Meyer tells the story of the successive attempts to solve this mystery of DNA and argues that fundamental objections now exist to the adequacy of all purely naturalistic or materialistic theories. The book then proposes a radical alternative based upon developments in molecular biology and the information sciences: it proposes the design hypothesis as the best explanation for the origin of the information necessary to produce the first life.
SIGNATURE IN THE CELL will not merely provide a critique of evolutionary theories. It also shows that‚ based on our uniform and repeated experience-the basis of all scientific reasoning about the past-there is a strong positive case for intelligent design. From our experience we know that intelligence alone produces large amounts of information. Thus‚ the book shows that the argument for intelligent design from DNA is not based on ignorance or a desire to "give up on science‚" but instead upon just the opposite: our growing scientific knowledge of the inner workings of the cell and our experience-based knowledge of the cause-and-effect structure of the world. For just this reason the argument for design can be formulated as a rigorous and positive scientific argument-specifically one called "an inference to the best explanation." The book shows‚ ironically‚ that the argument for intelligent design from DNA is based on the same method of scientific reasoning that Darwin himself used.
