Each cell with genetic information, from bacteria to man, according to molecular biologist Michael Denton, consists of “artificial languages and their decoding systems, memory banks for information storage and retrieval, elegant control systems regulating the automated assembly of parts and components, error fail-safe and proof-reading devices utilized for quality control, assembly processes involving the principle of prefabrication and modular construction … [and a] capacity not equaled in any of our most advanced machines, for it would be capable of replicating its entire structure within a matter of a few hours” (Denton, p. 329).
DNA: The Tiny Code That's Toppling Evolution
Encyclopedia of American Loons: #276: Stephen Meyer
Stephen C. Meyer is a philosopher and one of the hotshots of the Discovery Institute. And like some philosophers and all Discovery Institute people, he likes to make grand claims about scientific fields about which he must be counted as an
illiterate. Meyer helped found the Center for Science and Culture (CSC) of the Discovery Institute (DI), which is the major hive for the ID creationist movement. Meyer is currently vice president and a senior fellow at CSC, and a director of the Access Research Network. He has been described as “the person who brought ID (intelligent design) to DI (Discovery Institute)”, he contributed to the second edition of Dean Kenyon’s “
Of Pandas and People”, wrote (with Ralph Seelke) the ID textbook “Explore Evolution”, was
appointed by the Texas Board of Education to be on the committee reviewing Texas’s science curriculum standards, is the primary link to DI sponsor and Taliban theocrat loon Howard Ahmanson, and was partly responsible for the
Wedge Strategy, as well as an active speaker and debate panelist.
In 1999, Meyer (with David DeWolf and Mark DeForrest) designed a legal strategy for introducing intelligent design into public schools in the book “Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curriculum.” (I mean, the point of ID is to get creationism and religion into the schools, not to do science). He is perhaps most famous for trying to realize the strategy through helping to introduce ID to the
Dover Area School District(more extensively
here), and for his
ridiculous 2009 book “Signature in the Cell” (which a probably drunk/dementia suffering Thomas Nagel
actually praised, flaunting his own ignorance of science). PZ Myers was offered a review copy by Meyer’s assistant Janet Oberembt, but
never received it. The book actually makes twelve “
predictions” for ID (although they are not predictions in the ordinary scientific sense because they are not derived from any concrete theory, and they all concern testing the theory of evolution, not ID). He also offers a “
theory”. The theory is unrelated to the predictions. He derives no predictions from his theory. He
offers nothing resembling a coherent justification either, so the book didn’t receive much positive feedback from
actual scientists. He has offered some
appeals to authority, however (“Thomas Jefferson wasn’t a Darwinist”).
In March 2002 he announced the “teach the controversy” strategy aimed at promoting the false idea that the theory of evolution is controversial within scientific circles, following a presentation to the Ohio State Board of Education. Since Meyer knows this is false, he was lying, but
dishonesty isn’t exactly a
surprising trait in ID advocates. The presentation included a bibliography of 44 peer-reviewed scientific articles that were said to raise significant challenges to key tenets of what was referred to as "”Darwinian evolution”. When NCSE contacted the authors,
none of the authors who responded (the authors of thirty-four of the papers) thought that their research provided evidence against evolution. Meyer also publicly claimed that the “Santorum Amendment” was part of the Education Bill, and therefore that the State of Ohio was required to teach alternative theories to evolution as part of its biology curriculum. Which is
demonstrably false, but tells you a lot about the DI creationists.
Of course, he thinks there is active persecution of the purportedly fast-growing number of scientists rejecting evolution in Academia (probably because he cannot find any). He was interviewed about those claims in
Expelled.
Diagnosis: One of the staunchest, most influential, most dishonest anti-science advocates in the world. Crackpot and complete hack.
