh, but if it, if there, if that’s signature Rose, it must’ve come from an intelligence out in space that itself evolved. And I call that the ABG option: anything but God.
Michael Medved (08:47):
Let’s go to Troy in Atlanta, you’re on the Michael Medved show with dr. Steven Meier. Thank you for taking the, um, my
Stephen C. Meyer (08:56):
Question is in studying Darwinism, they always point out the imperfections in nature as a case for Darwin. And I’m wondering how you know in advocating intelligent design deal with those imperfections. I mean, whether it be in human design, you can point out, you know, the trachea and the esophagus being so close together.
Michael Medved (09:22):
It’s a great question, Troy. And I get this a lot and I know you do too. Steven, how do you explain the fact that sometimes animals are not designed perfectly
Stephen C. Meyer (09:32):
Well? There’s a number of factors. Sometimes our perceptions about imperfect designer themselves imperfect. For example, there’s been a lot, four different books last year, challenging intelligent design because of the existence of the so-called junk DNA, the DNA that doesn’t code for proteins, it was asserted by lots of Darwinians that the non-coding regions, uh, had no function and therefore God wouldn’t have done it that way. It turns out they do have a function, but we also know that things can degrade. And if you see rust on a car, it doesn’t, uh, uh, that shows that there are processes of decay, as well as in the original design. It doesn’t refute the idea that the car was designed to know that it decayed over time
Michael Medved (10:07):
And also intelligent design does not preclude — and certainly your book Signature In the Cell — the operations of natural selection. Natural selection, may in fact, lead to some kinds of Darwinian dead ends. That’s not the kind of thing you would argue against.
Stephen C. Meyer (10:26):
Oh, absolutely not. Natural section is a real process and it’s just …
Michael Medved (10:29):
Okay, so how does it work? And what’s the context it works. We’re going to continue the conversation with you and with dr. Steven Meier, author of signature in the cell, the Michael Medved studio lines are sponsored by gotomypc.com. Access your office PC from anywhere with gotomypc.com. [inaudible]
Stephen C. Meyer (11:10):
No it’s sponsored by the franchisees and learning center, the way that makes sense to them. Franchisee information,
Michael Medved (11:21):
Twenty-one minutes after the hour on the Michael Medved show, if you want to touch some of the most important and compelling issues and life and faith and science, uh, they are raised and largely answered in signature in the cell. It’s a substantial book. And as you’d expect and easier to require for a book that is subtitled DNA and the evidence for intelligent design. The basic argument of the book? If you look at the science, it is impossible to believe that life and, uh, intelligent life arose in a random accidental, non designed fashion. The author dr. Steven Meyer has his degree in philosophy of science from Cambridge university. He is a been for many years with the discovery Institute, which has been leading the fight, not for creationism, cause they’re not creationist, but for intelligent design, which is basically, and fundamentally different. +1 800-955-1776, Dave in Seattle, you’re on the Michael Medved show with dr. Meyer,
Speaker 4 (12:32):
Dr. Meyer, talk about the point of the book. And I’m just wondering if, uh, Charles Darwin’s point of the book was that were created from the simple and to the more complex, I wonder what Charles Darwin would suppose if he had had the benefit of electron microscope instead of the primitive optical microscope to see the vastness and immensity a creation.
Michael Medved (12:54):
Yeah, very perceptive point. The whole a strategy of the origin of species was to try to explain the complex things we see today as the result of a slow gradual process building up from a very simple first cell one or a few simple forms Darwin said, but we now know that even the very supposedly simplest cell is enormously complex, complex on the order of a sophisticated factory or a CAD cam to a manufacturing plant at Boeing, something like that. So there is no complex or there is no simple starting point. And that’s the, th this is something your book does very well signature in the cell. It give people some, uh, way of conceiving of just how complex this tiny little microscopic cell complex that we talk about. We talk about nanotechnology. Uh, there, the cell is full of little miniature machines, but the machines are all built as the result of a manufacturing process that is directed by code.
Michael Medved (13:51):
Now, I mentioned it in the previous segment that that’s strikingly similar to what goes on over at Boeing, where code directs the construction of airplane wings or other, uh, other complicated, um, um, uh, manufactured parts that go into the airplane. But all of his code is contained in a microscopic it’s, it’s tiny. And, uh, the information storage density of the DNA molecule is a, uh, it was a number of years ago that I have this status may have changed a bit, but a few years ago it was 45 trillion times. Our most advanced super chip that’s. That’s how much more information is packed into a DNA molecule than our own, our own chips. I, we need to, we need to go over this one more time, because I think a lot of people out there because of the Obama spending are beginning to understand what a trillion trillion trillion is such an up the 45 trillion times more dense with information than our most advanced super chip. And our most advanced super chip can get, what does the entire
Stephen C. Meyer (14:52):
Encyclopedia petabytes or mean we’re, you know, and it may have changed a few by a couple orders of magnitude from when I had the stat memorize, but you got the idea. This it’s an enormously concentrated, uh, packet of information on a miniaturized scale. And yet it’s working with extraordinary precision to build these intricate parts of, of a very intricate nano machines. And the machines that you have in cells themselves are extraordinary. You’ve got, uh, the, these little rotary engines, the bacterial flagellar motor that Michael B, he has made famous something called an ATP synthase, which is a turbine that’s inside. Our mitochondrial cells works on the same principle as a hydroelectric dam with, with rotors and, and, uh, and, uh, uh, Staters. And, you know, these are fascinating, the small miniaturized machines in cells, I call them high tech and low life. Even lowly bacteria have these machines in them.
Stephen C. Meyer (15:41):
Let’s just, again, to help people try to imagine this. It would be safe to say, when you’re talking about 45 trillion, let’s say you take every word of every book ever published in the United States of America in the history of this country, every book ever published, including your book, which is substantial, um, take every letter. Every word, what you’re talking about is you could take every book ever published in the United States of America and fit it into this information, into this one little tiny microscopic cell, something like that. You’re taxing my mathematical abilities just on the fly here, but 45 million. It’s a big number. It’s 40,000 books published every year in 45 trillion. And the human genome has something like 3 billion base pairs, just, you know, in, in, in one, one section of the genome, but information is, is concentrated extremely densely, but yet it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s functional. It’s doing important jobs. It’s directing the manufacturer of all the proteins and protein parts that every cell needs to stay alive. Let’s go to Tim in Chicago, Tim you’re on the med vet show with dr. Steven Meier,
Speaker 5 (16:51):
Good afternoon, uh, Francis Collins in his bio logo’s, uh, foundation is doing amazing work and explaining the scientific reasoning behind believing in a creator and Hugh Ross reasons to believe whatnot. The thing is that it are you not also, I mean, do you know that you’re kind of having a wheeling, a double edged sword is you’re proving God exists, which to me is, is, is somewhat dangerous in a way when you’re talking about zealots and, and, you know, fundamentalists and terrorists and jihad is now saying, look, we are absolutely factually proven, correct. And we can do this in the name of, I mean, I don’t know if you guys have seen on the internet. I mean, the atheists are being mocked by zero times, zero equals atheism. And a lot of atheists are just people that are questioning people. They’re not necessarily nasty people. And most of them want a very nonviolent society. I mean, you know,
Michael Medved (17:50):
Proving God, what I’m saying is you kind of have a two edged sword, do you not?
Stephen C. Meyer (17:53):
Well, uh, first of all, science doesn’t give you proof. Uh, and what I show in the book is, uh, by using a standard method of scientific reasoning, in fact, the very method that Darwin himself used to develop his case in the origin of species I can, what I’ve tried to show is that, uh, the inference to intelligent design is the best explanation for the evidence that we have. That’s what science does. It doesn’t prove things with absolute certainty, but it rather, it looks at the evidence evaluates the competing hypothesis. And then it says based on what we know about, for example, the causes that are working in the world, uh, what is the best explanation of the effect that we have in, in, in question here? The effect in question is, as I’ve mentioned, the digital code that started in DNA molecule, the processing system that’s involved in expressing it.
Stephen C. Meyer (18:35):
These are, these are features of our experience that we know always arise from an intelligence source. So the best explanation for that, uh, that information is intelligence. Uh, then that raises a question, uh, what is the identity of that intelligence? Uh, the two possibilities either the intelligence is within the cosmos or beyond for a number of reasons beyond just the bio biological evidence that I look at, for example, also the evidence of fine tuning and the evidence of design and physics. There’s good reasons to, I think, prefer the God hypothesis over, over what you might call the spaceman hypothesis. I, I, I, myself am a believer in God, but beyond all that, uh, a belief in God, I don’t think leads to violence. I think it leads to respect for the moral law, which is the basis of civilized society,
Michael Medved (19:19):
The same arguments saying that religion leads to violence. Uh, let’s keep in mind that both Stalin and Hitler were in their own ways, a very strong students of Darwin, how we’ll get to that. And more coming up with dr. Steven Meier, author of signature in the cell,
Stephen C. Meyer (19:36):
The Michael Medved studio lines are sponsored by gotomypc.com is your office PC from anywhere with gotomypc.com Michael Medved studio is sponsored by the franchisees event. Naseum learning centers, teaching kids math, the way that makes sense to them to request or franchise information call eight, seven, seven math
Michael Medved (20:15):
34 minutes after the hour on the Michael Medved show back with Stephen Meyer. He is, uh, with the discovery Institute, he is a exact title with the discovery Institute is he is the director of the center for science and culture. He, uh, is also the author of the very important and persuasive new book signature in the cell DNA and the evidence for intelligent design. Our last caller brought up the point about it being a double edged, if you’re able
Stephen C. Meyer (20:48):
To prove through scientific means that God exists, doesn’t that somehow encourage jihadists and religious fanatics and zealotry and murder. And the only point that I would make indirect response to that would be, I think it’s wrong. I don’t like the argument against Darwin that says, well, Darwin was embraced by Hitler and Stalin. And therefore Darwin is discredited because Darren was also raised by a lot of lovely people and positive people and nice people. But the same thing applies to religious faith. I mean, over the years, religious faith has had such a particularly Christian faith on this society has had such a profound influence. Most of it, quite positive, and some of it occasionally used in a distorting and destructive way. That doesn’t mean that belief in God is inherently dangerous. Any more than a belief in, uh, unaided Darwinian evolution is inherently dangerous. It still could be wrong.
Stephen C. Meyer (21:47):
And in any case from a scientific and philosophical point of view, you want to look at the evidence. So there’s a great question. Uh, uh, we call it in philosophy, the question of metaphysics or the primary reality. What’s the thing from which everything else comes, is it mind or matter? And, uh, it turns out that we have made discoveries in the 20th century at the beginning of the 21st century that actually scientific discoveries enable us to address that fascinating philosophical question. And I think that’s one of the exciting things for me about this topic is that science and these big questions do intersect. And there’s ways of evaluating those, the answers that you would give to those first time in all of human history. And it’s in your book, let’s go to Harry in New York city. You’re on the Medved show with dr. Meyer.
Speaker 5 (22:28):
Hi, it seems to me first that you have an endless reverse cycle of creation or intelligence because the intelligence that was needed to create a DNA had to be pretty good. So who created that intelligence, et cetera, et cetera. But even if you stop at the first one, God, call it God, there would be no way that’s done anything you said to show that that intelligence either still exists or has that made any communications with humanity or even has any high morals because ability to create power is not correlated with morals or with going on forever.
Stephen C. Meyer (23:05):
Uh, well you raised two objections in one. The first is the, uh, another way of saying it is who designed the designer. Uh, that was a, it’s an objection that Richard Dawkins has made against the design argument. And I address that in the book and, uh, 17th chapter, actually, if you’re interested, keeping track on your scorecards at home, but, uh, the, uh, the, it goes back to this question of, of the primary reality. What is the thing from which everything else came? There’s two basic candidates that philosophy has considered all the way back to the Greeks. One is matter, and one is mind. And, uh, since the, the, the, the advent of the big bang theory and the theory of general relativity by Einstein, and since cosmologists have come to the conclusion that the universe itself space and time
Michael Medved (23:46):
Had a beginning and started a singularity matter is really a very poor candidate to be the thing from which everything else came. And since every, every philosophical system has to answer that basic question, uh, you have to have a starting point. Either things started with under matter. Um, I think the evidence from modern science, both from physics and cosmology and biology points more decisively to mine, this is the starting point, but Harry’s other point would be not one that you take issue with. And in your book, he makes that the fact that there is a creator, the fact that there is an intelligent designer doesn’t mean that that intelligent designer has necessarily communicated with human beings or is necessarily moral. Absolutely. That’s not something that the scientific evidence can address. People who believe in revealed religion, have other evidences that they might offer it for supportive the, the Bible’s claim to, uh, represent a God who communicates, but that’s not the topic of this book or what, not something that science itself can adjudicate one 809 five, five 1776 is our phone number.
Michael Medved (24:49):
Uh, have you had, uh, condemnations from your colleagues in the scientific community, uh, from this book signature in the cell and from your other work, we will get an answer from Stephen Meyer. He is a director of the center for science and culture at the discovery Institute here in Seattle. And, uh, he has been at the forefront of the fight for serious consideration of what is called intelligent design, which is not creationism. What’s the difference. We’ll get an answer to that. And more from Stephen Meyer, author of signature in the cell, the Michael Medved studio lines are sponsored by gotomypc.com. Access your office PC from anywhere with GoToMyPC dot [inaudible] studio. It’s sponsored by the franchisees of magnesium learning center, teaching kids math, the way that makes sense to them to request for franchise information, call eight seven seven four one one 44 minutes. After the hour on the Michael Medved show your daily dose of debate. If you think that the whole idea of a intelligent design is unscientific is illogical is backward. His knuckle dragging his troglodyte, give us a call +1 800-955-1776. I’ll just sit back and let dr. Steven Meier author of the very important new book signature in the cell, uh, answer your questions and challenges. +1 800-955-1776. You’re not a creationist. No. Um, the, you
Stephen C. Meyer (26:44):
Asked before the break about the difference between intelligence intelligent people. People make that distinction. They blur that distinction all the time creation is in the, in the parlance in the way it’s used. It’s typically refers to a person who believes the earth is very young, maybe 10,000, 6,000 years old takes the biblical account in Genesis as a very literally reads it very literally as a scientific account of the theory of intelligent design is not attempting to explain the book of Genesis it’s. It’s an inference from biological evidence rather than a deduction or interpretation of religious authority. Did dinosaurs exist? Oh, I think so. I love dinosaurs. Okay. You see, this is one of the things how I got into all this as a four year old I’ve had people who’ve emailed me these anguished emails, cause it’s, uh, it’s well known that I’m a supporter of intelligent design arguments.
Stephen C. Meyer (27:36):
And people say, how can someone who says educated? Like you, are you, you, you believe that dinosaurs didn’t exist. Do you believe that? Or do you believe that dinosaurs coexisted with cave men did dinosaurs coexisted with no, I don’t think so. They were separated by pretty, pretty big hunk of rock strata. Yeah. Yeah. That would appear to be pretty clear in the evidence. And that’s what this book is about. It’s about evidence. And the problem that I have is having read all of Richard Dawkins, recent books, and they don’t address the same evidence you do. They don’t address the fundamental question you made the point that in the 19th century, scientists talked about matter and energy matter and energy are still part of science, but there’s a third fundamental element that plays a critical role in biology it’s information and the information argument, the DNA to design argument, as we sometimes call it is just simply not addressed by Richard Dawkins in these new atheists.
Stephen C. Meyer (28:30):
And yet they, they, they base their whole position on this supposed denial of any evidence of design, their reasoning. It goes like this, no evidence of the design argument was always the strongest argument to believe in God. There’s no evidence of design in nature. Therefore belief in God is tantamount to a delusion, but that whole argument is, is predicated on a false hood. There is evidence of design it’s very compelling and, uh, and they don’t address it. In fact, if you ask them the right questions, they concede that they don’t have an explanation for the origin of the information you need to build life in the first place, which is the key question. Let’s go to Kevin Louisville, Kentucky. You’re on the Michael med that show with dr. Steven Meier.
Speaker 5 (29:05):
Hey, thanks, Michael. And without a doubt, your show is the best show on radio. Thank you so much. Hey, dr. Meyer, I’m just finishing up Michael Bay. He’s Darwin’s black box. And I’m just wondering why you felt compelled to write another book and how much more evidence do we really need. I mean, you know, I think Michael makes a pretty good statement in his book. I mean, how it’s sort of like piling on, I mean, how much more evidence?
Stephen C. Meyer (29:35):
Well, usually we don’t get the objection that you’re, you’re giving us too much evidence for intelligent design. It’s usually it’s creationist and cheap tuxedos kind of thing that gets, that gets thrown at us. But well, actually, uh, the, the, the arguments of the two books are complimentary. Michael is talking about the, uh, the functionally integrated irreducibly complex nano machinery inside cells. I’m talking about what is perhaps an even more fundamental evidence of design. It’s the information that you need to build those nano machines and, and also the information you need to get life going way back at the very beginning. It’s something Darwin never addressed in 150 years since Darwin, we still have that same fundamental mystery. How did you get the first life out of non-living chemicals? Let’s go to Tom Everett, Washington. You’re on the med vet show with dr. Steven Meier.
Speaker 5 (30:21):
Thank you, gentlemen. It’s an honor to speak to both of you, the document that I’ve been listening to you for years, I am curious how a, uh, how the Darwin, uh, theory holds up with me. He’s picture all of the, of the fundamental flights. What I believe he calls it, the cell with the roller. I mean, you cannot evolve to that in there.
Stephen C. Meyer (30:46):
Well, there’ve been people who have challenged Michael’s argument. They’ve said that the, that there’s a little part of the flagellar motor that might have functioned as a precursor to it, but the genetic evidence shows just the opposite. That that little part that could be a precursor actually seems to be derivative of the flagellar motor rather than a, uh, something that came before. So it’s, it’s a deep Solutionary byproduct of this complex system that, uh, dr. Bihi highlights in, uh, in Darwin’s black box,
Speaker 5 (31:14):
An appendix in other words, but, but how, what that is such a fundamental argument for intelligent design, because you’d have no ability to evolve such as simple motors.
Stephen C. Meyer (31:26):
I think you’re right. It’s very, it’s very powerful. You got rotary rotary engine with rotor, stator bushings, O-rings drive shaft, all functionally coordinated. Uh, it looks, uh, for all the world, like a beautifully engineered system. And that’s what he argues that it is. And by the way, w the, the mechanism of mutation and natural selection, all of that, not something that you deny, no, it’s, these are real processes. The question is whether they are creative or destructive, and if creative, to what extent they, they certainly are responsible for small scale micro, evolutionary changes. They are the likely, the mechanism responsible for Darwin’s Finch, beaks. They adjust slightly in response to environmental changes, a little longer, a little shorter, more curved, less curved, um, antibiotic resistance. Those sorts of phenomenon are well-documented evolutionary phenomenon. We’re not questioning that we’re questioning whether that mechanism can explain all the appearances of design in the history of life, including the most fundamental ones, uh, such as the origin of digital code. Let’s see, this is what, what gets me. And I think I hope people out there who are listening to us, it’s at least opening your mind to this here, you have this vast universe and it’s full of inanimate
Michael Medved (32:40):
Matter. It’s full of rock and water for that matter. And you take a look and you can look down at the molecular level. Now, nothing, no code, no information. It’s just basically dead matter. And all of a sudden, these most simple, tiny, tiny, tiny micro organisms, an unimaginably dense amount of information that that is, is so extraordinary. It’s what fascinated me with the whole thing. Originally, you know, we’ve got digital code in life. It’s written at some level. It’s not that hard. We ought to realize immediately that we’re looking at a product of intelligence and a pretty good software engineer. We’ll be right back with Stephen Meyer, author of signature in the cell, the Michael Michael medved.com. [inaudible].
Michael Medved (33:45):
If you’re interested in defending the first amendment with its guarantees of religious Liberty, consider supporting the Alliance defense fund, find out how to help it. Michael medved.com and stay tuned for the first amendment. Every Thursday. One of the things that the Alliance defense fund helps to defend is the right of schools. For instance, to take books like signature in the cell, and to include it in the school library for goodness sake, the author, Stephen Meyer has impeccable scientific credentials, a doctorate degree from Cambridge university in great Britain. And, uh, yet you will find that there are people who will try because the book advocates for intelligent design will try to exclude it from public school libraries. That’s the kind of outrage that needs to be resisted. Seems to me, Tim, in Minneapolis, you’re on the Medved show with Steven Meyer.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
Yeah. Thanks. I’ll spit this out quick. One of your previous caller said something about the fact that if a Darwin had had access to the technology that we have today, that his hypothesis would be different. I could say the same thing about 2000 years ago. Um, also I’d like to say, you keep referring to intelligence as if it was an irreducible X amount of concept, but it’s not intelligence as a corollary of consciousness consciousness as a corollary of existence. Existence is an irreducible axiomatic concept. So all you’ve done is, is, is, is just attempted to disprove Darwin, but in no way, proven the existence of a consciousness outside of existence.
Michael Medved (35:18):
Well, actually the way I argue for this consciousness and intelligence are related, there’s a scientist, a pioneer in information theory, who said that, uh, uh, information habitually arises from conscious activity. That’s what we know from our experience. Darwin pointed out that our experiential knowledge of cause and effect is the basis all scientific reasoning.
Stephen C. Meyer (35:38):
So what I use it, what I do in the book is use Darwin’s own principle of reasoning to establish that, that we have in effect, which is known to arise from only one, cause that causes conscious activity or intelligence. So the two are, are, are, are linked. Doesn’t prove the existence of God, but it has what I would call theistic implications. It’s friendly to a theistic interpretation of nature, very quickly, Sean Hermosa, beach, California. You’re on the med that champ
Speaker 5 (36:02):
Gentlemen. So I believe what you’re saying about, we won’t have life without intelligence, but can we get even more foundational with what we know about physics and atomic order and so forth? Can we say that there’s no matter without intelligence,
Stephen C. Meyer (36:21):
Actually, that’s one of the curious things that’s coming out of physics. So when you get to the very, very bottom of the reduction, you find that you have something called the Schrodinger equation, which is essentially a wave describing possible States of affairs. It’s an information wave. Some scientists think at the very beginning of the universe, the first thing that existed was this information wave. So information is fundamental, not only to biology, but also to the universe itself, which I think points not only to a designing intelligence, but one that is more likely to be God than certainly something like space aliens. We could agree more likely than space aliens, the book signature in the cell. You won’t find a lot of information about little green men, but you’ll find information about the origins of life. Some of the dazzling mind opening and mind boggling complexity in life and in information itself in this greatest nation on God’s green earth.