It impressed me to see that scientists who had always accepted the standard evolutionary story were now defending a theistic belief, not on the basis that it makes them feel good or provides some form of subjective contentment, but because the scientific evidence suggests an activity of mind that is beyond nature.
"[12][15] Charles Thaxton organised the conference held in Dallas on 9–10 February 1985, featuring Antony Flew, and Dean H. Kenyon who spoke on "Going Beyond the Naturalistic Mindset: Origin of Life Studies".
In the Fall of 1987 Labberton introduced Meyer to Phillip E. Johnson who was on a sabbatical at University College London, and having become "obsessed with evolution" had begun writing a book on what he saw as its problems.
They contrasted this with "purely material, scientific" ideas which equated humans to animals, and restated their central thesis that "Only if man is (in fact) a product of special Divine purposes can his claim to distinctive or intrinsic dignity be sustained."
[27][28] Meyer recalls the term coming up at a June 1988 conference in Tacoma organised by Thaxton, who "referred to a theory that the presence of DNA in a living cell is evidence of a designing intelligence.
[33] Meyer participated in the "Ad Hoc Origins Committee" defending Johnson's Darwin on Trial in 1992 or 1993 (in response to Stephen Jay Gould's review of it in the July 1992 issue of Scientific American), while with the Philosophy department at Whitworth College.
[34] In December 1993, Bruce Chapman, president and founder of the Discovery Institute, noticed an essay in the Wall Street Journal by Meyer about a dispute when biology lecturer Dean H. Kenyon taught intelligent design in introductory classes.
He has also been an active debater such as in April 2006 with Peter Ward, a paleontologist from the University of Washington held an open online discussion on the topic of intelligent design in the Talk of the Times forum in Seattle, WA.
[44] The presentation included submission of an annotated bibliography of 44 peer-reviewed scientific articles that he claimed raise significant challenges to key tenets of "Darwinian evolution".
The professor of biology Kenneth R. Miller replied that comments and not approved amendments in conference committee reports do not carry the weight of law and that Meyer had misled the board of education in implying that they do.
[51] The journal's reasons for disavowing the article were rebutted by Sternberg, who says the paper underwent the standard peer-review process and that he was encouraged to publish it by a member of the Council of the BSW.
In a 2006 article published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, a group of writers that included historian of science Ronald L. Numbers (author of The Creationists), philosopher of biology Elliott Sober, Wisconsin State Assembly representative Terese Berceau, and four members of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison characterized such claims as being a hoax.
[57] On their website refuting the claims in the film Expelled (which featured Meyer), the National Center for Science Education states that "Intelligent design advocates ... have no research and no evidence, and have repeatedly shown themselves unwilling to formulate testable hypotheses; yet they complain about an imagined exclusion, even after having flunked the basics.
The philosopher Thomas Nagel, who generally argues in opposition to the philosophical position of physicalist reductionism specifically and materialism more generally, submitted the book as his contribution to the "2009 Books of the Year" supplement for The Times, writing "Signature in the Cell...is a detailed account of the problem of how life came into existence from lifeless matter – something that had to happen before the process of biological evolution could begin ... Meyer is a Christian, but atheists, and theists who believe God never intervenes in the natural world, will be instructed by his careful presentation of this fiendishly difficult problem.
"[60] Stephen Fletcher, chemist at Loughborough University, responded in The Times Literary Supplement that Nagel was "promot[ing] the book to the rest of us using statements that are factually incorrect.
"[62] Darrel Falk, former president of the BioLogos Foundation and a biology professor at Point Loma Nazarene University, reviewed the book, saying it illustrates why he does not support the intelligent design movement.
Prothero criticizes Meyer for ignoring much of the fossil record and instead focusing on a later stage to give the impression that all Cambrian life forms appeared abruptly without predecessors.
Decades of fossil discovery around the world, aided by new computational analytical techniques enable scientists to construct a more complete portrait of the tree of life which was not available to Darwin (hence his "doubt" in Meyer's words).
Cook cites Nick Matzke's analysis that the major gaps identified by Meyer are derived from his lack of understanding of the field's key statistical techniques (among other things) and his misleading rearrangement of the tree of life.
[67] Cook references scientific literature[68] to refute Meyer's argument that the genetic machinery of life is incapable of big leaps therefore any major biological advancement must be the result of intervention by the 'intelligent designer'.
The main argument of Meyer is the mathematically impossible time scale that is needed to support emergence of new genes which drive the explosion of new species during the Cambrian period.
The root of his bias is his "God of the gaps" approach to knowledge and the sentimental quest to "provide solace to those who feel their faith undermined by secular society and by science in particular".