Signature in the Cell

DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design

By: Stephen C. Meyer

Narrated by: Derek Shetterly

Length: 19 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

Named one of the top books of 2009 by the Times Literary Supplement (London), this controversial and compelling audiobook from Dr. Stephen C. Meyer presents a convincing new case for intelligent design (ID) based on revolutionary discoveries in science and DNA. Along the way Meyer argues that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution as expounded in The Origin of Species did not, in fact, refute ID.

If you enjoyed Francis Collins' The Language of God, you'll find much to ponder - about evolution, DNA, and intelligent design - in Signature in the Cell.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2009 Stephen C. Meyer (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers

buries darwinian evolution

you will shake your head in disbelief at how so many people have been duped by the absurdity of Darwinian evolution. This book elucidates just about every aspect of intelligent design and is a compelling obvious correction of how intelligence was necessary to create the information in life and DNA.

ID vs Materialistic view (evolutionary theories)

Well done. Complex science, well described. Great background History examing contenders for Best Origin Theory.

Heavy but well done and thorough.

Meyer is unapologetic and extremely thorough in his research and determination. Although he is a Christian, this is not the perspective of the book, Meyer does a great job of remaining focused on the science.

Authoritative source for origins of life debate

This book is concerned with origin of life - how life first started on Earth. It's not concerned with other aspects of the evolution debate. I'm still looking for two good books (one on each side of the argument) that discuss how humans evolved from the common ancestor of humans and chimps approximately 5 million years ago. 30 million DNA base pair differences in 200,000 generations seems pretty daunting.

Anyway, here's the good, the bad and other random thoughts.

Good: It gives an extensive overview of the basics of a living cell, and some idea of what parts of a cell need to up and running for a cell to propagate. That obviously starts with a strand of DNA. For blue-green "algae" (actually bacteria) that's about 27 million base pairs. This book shows that the DNA strand would be just the beginning of what is needed for a cell to become alive - to consume energy and propagate.

It gives a fairly detailed history of the race to understand the structure of a DNA molecule, and the fact that a trio of DNA base pairs codes for one of twenty amino acids.

The book covers many of the modern attempts to show that life could get started from just a bunch of amino acids, and does a good job of showing how lacking they are.

The Bad:
It's too long. It's over 19 hours, and could probably be stripped down to 10 hours or so without losing much. It goes into too much detail, and repetitive detail, about information coding and whether the information actually has value or is just a bunch of random letters or numbers. It similarly is too detailed about the flaws in the various attempts to simulate life from nothing. He could just tear through a few of the attempts by saying that the experimenter is guiding the path of the simulated life, which would clearly not be happening in real "life".

The author inserts himself into the narrative too much. I would care about the author only if he personally proved that some additional mechanism needed to be in place for a cell to become "alive". I don't believe that was the case.

And, as I noted above, the book doesn't discuss problems with problems of the Darwinian narrative of new species evolving from old species. It's only concerned with the start of life. Of course, since this book is very long, any discourse on new species evolving would merit a separate book.

Other random thoughts:
According to this book, Darwin never talked about the origin of life itself.

The book tried to go into how a 3-base-pair codon codes for an amino acid, but I sure didn't get it. I'll have to look this up elsewhere. I'd also like to explore what we know about how those amino acids code for a protein, and how those knit together an embryo (for higher forms of life), developing into an adult. I don't think anybody knows much. For example, the FOXP2 gene is said to control speech ability in humans. One article I found says that the FOXP2 gene causes 116 other genes to express differently in chimps vs humans. But no clues as to why. So I guess we are still a LOOOOONG way from being able to read the DNA code and figure out what it does, similarly to a computer program.

BTW, I was a math major in college. I took a few biology courses, including genetics, but that's about the extent of my biology knowledge.

A must read!

This book was an excellent listen. If you listen with an open mind, it will certainly help you to see the weakness of the Theory of Evolution. Mathematically it simply does not add up. I read and listen broadly and it helps to reason with others in this divisive issue. It would benefit us all if we could reason and discuss instead of getting emotional and arguing. In all your other reading and listening on this issue, listen to this!

Clear and scientific evidence for intelligent design

Meyer tells his own story of discovery like a biography and the science of the history of the origin of life like a detective story. He brings complex statistical and biological concepts right down to the general public. It was a great book to listen to and clearly convinced me that an intelligent designer played a role in the origin of DNA and therefore in the origin of life.

Articulate, Insightful, and thought-provoking

How many times have I looked at electron transport systems, such as ATP Synthase, and thought there is no logic in believing this basic cellular unit naturally occurred through a chance process. I wish Dr. Meyer could have been my microbiology professor.

A good read for anyone with a scientific bent

Stephen Meyer does an excellent job presenting his case for why Intelligent Design Theory, in his opinion, presents the best case for the design apparently present in living things. He does a fair job of presenting both sides of the argument (methodological naturalism or neo-darwinian evolution VS ID) and why he feels ID is the best theory based upon evidence available. He addresses issues which are brought against ID being a scientific theory and refutes them well.

The book is a scientific book written for folks without a scientific bent (I think it tends to be more scientific/technical than the average reader) and is also a long presentation.

No matter which side of the discussion/debate you fall on, this is enlightening and well worth the read.

Naturalists cannot overcome the DNA Enigma.

Very thorough and thought provoking refutation of the Chance Hypothesis that is posited by Neo Darwinist/ Naturalism adherents.

Thought Provoking. Challenging.

This book will get you thinking. Challenge your "beliefs" and set in your mind that Science is never settled, and neither is history. I encourage all that are interested in the natural sciences as well as genetics to dive in. You will not be sorry.