The Cambrian Information Explosion – Part 3

Extracted from our series, The New Scientific Evidence That Points to the Existence of God, Part 3. Edited for publication.

The Challenge of Developmental Gene Regulatory Networks

Dr. John Ankerberg: In your bestselling book Darwin’s Doubt, you discuss the complex circuitry found in animals. Why does this present a challenge to evolutionary theory?

Dr. Stephen Meyer: Within living cells, we find developmental gene regulatory networks. These are not just strands of DNA, but intricate systems that regulate when information is turned on or off. As cells differentiate—such as a bone cell versus a muscle cell—these circuits ensure the right proteins are activated at the precise moment required for animal development.

Electronic Circuitry in Biological Systems

Scientists at Caltech who mapped these regulatory networks discovered they function remarkably like electronic circuits. However, they also found that these networks are not subject to perturbation. These are highly integrated, fragile systems; if you change them even slightly, animal development shuts down. This creates a significant problem for theories of undirected biological evolution. To transition from one form of animal life to another would require changing these essential networks—the one thing we know cannot happen without destroying the organism.

Inference to the Best Explanation

Dr. John Ankerberg: What led you to propose a scientific hypothesis for intelligent design to answer these questions?

Dr. Stephen Meyer: I began to investigate Darwin’s method of reasoning for studying the remote past, known as "inference to the best explanation." Darwin adopted this from the geologist Charles Lyell, who argued that to explain past events, we should look for causes that are currently in operation—causes known to produce the effect in question. I asked myself: What is the known cause that produces digital code, complex information storage, and processing systems? Our present experience shows only one type of cause: an intelligent agent or a mind.

Information and Conscious Activity

I encountered a principle from information theorist Henry Quastler, who noted that "the creation of new information is habitually associated with conscious activity." In our experience, whenever we see information—whether in hieroglyphics, a book, or computer code—tracing it back to its source leads to a mind, not a material process. Because our uniform experience shows that information requires an intelligent source, this provides a basis for scientific reasoning about the past.

Intelligent Design as the Best Explanation

The case for intelligent design in biology is a positive case. We argue that intelligent design provides the most causally adequate explanation for the information-bearing properties of DNA, the information-processing systems, and the regulatory circuitry we observe in life.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Essentially, intelligent design is pointing to God.

Dr. Stephen Meyer: Initially, the evidence infers the existence of an intelligent agent. However, when you integrate biological evidence with findings from physics and cosmology, the type of designing agent necessary to explain these information systems possesses the attributes that traditional Jews and Christians have long associated with the deity: God.