Stephen C. Meyer Philosopher of Science

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A researcher put a strip of 8 PCR tubes on the thermal cycler for DNA amplification
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Stephen Meyer Responds to Stephen Fletcher’s Attack Letter in the Times Literary Supplement

Ever since Thomas Nagel selected Signature in the Cell as one of 2009’s best books, the Times Literary Supplement has had a vigorous back and forth in its letters section. The last salvo published was by Loughborough University chemistry professor Stephen Fletcher. The response below was submitted by Stephen Meyer to TLS, but they opted not to publish it. To the EditorThe Times Literary Supplement Sir — I see that the Professor Stephen Fletcher has written yet another letter (TLS Letters, 3 February, 2010) attempting to refute the thesis of my book Signature in the Cell. This time he cites two recent experiments in an attempt to show the plausibility of the RNA world hypothesis as an explanation for the origin of the first life. Read More ›

On Not Reading Signature in the Cell: A Response to Francisco Ayala (Part 2)

[This is part 2 of Stephen Meyer’s response to Francisco Ayala’s critique of Signature in the Cell. Read part 1 here, or download the entire response as a PDF.] The closest that Ayala comes in his review to recognizing the central affirmative argument in the book is his rather clumsy attempt to refute the idea of intelligent design by insisting that existence of “nonsensical” or junk sequences in the human genome demonstrates that it did not arise by intelligent design. As he claims explicitly, “according to Meyer, ID provides a more satisfactory explanation of the human genome than evolution does.” Again, I have to wonder whether Professor Ayala even cracked the pages of the book. My book is not about the origin of the human genome, Read More ›

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wrapped gift kraft paper on a wooden background
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On Not Reading Signature in the Cell

Dr. Francisco Ayala, former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, reviewed (or merely commented on at length, without reading?) Signature in the Cell for The Biologos Foundation’s blog, “Science & the Sacred.” Below is Dr. Meyer’s response. No doubt it happens all the time. There must be many book reviews written by reviewers who have scarcely cracked the pages of the books they purport to review. But those who decide to write such blind reviews typically make at least some effort to acquire information about the book in question so they can describe its content accurately — if, for no other reason, than to avoid embarrassing themselves. Unfortunately, in his review of my book Signature in the Read More ›

On Not Reading Signature in the Cell: A Response to Francisco Ayala (Part 1)

[This response is crossposted from Biologos.org] No doubt it happens all the time. There must be many book reviews written by reviewers who have scarcely cracked the pages of the books they purport to review. But those who decide to write such blind reviews typically make at least some effort to acquire information about the book in question so they can describe its content accurately—if, for no other reason, than to avoid embarrassing themselves. Unfortunately, in his review of my book Signature in the Cell (titled ironically, “On Reading the Cell’s Signature”), eminent evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala does not appear to have even made a search for the crib notes online. Indeed, from reading his review it appears that he did little more than crack Read More ›