The vacuity of Stephen Meyer


Via Sandwalk, here is Stephen Meyer explaining the central concepts of his theory: it’s all about the origin of information.

It’s a ridiculous argument. He constantly repeats this mantra of “digital information”: I don’t think he knows what he’s talking about. He also likes to claim that he’s using an accepted scientific argument, of using only known, extant processes and extrapolating to the past; which is fine, except that he pretends ignorance of the fact that we know of natural processes that increase the amount of information in the genome without intervention by any intelligent agent.

He has this silly syllogism that he trumpets in his book, Signature in the Cell:

  1. Despite a thorough search, no material causes have been discovered that demonstrate the power to produce large amounts of specified information.

  2. Intelligent causes have demonstrated the power to produce large amounts of specified information.

  3. Intelligent design constitutes the best, most causally adequate, explanation for information in the cell.

Point #1 is false, except for the trivial loophole of “specified” information, a term he never defines. Point #2 is true. However, Point #3 fails because he hasn’t shown that his first premise is true.

This is all the Discovery Institute has got: blindly repeating the same lies over and over again.