Stephen C. Meyer

"The Explanatory Power of Design: DNA and the Origin of Information"

Rather than being thought of as "homogeneous globules of plasm", "modern biologists now describe cells as, among other things, 'distributive real-time computers' and complex information processing systems"

"The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories"

"What natural selection lacks, intelligent selection-purposive or goal-directed design-provides. Rational agents can arrange both matter and symbols with distant goals in mind. In using language, the human mind routinely 'finds' or generates highly improbable linguistic sequences to convey an intended or preconceived idea...The causal powers that natural selection lacks-almost by definition-are associated with the attributes of consciousness and rationality--with purposive intelligence. Thus, by invoking design to explain the origin of new biological information, contemporary design theorists are not positing an arbitrary explanatory element unmotivated by a consideration of the evidence. Instead, they are positing an entity possessing precisely the attributes and causal powers that the phenomenon in question requires as a condition of its production and explanation."

"Our experience-based knowledge of information-flow confirms that systems with large amounts of specified complexity (especially codes and languages) invariably originate from an intelligent source."

The above quotes are from the conclusion of the article that caused such a big uproar that it caused repercussions against the Editor, Richard Sternberg, who allowed it to go into print in a peer-reviewed journal. Quote from Sternberg on pg95 of Johnson's "Probabilities Nature ..."

"DNA And Other Things"

"DNA does not imply the need for an intelligent designer because is has some similarities to a software programme or to a human language. It implies the need for an intelligent designer because ... it possesses an identical feature (namely, information content) that intelligently designed human texts and computer languages possess." [Quoted by Lennox on pg 174 of God's Undertaker as part of his defense against Hume's analogy attack.]

Brief Amici Curiae of Physicians, Scientists, and Historians of Science in Support of Petitioners, Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. , 509 U.S. 579 (1993)

"The quality of a scientific approach or opinion depends on the strength of its factual premises and on the depth and consistency of its reasoning, not on its appearance in a particular journal or on its popularity among other scientists."

"Signature in the Cell"

"Though the designing agent responsible for life may well have been an omnipotent deity, the theory of intelligent design does not claim to be able to determine that. Because the inference to design depends upon our uniform experience of cause and effect in this world, the theory cannot determine whether or not the designing intelligence putatively responsible for life has powers beyond those on display in our experience. Nor can the theory of intelligent design determine whether the intelligent agent responsible for information life acted from the natural or the "supernatural" realm. Instead, the theory of intelligent design merely claims to detect the action of some intelligent cause (with power, at least, equivalent to those we know from experience) and affirms this because we know from experience that only conscious, intelligent agents produce large amounts of specified information."(p428-9)