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• Evolution debate on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
• Dr. Meyer's critique of PBS's Evolution series
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Tavis: Tonight we look at the issue of intelligent design with Dr. Stephen Meyer, director and Senior Fellow at the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute. He and his colleagues have been at the center of this growing debate about the teaching of evolution in American schools. He is the co-author of two books, including 'Darwinism, Design, and Public Education.' He joins us tonight from Seattle. Dr. Meyer, nice to have you on the program, sir.

Doctor Stephen Meyer: Great to be with you, Tavis.

Tavis: Let me start with those two questions that I posed in the introduction. Namely, and simply, what is intelligent design, and why is it so controversial?

Meyer: Oh, those are great questions. Well, as to what it is, it's the theory, or the idea, that there are certain features of biological systems that are best explained by an intelligent cause, rather than an undirected process like Darwin's idea of natural selection. What features are we talking about? We're talking about things like the little miniature motors, the rotary engines, the turbines, the sliding clamps, this exquisite nanotechnology that scientists have been discovering in cells over the last 30 years.

And we're also talking about something that's really interesting to me personally, which is the digital code that is inscribed along the spine of the DNA molecule. The instructions that the cell has for building all of these little miniature machines inside the cell. So we've got code, and we've got machines in cells, and this looks to many scientists to be...evidence of an actual intelligent design, not an undirected process.

Tavis: So for my mother who's watching in Indiana, who doesn't have the degrees that you have, or for that matter, that I have, what you're really saying is that the human organism, that the human body is so intricate, that there has to be something other than this mere process of evolution, that makes us who and what we are?

Meyer: Right. I mean, we're not opposed to the idea of evolution per se, meaning change over time, but we are opposed, we are challenging...the Darwinian idea that things arose through a purely undirected process. We think that there, that things arose by some kind of design, and you can see the evidence of that when you look closely at the cell, because you've got, as I said, again, this information encoded in DNA. We know from experience that when you get a, if you need a computer program, you need a computer programmer.

In fact, we know that any time we find information, whether it's in the form of a Hieroglyphic inscription, or a newspaper headline, invariably, there was an intelligent agent behind that information. So when we find information, encoded in the DNA in this four character digital code that is responsible for all the instructions in the cell, it's...the logical inference, an explanation, to say that an intelligent agent of some kind played a role in the origin of that, of those living systems.

Tavis: Let me ask you a question, after this preface. What you call...

Meyer: I don't know if that helped your mother or not. Maybe there were still too many big words.

Tavis: Well, I'm gonna ask another question I think--might advance the conversation for her and others who are watching. Let me put it this way then. What you call intelligent design, my mother and others might call God. So let me ask two questions. One, if it is God we're talking about here, why don't we call it what it is? Number one. And number two, if that's not what you're saying, what then is the distinction, the difference between intelligent design and shall I say, creationism?

Meyer: Well, those are great questions. The key to this is the difference between the evidence and the implications. We're scientists, and we're looking at the evidence. And what we can tell from the evidence is that some kind of intelligence must have played a role. If you see an inscription, you see some written text, if you see software, you know that there was a programmer or an intelligence behind it.

Tavis: Exactly.

Meyer: And that's what we've got in the cell. Now, the questions is to the identity of that intelligence, that's a second question, a second order question. And for people who have a religious belief, this very well may support that religious belief. It's certainly, God is certainly a likely candidate to be the intelligent designer. We just, as scientists, can't prove that from the science. We can see that some intelligence played a role, and for the people who are religious believers, it's a natural thing to associate their belief in God with the evidence they see of design in life. But we're just trying to be accurate and careful about the science and say what we can tell from the science, and what we can't.

Tavis: Fair enough. So, President Bush steps into this debate some days ago and suggests that he thinks intelligent design ought to be taught in schools. Pick up the debate there and tell me what you thought of that controversy that erupted, when he had to say what he said.

Meyer: Well, it kind of interrupted my vacation plans for August. I've been doing a fair number of these shows with your colleagues.

Tavis: Yeah. I'm glad to have you on.

Meyer: Yeah. It's...certainly one of the things we appreciated about the President's statement was that it was a clear statement of principal in favor of academic freedom. And we, what we're finding around the country is that many scientists who are challenging the strict Darwinian interpretation of life, and scientists that are going further and even saying, 'Hey, I think there is evidence of design,' are paying a price for that in their scientific careers. And we've been somewhat reluctant to say, 'We want our theory required in the public schools,' because we've got scientists who have paid a price in the laboratory, in the universities, when they have spoken up.

And at this point, I think we just want to get everyone calmed down, and have a rational discussion about this before we try to push it into the schools, but we appreciated the President's support for the idea that it's a perfectly legitimate thing for students to learn both sides, or many sides of any controversial idea.

Tavis: All right, to this scientific notion, then, that you've put forth of intelligent design, and I like your analogy earlier that if you see software, you know there had to be a programmer, whatever his name is, whatever you want to call him, there had to be a programmer that put this software in place. If that in fact is your argument, and I accept that, I understand it, tell me what the argument is essentially that the critics make against intelligent design being taught. Hate to put you in, you know, in the spot of telling me what your critics say. But as you interpret their argument, what are you hearing most fundamentally about why your critics don't want intelligent design taught in schools.

Meyer: Well, one of the things, maybe the most common thing that we hear is that it's not a scientific explanation to say that intelligence played a role. But there are many sciences that do in fact infer intelligence. If you're an archaeologist, and you find an inscription in a piece of rock, if you're looking at the Rosetta Stone, for example, you're gonna infer that an intelligence played a role. And it turns out that there are developments in some technical fields, complexity and information sciences, that actually enable us to distinguish the results from an intelligent cause...distinguish the results of intelligence as a cause from natural processes.

And when we run those kinds of, modes of analysis on the information in DNA, they kick out the answer, yeah, this was intelligently designed. So, there is actually now a science of design detection and when you analyze life through the...filters of that science, it implies, it shows that life was intelligently designed. So...one of the things we want to say to our critics is, look, we've got to be open to whatever the answer is. We can't decide in advance that we're not gonna allow certain kind of answers to be considered by scientists. The fundamental commitment that every scientist has is to follow the evidence where it leads, even if that leads to an uncomfortable conclusion, one that, you know, maybe your mother would like.

Tavis: Let me ask you, then, where you think this debate is headed. Increasingly, I saw the 'New York Times' op-ed page yesterday, that was pretty much...devoted almost exclusively to this issue, this conversation continues to take place around the country. Where is this conversation, this debate headed as you see, where science and faith, science and God, science and religion are concerned? Where is this intersection, where are we headed with this intersection? Are we headed for some catastrophic crash here?

Meyer: Well, I think first of all, there's a lot of good science that's going to be done on the basis of the idea that life really was designed. I mean, the Darwinian idea is that things look designed, but they're not really designed, because an undirected process called natural selection produced that illusion of design. And we've seen for 30, 40, 50 years now in biology that people actually approach the living cell as if it were an intricately designed system, and then tried it, they actually do reverse engineering in order to figure out how the cell works.

So we think that there's gonna be a lot of good science that's gonna be done on the basis of the conclusion that life was designed. And so that's one thing that our institute is particularly focused on. As far as these larger questions, and people are kind of free to draw their own conclusions. But I think increasingly, people are reluctant to say, as they were at the close of the 19th century, that there's a conflict between science and religious belief. I think increasingly, people see that the two can go hand in hand in harmony, and in fact that there's some evidence that actually supports a larger theistic perspective without necessarily being a proof of God's existence or something like that.

Tavis: All right, let me ask you then a two part exit question that might be a bit unfair, but forgive me in advance for asking you, because I'm curious here. Tell me...

Meyer: You want to ask the hard questions. That's your job, right?

Tavis: Yeah, well that is my job. Let me ask you, then, a two part exit question. Part one, what is, and I think you may have already answered it, but I just want to get back on record here again, and make sure I'm clear about it. What do you think is the strongest argument that you all can make at this moment for intelligent design? And where do you think that you're a little shaky, where does more work have to be done for you all to get the majority of Americans, or a significant number of Americans to accept the fact that intelligent design ought to be taught in schools? Where you're strong, and where you're weak. Where you're shaky.

Meyer: Thanks. You know, maybe I should clarify first, just that we're not asking for our theory to be required in the schools.

Tavis: Fair enough.

Meyer: If a teacher wants to talk about it voluntarily, they should, but we don't want teachers to get, experience the kind of recriminations that some of our scientists have experienced.

Tavis: Right.

Meyer: I mean, we don't want teachers getting lynched over bringing an idea into the classroom. But we, of course, think they ought to be free to do that. But on the science, I think this argument from information is extremely strong. I mean, people get it right away. I think more and more scientists are getting intrigued with the idea that we've got an information processing system and digital code in the cell. We've got to explain that. We haven't done that from an evolutionary standpoint. And yet it screams intelligence. We've also got a lot of little miniature machines that also look for all the world like something that was designed by very, very intelligent engineers. So I think those are very strong arguments for design.

I think one of the things that we want to do to advance our research program further is start to draw up the implications of intelligent design for different aspects of biology. And that's gonna take more research dollars, more scientists devoting their career to that. And we see, we're in the early stages of that, and we think there will be more research coming that shows how fruitful intelligent design is for making other discoveries in science.

Tavis: Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute. Dr. Meyer, I enjoyed our conversation and I suspect in the coming days, months, and years, we'll get a chance to talk about this again. I got a feeling this won't be the last conversation.

Meyer: I enjoyed it, too, Tavis. Thanks for having me.

Tavis: Glad to have you on the program. Up next, funk music legend George Clinton. Stay with us.

It's about to get funky up in here. Please do welcome legendary funk impresario...

George Clinton: Ooh, ooh, ooh.

Tavis: (laughs)... George Clinton to the program.

Clinton: That's my signal.