Signs of Intelligence
by Stephen C. Meyer, Discovery Institute
Consider an even more fundamental argument for design. In 1953, when James Watson and Francis Crick elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule, they made a startling discovery. DNA’s structure allows it to store information in the form of a four-character digital code. Strings of precisely sequenced chemicals called nucleotide bases store and transmit the assembly instructions—the information—for building the crucial protein molecules and machines the cell needs to survive.
Mr. Crick later developed this idea with his famous “sequence hypothesis,” according to which the chemical constituents in DNA function like letters in a written language or symbols in a computer code. As Bill Gates has since noted, “DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.” Clearly, the informational features of the cell at least appear designed. And to date, no theory of undirected chemical evolution has explained the origin of the digital information needed to build the first living cell. Why? There is simply too much information in the cell to be explained by chance alone. And the information in DNA has also been shown to defy explanation by the laws and forces of chemistry. Saying otherwise would be like saying that a newspaper headline might arise as the result of the chemical attraction between ink and paper. Clearly “something else” is at work.
DNA functions like a software program. We know from experience that software comes from programmers. We know generally that information—whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book or encoded in radio signals—always arises from an intelligent source. As the pioneering information theorist Henry Quastler observed, “Information habitually arises from conscious activity.” So the discovery of information in the DNA molecule provides strong grounds for inferring that intelligence played a role in the origin of DNA, even if we weren’t there to observe the system coming into existence.
Thus, contrary to media reports, the theory of intelligent design is not based on ignorance or religion, but instead on re-cent scientific discoveries and on our uniform experience of cause and effect, the basis of all scientific reasoning.
In short, intelligent design, unlike creationism, is not based on the Bible. Design is an inference from biological data, not a deduction from religious authority. Even so, ID may provide support for theistic belief. But that is not grounds for dismissing it. Those who say otherwise confuse the evidence for a the-ory with its possible implications. Many scientists initially rejected the Big Bang theory because it pointed to the need for a transcendent cause of matter, space and time. But science eventually accepted the theory despite such potentially unsettling implications because the evidence strongly supported it. Antony Flew, the long-time atheistic philosopher who has come to accept the case for design, insists correctly that we must “follow the evidence wherever it leads.”