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Friday Five: Dr. Stephen Meyer, Discovery Institute

by Kim Trobee, editor

With the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species fast approaching, Dr. Meyer explains the holes in the theory of evolution and the magnificent ode to intelligent design within the human cell.

Dr. Stephen Meyer is director and senior fellow of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute.  After completing undergraduate degrees in physics and geology and working in the oil industry, he went to Cambridge in 1986 to pursue a degree in the philosophy of science.  Fascinated with the question of how life began and the possibility of intelligent design, Meyer embarked on a journey to find the answer.  His book, Signature in the Cell, is the story of that journey.

1.  Darwinism has been around for 150 years.  How has the theory affected our culture?

Darwin, along with Marx and Freud, other 19th century thinkers, provided the basis of a comprehensive materialistic worldview.  Many people associate materialism with spending sprees, supermalls and the slogan, "he who dies with the most toys, wins," but materialism is more than a lifestyle of conspicuous consumption. It is also a philosophy that treats the material world as the whole of reality. Materialism asserts that matter and energy, not God, are the things from which everything else comes. As the late Stephen J. Gould put it, "Matter is the ground of all existence; mind, spirit, and God as well, are just words that express the wondrous results of neuronal complexity."

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