This is the heart of Stephen Meyer's argument, and it deserves to be understood clearly. It is not a "God of the gaps" appeal to ignorance; it is an inference to the best explanation from what we positively know about information.
The discovery
In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered that DNA is structured like digital code — four chemical "letters" (A, T, C, G) arranged in long sequences that specify the construction of proteins. The cell reads DNA the way a computer reads binary.
Bill Gates: "DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created."
Francis Collins (former head of the Human Genome Project): "DNA, the molecule of life, is a database of historical events."
The key distinction
DNA is not just complex (lots of stuff). It is specified (arranged in functional sequences). And it is information-rich in the technical sense — strings of symbols carrying functional meaning.
A pile of rocks is complex but not specified. A random string of letters is complex but not specified. A novel is complex and specified — and specified complexity, in every observed case, comes from a mind.
The argument from inference
This isn't an argument from analogy. It is an argument from inference to the best explanation:
- We observe complex specified information in DNA.
- The only known cause of complex specified information is intelligence.
- Therefore, intelligence is the best explanation for the information in DNA.
This is the same form of inference used in archaeology (this is a tool, not a rock), forensics (this was a murder, not an accident), and SETI (this signal would indicate intelligence). Design inference is well-established as a mode of reasoning.
The atheistic counter
"Evolution by natural selection produced the information." But selection requires existing information to act on. Selection sorts; it doesn't create new functional information from random noise.
The math: Meyer calculates that finding a single functional 150-amino-acid protein by random mutation has a probability around 1 in 10164. The universe has existed for about 1017 seconds. There is not enough time in the history of the universe for blind chance to find functional proteins, let alone an integrated cell, let alone a multicellular organism.
Hubert Yockey's information theory
The mathematician Hubert Yockey, who applied information theory to biology, concluded that information cannot arise from random processes alone. The math does not allow it. Information is a fundamentally non-random category.
The Orthodox lens — the deepest answer
The Christian doctrine of Logos is the most profound response. John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… All things were made through him."
DNA is, in a real sense, the chemical script of the Logos written in living matter. The Word is in the world. The same Reason that ordered the cosmos ordered the cell.
St. Maximus the Confessor taught that every created thing has a logos — an inner principle of meaning and being given by the divine Logos. DNA is one of these logoi made visible to our microscopes.
Common objections
- "We just don't know yet." True, but the gaps are widening, not closing. Naturalistic origin-of-information mechanisms have been repeatedly proposed and refuted.
- "Design isn't science." Design inference is used routinely in archaeology, forensics, cryptography, and SETI. There is no principled reason it cannot be used in biology when the evidence warrants.
Stephen Meyer's case in three books
- Signature in the Cell — the origin of life and DNA information.
- Darwin's Doubt — the Cambrian explosion and body-plan information.
- Return of the God Hypothesis — convergent evidence from cosmology, fine-tuning, and biology.
A pastoral word
The more biology discovers, the more the cell looks like the work of a Mind. You can love science and love God. The information in your cells is itself a quiet sign that you were spoken into being by a Voice that knew exactly what it was doing.