important becaue refuted the old classica argumentrom design. franciscoyala, one of the past presiden of the aaas puts it this way. he says the functional design of living organisms and their features would seem to argue for the existence of a designer. it was darwin's greatest accolishment to show the directive ornization of living beans can be explained as the result of the natural process natural selecon actg on random mutations without any need t resort to a creator or any other external agent. idea is picked up in the works of richard dawkins. dawkins puts it this way in his classic work, "thelind watch

maker." he ss, biolo is the study of complicatedhings that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose. i'm an old college professor, but i want to offer a quiz right now for anyone who can come up with the keyword this this quotation. it's obvusly appearance, right? things look as thougthe been designed but they weren't because there a purely and guided mechanism and natural selection acting on random variations or even that can produce the appearance or the illusion of design without that mechanism of natural selection being guided or directed in any wa th was berlinski idea. natural selection of course being feel idea of random variations and a population an differential reproduction. now, let's put tha idea of

darwin's in context. what he was trying to show is that all of the living forms that have risen since the very beginning of life were produced by a purely on direct and natural process a the proce again is natural selection darwin also depicted the history of life as it a tree and he suggested they are represented by the branches of the top of the te. the draft, the crocodiles, the birds, mammals of the various kinds, ourselves, and all of those forms eventually could be traced back. they descended by the power of natural selection from originally one or very few simple forms. so that's his theory of evolution sometimes called biolical evolution because what darwin was attempting to do is explain all of the forms we have today from simple a pre-existing forms.

but darwin didn't answer a fundamental question, mor fundamental questi of ct he didn'tven address it and that ishe questikn of the origin of the first life, the form of life represented by the very base of the tree or the trunk. to get life going somehower simple chemicals have to be converted into a living cell. darwin didn't address that topic and we will see as lector proceeds 150 years subsequent generations of scientists who have addressed it haven't be able to solve the mystery of the origin of the first life either. now there is question today in the scientific literature and among many of my colagues of the discovery institute about this efficiency ofarwin's theory getting fm the first life to all the living forms we see today. but r the purpose of argument i am going to set that qstion aside in this lture as i've done in my book to focus on this

more fundamental questio the question of the origin of the very first life. n that very first life be explained as the resulof a purely on directed process such that any appearance of design we might find and for example the first livi cell can be safely assumed to be an illusion? or is there evidence of actual design, is designed merely parent or is there tual intelligent design? that is the question i am going to addresspecifically as it relates to the origin of the first life. now, and darwin's times scientists were not particularly coerned about this. there waa general materiistic turn and scice during the late 19th century wi attempt to explain all major phenomenon by reference to maer in motion. maybe the laws of nature. bueven though there wasn't a formal theory of therigin of first life scientists were all very concerned about not having such a theory by and talking

about materialistic we oriented evolutionary biologists because they assumed the cell was extrely simple. it didn't seem it was goi to be difficult to produce an explanation for the origin of the first cell because the cells thought to be something like a blob of jell-o which could be produced by a few simple ingredients, simple chemical ingredients reacting with each other in one or two simple reactions. i love the quo othe screen behind me because it makes me feel so very smart and able to look back with a benefit of hindsight and all at's been discovered in the last half century and indeed last 100 even last just ten years and feels like molecular and cl biogy and genomics but this is thomas henry huxley and darwin's famous protagonist paul balk and he said at the time the cell is a simple homogenous blobby will

alw se. a simple goal of jello. so there wasn't all lot of worry not being able to exain this appearance of designed because scieists at the time didn't think the sell appeared of that design. it just looked like something a few chemical reactions cou produce. they felt the essence of life was the sstance on the inside of the membrane call protlasm, and all of that changed, first gradually at the turn of the century as we began to learnore about proteis and metabolism but then dramatically in the 1950's and 1960's during the period of time historis of science calledolecular biological revolutio the key discovery in this period of time or one of the key discoveries was the discovery by watson and crick of the structure of the dna molecule, the famous double helix with which most of us are familiar the helix is not kind of a cultural icon.

we see donner ns reports and we know that criminals are convicted because of dna evidence and we knmw that there are biotech firms investigating dna and jeans and the like so we are l veryamiliar with dna but at the same time there's something profoundly mysterious about this model that we have never come to grips with and that is what my book is about. one way to think of it is to think of something else, another one of the burly and discoveries of francis crick. the brilliant english physicist turned biologist. he had been a code breer in world war ii and he ended up being iolved in breaking the ulmate code, the digital code stored in the dna molecul from 1957 he proposed an amplification of t worhe and watson had done in 1953 and that was his so-called sequence hypothesis. according to which the fo

chemicals on the inside the spine of the molecule, tnes i've represented wit the letters a, c, g, pea,e proposed those chemicals called bases functioned exactly like alphabetic characters a written language or digital characters in a machine code. if you stop and think about this and set aside the familiarity that we all have with this subject from high schol biology, you have to realize we all have toealize this is an absolutely stunning hypophysis one which was confirmed in a series of discoveries over the next ten to 15 years during this revolution in molecular biology and what wac discoveredas these characters, the four chemicals that function as characters director of the production of proteins and the protein machines that keep the cell alive. now the way this works inside is

that the air arrangements of the a' c's, g's, and t's, de construct the amino protein acids. and here is a vual aid. some of you have seen a veron of this talk before so we are getting very frightened by all of this amino acid talk but i am going to break thi dn. these are snap block beads on the box and from which rice-schild then it said ages two to four. [laughter] it ia child's toy but illustrates something important how molecular biologyorks. proteins are like the tool x in the cell and they are formed om amino acids which i have represented. protei hearts three-dimensional shapes that allow them in a hand and glove fashion to perform critical functions inside the cell, just

as the tool box in the crotch and have a hammer andaw and french and some of the lawyers and ech of those tools has a relationship between its form and function. the shape of the tool largely determines what kind of job it can do. the same kind of relationship exists between the shape of the protein cell. here are pictures of the internet of the intricate three-dimensional shapes preins have. thoqe shapes are determined in rge part by the interactions between these amino aci. each of these amino acids have r our called side chains, will stkiest of the backbone, that's the technical term, and the slight chance in place and set a constellation of the forces that cause different shapes to form and those shapes

again are responsible for the nctions pteins can perform insi the cell. here's an example of a protein enzyme that performs, break apart two-part sugar molecule. you see the cut outn the middleart of the slide shows the hand in glove fit beten whats called thective site and protein and the sugar that looklike a barbell and you can see there's a pfect hand and glove fit that is responsible for the chemical braking the ensign accomplishes and this is typical oflmt all proteins. they perform their function because of this exquisite three-dimensional specificity, this hand and glove fit. the key question is how does that specifcity our ives and we know the specificity of shape and the protein derived from the specificity of sequence in any no acids which in turn derives

from the specificity of sequence and arrangement, the information, the instructions, the digital code stored along e spine of the dna molecule so that is what i call the dna and make my and i will explain in a minute why i call that and make love. before we do that though it might be helpful to have visual representation of exactly what the instructions, the digital code in dna does within the molecule or within the cell. we now know that and is nice to have a look. i am going to in a second press the button and you will see an animation and it is first going to sw the digital code represente symbolically along the spine of the molecule then you will see a lot of stuff that starts to happen fast and when you will see is the dna molecule will be separat by a large proteicomplex that will open the molecule and explosives from copying and then you are going to see another large protein

complex called apr race which is the sell's copy machine d it is going to come in and attach itself to the dna and u wl see it spit out a single stranded copy of the dna information and the copy is going to go out and eventually direct the production of protein machines. i'm going to show this animation starting with a digital de on the dna. he we see the dna and code represented graphically with a's, c's, g's, and t's and now we are going to see the protein complex attach itself and that's preparing of the molecule, the dna strd to be copied and there we see the polymer race at that and it's beginning to sprout the single strande copy. this is view on the inse of individual basis positioned and

added to former this single stranded copy of the genetic instructions. now there's the copied completed and it's going to be transported out to something called the nuclear complex which i an information recognition device that controls the flow of inrmation in and out of the cell's nucleus. out it goes and it's now going to approach and be transported to two-part chemical factory called arasm and it's gog to thread in and as the messenger transcript is red and threads through it is now going to provide the instructions for buildinghehain of amino acids which you see along the border and a mechanical assembly process and sues as the amino acids are linked up a accord

with the three letter words and the genetic message. now we see the ribosome and ad the bottom you see the growing protein chain, the messengers transcript is at the top of it begins unfolding process, and en i is often shepherded to something called what is a barrel shaped protein that will cause it to fold even more specificity. it's called a chaperone. d the animator here in just a second is going to show when the protein comes into its final nfirmation. it's going to light up for us. there we go. and then the door opens and out it goes to the outer coplasm into the cell where it will do its job and you can see the animat has done a lovely job of bringing to life the beauty and intricacy inde t cell.

so that what we arealking abott when we are talking about what dna does. it directs the instructions, it is the instructions that drexel protein synthesis and all the wonderful maches the protein make. okay. so i called this the dna in it now. but what is the dna in it? it inot the question of the structured dna watson and crick solved that in 73 of cours the first line of myook is when watson and crick they solved the mystery by the they created another. this, the mystery is it the mystery of structured dna. it'sotven the mystery of where biological information reside. we now know where some of the information living organisms resi and it recites a long the dna molecule. the dna in a, mystery of what information in the dna does. we now have a very good hane

on that. we havseen an imation albeit perhaps a little simplified of whats called gene expressio or protein synthesis, dna rex the process. instea the dna in it, is something even more fundamental. it's the mysry of the origin of the information on the dna molecule. and that mystery is intimately connected with anotheand very profound longstanding mystery and that is the mystery of e origin of life. here we have a lding germa origin of life biochemist burt wolf küppers who says it is eqvalent to the problem of biological information. the origin of biological information. now, it is fairly easy to see why the problem of the origin of life and of information are so intimately concted i used to like to ask my students if you want to give your computer a new function what do you have to

give it? be put immediately understand. the are better at computers than anyone over 30 and its code you have to give the computer -- you have to gi it a new program. the same is true in life you want to build a new organism from a pre-existing organism if you want to ild an organ or structure or molular machine information is required. proteins are required and that means new informati. more fundantally, if you want to build a life in the fst part if you want to get life going you need information. the very information we know runs the show in biology the information in dna the first living cell would have required such infortion and that is the dna enigma, the mystery of the origin necessary tproduce the first life now for engineers and scientts in the group one clarifying point might be helpful. it is a mathematical

understandingescription of informatn provided by mathematician claude shannon and this is the simpler forms of one of his equations and mathematically information is inversely related to probability so the more improbable sequence of characters is the more information it conveys. however a limit to that mathematical concept of information. shannon's equation and his form of analysis cannot help us captured the distincti between thestwoypesf sequences. the sequence of the top is very improbable, a very probable of arrangement voss on shaon's pherae it has a large cultural amnt of iortion or information care capacity. the sequence on theottom is al very improbable and therefore has a lot of shannon information that has something else, an extra long qualitative element. it has a cificity of arrangement that enabs that

sequence to carry or convey functional informaon. it performs the communication function and the term of art in the information sciences is the bottom string is specified information or specfied complexity for the top string is really complex or it merely has shannon information. when we talk about the beginning in may, about the kind of information necessary to get life, and it's important to recognize we are talking about specified information, functionally specified information where the air arrangement of the characters matters. and francis crick and the genius on the cutting edge of the late 1950'saslear to clarify is from the beginning of the molecular biological revolution. he said by information information means hear the precise derminationf sequence either of the bases in the nucleus acid and dna or of the e and l acids and

proteins. we are talnghen we talk out biological information the kind that needs to be explained to understand origin of life we are talking about specified functionally specified information not merely shannon information or in probability. i first encountered the dna in a, at a conference in 1985. there were sever scientists i have come to know in the ensuing years but one had just published a book called the mystery of life's origin. at this conference, he share the critique that he had provided in his book of the trees of t checal origin of life a he provided an exhaustive critique and though the conference will set uas the debate between different schools of thought nearly evyone on the panel accepted the maithrust of his critique that series of chemical evolution as they were called do not provide adequate explanation and i became fascinated with

this qstion because i had been under the impression havingone through to science degrees of the evolutionary biologist at all the questions and so not and there was rather striking and surprising to learn leading igin of life scaentists concededhe of have -- all the aners or even the key interest the central question and i learned the key question tt was a stumbling block for the origin of life was a question of origin of iormation. so a year or so later i was o toidge england and began a program after having a number of long conversations with dr. dr. saxton. in my graduate studies i naturally did two things. first of all, i studied the

competing theories of the origin of life that were out there and one of the reasons this was such profound mysterys the problem of the origin of information is a problem of a parent design three we talked about how the darwinian attempt toxplain away but when we are lking about the digital code, maine code inside a cell we are talking about something as richard dawkins himself acknowledges is on uncannily computer like. bill gates our hero here in setle said dna is like a computer program far more advanced than any we've ever created. and so the question arises is this appearance of design, this code that looks for all the wod that functions for all the world like a computer program or maybe a section of code in achad program and a manufacturing plant,s this the product of intelligence? looks as if it were designed

by intelligence. is there and on direct mechanism that can explain this appearance of design at the foundation of life? that was the question that seems to me as i began to investigate and i came across a book by a molecular biologt who was a colleague of crac in the 60's and he wrote a treatise how scientists should go about solving proems. and on the cover of his book called chance and necessity, he said if you're going to be scientists you shod approach all problems with the same basic strategies. you shkuld try to explain all phenomena by reference to the chance prophecies by reference to natural law or at he might call necessity, the principles of nature thad ford the same thing to happen all the time or by a combination of the two and as i began to investigate the different theories about the origin of life i found sure enough the various theories exemplified one of these two or ree basic approaches. ey either exemplified reliance

upon chants or reliance on the necessity or natural laws or what were called self organizational scenarios where the physics and chemistry were invoked to try to explain ntral ingredients of life, were soee modelsttempted to explain the combintion of the tgo and one such model lescol diprete diav natural selection. it tried to inve natural selection before life began and the natural selection interacted with random events. now in my booi will get a whole series of proposals that have been made to try to solve the dna in it much to account for the origin of information necessary to build the first life, and i showed that each of these proposals exemplifies one of the three bic approaches that jacques minoweaout and 1967 and i critique these models

but in some wayit wasn't my job to critique them or've been able to simply report the critiques made of these models by of their origin of life here guests who've become convinced indeed theield is at a state of in past. when i give this talking longer form i like to go into a number of key models and exemplify what is wrong with each of these basic approaches. th good people at c-span, however, have about 65 minutes of tape tonight, so we are going to kind of eape by this and i am going to look at one of these approaches. one that kind of exemplifies exactly why the problem of the origin of informatiois such a deep mistreat and am going to look at this approach specifically because it has been one of the most popular approach is to solve the problem of the origin of life. it's sometimes known as self organization and it relies on what youight call forces of chemical necessity.

it was first proposed in the 19's by a scientist named dean kenyon and garrey stein and and and th idea was you cld explain the origin of the specific arrangements of the amino acids you find in proteins and i suppose they hope you coul also explain the origin of the a range of the base in a dna molecule because t forces of emical attraction, fors of necessity. most of us are familiar with ystals and in particular the chemical formulaor the crystal salt which is as i rall in a and cl. there is a force of chemical traction that creates the structure, orderly structure that repeats over and over agai and the idea is as the order in a crystal of the force of traction, so tis the arrangement of the key constituent parts of the bio molecules also theroduct of

forces of attraction. the scientists ho advanced is principally was dean kenyon. he happened to be at the same conference and 85 where i heard charles thaxton speak and he was repudiating s own theory he had called biochemical predestition for presbyterians here he was not a calvinist. [laughter] he was referring to the forces of attraction between of the constituent parts of the key molecules. in 198he ended up reject he publicly repudiated his own theory which was a shock of this conference, sent a ripple through the field of origin fe, biology and it got me even more intrigued witthis whole subjt. now, i want to illustrate why this idea of biochemical predestination doesn't work and

what can and himself came to in his understanding w his theory didn't work. he realized even if you have forcesf attraction that could help explain w the edemea acids line up the way they do in proteins y have a more fundamental issue, and that is you had to explain the origiof the information becse we know the dna produces the sequence arrangement of amino acids and proteins, and as he examined more carefully, the checal structure of the dna molecule, heealized his pposal was never going to work. if y look at the chemical structure of dna you see on the outside parts ofhe olecule little circles, that is the representati owhat is cald the sugar phosphates backbone. that part of the molule is the meum upon which the genetic text is inscred. it is l the information. it is the medium where the

inrmation is stod. alonthe spinof the molecule in the vertical ax where you see a's, c's, t's, and g's, that is where the information was stored you have forces of attraction responsible for causing the key message bearing information bearing constituents of the b moculeto line up a particular way. notice that there are no little sticks between the a's, c's, t's, and g's. the little sticks in a structural, and chemastry represent bonds. there are bonds between the schricker backbone but those bonds are the same no matter which one of the chemical characters is being attached to the backbone. lot of chemistry but let me break it dn with another official -- visual aid.

a little visual says min over tter. it says something have the mariners rock t i am not se how they do. so this is a magnetic chalkboard and i have got magnetic platters that stick to the chalkboard. there are forces of attraction here at work, se organizational force is you might consid them. except is the information in this message the result of magneticorces of attraction that cause them to stick to the backboard? can you see the information isn't the result the magnetism? instead you can see tt because the magnetic forces are at work as i disrupt that message, rit? this is a very nice analogy to what is going on in the dna molecule. the backbone of the molecule corresponds to the back board. it's the medium of the message. there are forces of attraction that expla why the basis stick

to the backbone. but the forces of attraction do not explain the sequential arrangement of t characts. do you see that, there are no bonds between the characters and the same type of chemical bond is responsible for each site where the characters tick. just ashe same force o magnetic attraction no matter which letter you put at exactly this site so what i am trying to illustrate there is nothing abt the chemistry of the dna molecule thadictates the sequential arrangement of the characters that constitute the informatn. it'sot the chemistry that produces the sequences that coey thenstrtion. it is something has become a chemist michael says it is extraneous to the physics and chemistry. it would be like saying that the information in this morning's seattle headlines is the result of eink bonding to paper. we know clearly something else is at work. by the way what else is at work?

>> [inaudible] >> okay. tuitivy we recognize there's ttle message on the chalkboard, the head line, there is the idea there is intelligence behind the informion. i first encountered this idea in discussion with charles thaxton because he had this very strongly. in an epilogue to his book he and his co-authors developed this idea or the sketched out and when i left for graduate school a began mwork in cambridgi was seized with the question could this connection beeen information and intelligence be developed into a rigorous scientific argument? and so naturally i went back and i studied the scientific methods of reasoning that are used by scientists trying to reconstruct the past and develop tories of origins and of course that led me to charles darwin and it

turns out darwin oneered a meod of sentic reasoning that goes by a couple different names sometimes called the method of multiple competing hypotheses and is sometimes called the net intert to the best explanation. and we see here in a quote whe he is defending his own scientific method he says it seems to me is opposing such a hypothesis were t elain such general propositions, he means facts, we ought in accordance with the common way of falling all science is tadmit until some better hypophysis be found out. he's describing hi u of this negative inference to the best explation. and this is the way the medicos. 's designed bycientists who are trying to determine the cause of an ancient event. and they have a limitation. scientists, stical scientists try to do this are not able to go back and see the event so wh they do is propose different hypotheses what caused the event and they evaluate each one hoping in the best of cases

to find only one that is adequate to explain the effect in question. but that leads to a queion. a question of scientific method. how do we determine which of the competing causes is best? how do wtermine which explationprovides t bt explanation fothe event that we are trying to explain? it turned out that darwin and his keycientific mentor charles lyell had a reasoning they used to guide them method of reasoning about the distant past. and one day while glancing at the front piece of lyell's but i had an epiphajy because the subtitle of lyell's book crystalled this bad in a single phrase. he says, the title of his book is principles of geology began an attem to explain the four changes of the earth's sface by reference to clause is now in operation. the principal was simple. if you -if you are going to

try to explainn event in the remo past you want to voke a cause which is known to produce the effected question. if y walt to explainhe leader of volcanic ash that exists in eastern washington you are going to prer the volcanic eruptions hypophysis over th earthquakes hypothesis because we know that volcanoes produce such phenomena and earthques do not. so i ask what is the clause operation that produces digital code? at is the cause we know what for our uniform repeat experience in the methodological dictum of darwin and lyell we should be looking forauses in operation we know from you before repeated experience. what is the cause in operation for production of information generally? intelligence. thank you. exactly what i felt.

later i came across information scientist, pione and the degree to molecular biologists who happened to make the same observation. he said the creation of new inrmation is associated with nscious activity. is that true? indy 500 it is. remember theuote from bill gates, dna is like a computer program by far more advanced than we've created. we know programs come from programmers. information genellwhether we are talking about a high rock creek -- hieroglyphic inscription or dig code in a computer program always comes fromn intelligence soce. we know tt from uniform repeated experncerom our present experience of cause and effect. we know that cause that is now in operati. so as i examined the cpeting approaches to explain dna in it, the origin of information to produce the fst life i very

consciously developed the case for design using the very method darwin himself used the method of multiple competing hypotheses. in the book and look at hypothesis on chance and those on necessity and those based on the combination of the to and show from the literature and the origin of life biology each of these approaches have failed. it is the unknown information and th cause is intelligent desi, conscious activity and therefore if there's only one known cause the presence of the effect points strongly ck to the action of the cause s that's the argument i've developed and signature in the cell that is in a sense the argument based on biology one no one. one of the things also excitifg i address in the book and i will briefl touch on here is there are many other signatures or

fingerprints of intelligence in the informational properties of living systems. my colleagues of the biological institute or the lab wetarted here in seattle and redmond have been working on the computational simulation of that and anition gene expression and one of my colleagues is a computer programmer, an architect levelrogrammer microsoft and he was working closely with molecur biologists. one day he came in my office and dropd a book on the desk in front of me called design patterns. it is apparently a standard maible for software engineers, and my colleague said to me i am getting an eerie feeling someone gured all this out before. [laughter] and i said what do you mean? and he explained to me the concept of a design pattern apparent a term of art in computer science that means a design strategy or a sign of

gic and he said there's all kind of different design strategies, designatterns we us to process information. and i am finding all of them inside the cell or many of them and he said the interesting thinis they are in -- and they start talking microsoft talk like the r and 8.010.0 version of the strategy that we use and they are executive same design and logic but executed was much more engineering elegance, and some of the things i discuss some of these design patterns in the la part of the book the fact we have meages within messages in the genomes called nested coating of information. various files within folders, folders with in super folders storing information. hierarchal system in the genome. there is a distributed storage and retrievalystem fojeneane beck modules for informational

modules, datasets and the operating system in the gome it's not john, the operating system causing the modules to be accessed and that's what we understand a gene to be. every level we are seeing a hierarchy of information and it's just an absolutely fascinating system that's been revealed by the most current discoveries in modern biology and modern original mix so it's a very exciting time to be interested in molecular biology and genetics but there's also new studies and discoveries shoving the case for intelligent design is stronger. each of these design patterns is a feature for which there is only one known cause i the universe and that is intelligent design. in closing i would like to make e more point because the objectioto intellige design a this argument for ignorance we are arguing for what we don't

know rathethan what we do know. am i sometimes debating partner has made this objection repeatedly. he says intelligent dign argues life is to specifically complex to have evolved by natural forces there far life is created by intelligent designer. he is acsing us of our doing in a fallacious manner like th. he's saying argument for design is basically simply constitutes nothing more than ignorance what natural processhese can do. he's saying we are arguing processe cannot produce defect in question therefore since we can't think ofnything else we invoke the mysrious notion of intelligent design. in fact the notion of intelligent design isn't mysterious. it is something we know about for our own experience and the argument isn't an argument from aikman's, it is an argumen from what we know both abo the features of the cell and the genome but also the cause and effect structure of th world so the argument for intellent

sign goes like this, one of the natural prophesies we've examined and chances of the and the combination@ of the to demonstre power to produce a fact in question. the specified information runs the show in biology. but we do know of because known to produce that cause is intelligence there for intelligent design constitutes the best explanation based on at we know from biology and the knowledge of the structure of the world. that is the form or reduc if this is an unscientific fallacious argument so is his but instead will live donner stirred tables and showed by using dorworth method of applying it to information to evidence h did not yet know about we could now show th legacy of darwin ishere is no eviden of designed we could e darwin's method treaffirm the case for design based on these discories of modern

biology. thank you. [applause] >> now you have to read the book and thereill be books in the lobby and steve will be signg them but first we wiave se questions. so if you would like to come to the micphone and a short question he will answer them. we have one. maybe we can live here. i have a feeling there will be more. >> one of the most impressive arguments i found in your book you haven't mentioned here is that the very end and that is e suggestion that

neo-darwinism are finding a hypophysis to the probability of is kind of code development occuing within the time our universe is as existed. i would like to know whas happening withhat argument among neo-darwinism right now. >> the's only one -- you're right, you know why all the juice or in trouble when they start invoking infinite numbers of oer universe to try to render otherwise extremely improbable events probable. it is a rather technical discussion when you get in these hypotheses. weave had discovery ititute a first-class the losper of physics and record and is doing cutting edge work on that. he has got a great article coming out in the new volume called the nature of nature and i would refer you to some of his work on that, but i guess it was

the second appendix has a ten page discussion which i take on that attempt to solve the probleof the origin of life by pointing to also versu -- universes'. theris only one biolt was proposed this, eugene boonen and i think that he may be serious but there is a little sense of tongue and cheek in the proposal and it's been receiv in the same spirit among most scientists working on the origin of life. you can imagine how on satisfying the that is if you are trying to figure out how the chemistry produced t code and somebody said ave copies biions and billions of other universes' and it happened some way somehow and we happened to be and theucky one. it is essentially an ignorance that we failed. but there are technical problems with the proposal even on its own terms which i spellut in the book.

>> this is a monumental achievement, steve i understand you re seeking endorsements incling francis collins. i was wondering itheris any --oou see overlap between whatou are doing in t signaturin the cell and what collins has argued in the language and are you looking rward to debating had some bright? >> very tightly question. i didn't seek his endorsement. i found it unlikely he would provide it. on the other hand there is a kind of curiosity. collins has been publicly critical of intelligent design. most of his criticisms have been directed at michael's argument om complexity. i think michael gets the better of the exchange but settinghat aside. collins is ve famous for his work on the human genome project and when the completion was

announced onhe white house lawn he said areot the result of purely on direct evionary process and instead ferred to the human genome has book of life by which god wrote the plan for building wife and i quote colleagues in the first chapter of my book so i actually curious how he would respond to thisrgument. he is te huma genome guy after all which the book of life, and beyond that, collins though he said he's against intellint design argues fintuning of the coepts of th physics that were set in place from the beginning of the universe speak powerfully to an intelligence behind the universe. that is a design argument, that is argument to intelligent desi. he makes a similar argument about the human moral sense. so i am cuous and i think this is something that a clarifying

conversation would be in order to kind of get to the bottom of this ectly where does collins agree and disagree and if so, why given that he does add delete design arguments and if anything the complexity of the genome exceeds even impressive complexity of the fine-tuning of physics and chemistry. so thanks for at question. >> if i quo him right i think that balkans makes t claim that he can see random changes are not going to generate proteins. but is not random and i can't puthat together. you answer that explicitly. but to me it is nonsense to say thresult of that is not

om. >> i do have a fairly extensive section in the book on this approach which combines natural selection and random variations or mutations. of course the context is different if we ar explaining the origin of life you have a problem if youe going to invoke natural selection and a pre-by of the context. and this is where the problem has been. for natural selection to work you have to have oanisms capablof differential reproduction, and so natural selection actually presupposes self-deprecating organisms. but self replication and heard prupposes the existence of information average dna and proteins in the infortion dna is responsible for the process of sop replication. it is for scientists who want to say we can rescue the origin of life chemical evolution from the immense and probability by bringing a natural selection

because natural selection is only operative and relevant once you have self rlicating orgasms which in turn apply as youlready have dna and proteins. what are we trying to explain? the origin of the dna proteins so i used to illustre this with my students by saying it's like the guy walking home from work. he's absent minded he must be a philosopher of science o something and he falls in a big hole and can't get out says no problem. he says all i need ia letter some people, and it' the latter, walks back, jump in, climbs out. that is what is going on with the diavik natural selection. bigot the question where you get the infmation phrian a preins replication and natural selection possible. christian de duve says theories of pie of natural selection need information which implies they have to be

presupposed which explains it in the firstlace. thattempt to bring that and doesn't solvehe problem and you are essentially left with throwing back on pure to cnce else this attempt to use self organizational force of necessity and my approach in the book. >> thank you. >> i am wondering where you got the intelligence for th title of your boo, siature and desultory by joost richard dawks use that phrase but you n't acknowledge that in the book. i didn't want to get plagiarizing or accuse me of intelligent designing something. [laughter] actually the phrase he used was signature of intelligence, the context that he is referring to is at the end of the mie where richard dawkins is probed by ben stein about the origin of life probm and acknowledges that no one knows how life first began. ofoue he's lking within the framework of a standard

evolionary approach which assumes all the materialistic explanion. then he goes on to say i suppose there could be intelligence inside life and i so that would point to the need of some kin of intligent cause and he says that would have tbe an intelligence someplace out in space that involv bayh and directed process these. some call that the a bg hypophysis, anything but god. [laughter] i raised that not because intelligent design proves existence of god but rather it shs richard dawkins program presupposes go@ can't be part of the answer. he can go to such lengt to propose the space alien id hypophysis it shs he has a visceral disste for cnnsidering anythingeyond

that. so it is very curious dawkins first of all acknowledges there isn't an explanation for origin of life( he is an ardent spokes' person. the delusion since there is no evidence of design beeve in god is tantamount to delusi and yehe acknowledges that there is not a better explanation than design when talking about the first life which he does so when he acknowledges no one knows from within a materialistic perspective so in a sense you can e the foundation of the feast argumen is falsely predicated. there is compelling evidence of design and dawkins at the origin, a point of origin dawkins isn't in the sition to answer that argument. >> using to srt to answer this with your last slide, but as you are getting towards the and it seems like it was almost sounded

like a lot ofhe gaps argument and then the last slidehat we do see intelligent design and work today that we can invoke that. i know a lot of people who see that argument and say well we haven't seen something like an intelligent designer like god and operation s can you comment on that? >> it's not an argument for god in existence, is intelligent existence a that is the principal of reason d bald scientifically is one based on uniform and repeated experience. we know by introspection by no other way the power of our own conscious delivered negative. we know theyan produce information among other effects. so, we have a rich wealth of exrience from which to draw and during at least a mind of a similar intelligence and capacity. once you have inferred that it raises the second question abou the identity of the intelligence i am a traditional fierce

myself, not all advocates of intelligent design are, but dsign at least has what he might call for and the implications and it does point in the direction of the believe though it doesn't prove it. it is a god of the gaps argument? no. the point i was making in the conclung slides, the point was the caps argument and argument from ignorance is the imate, well because cause a isn't sufficient to oduce the effect their for some other cause did even though we don have positive edence the other costs could have done so. that is in t case of intelligent design. we are saying cause abcaven't demonstrated theffect in question but there is another cause if you will that is known to have the pow to produce the effect in question that causes intelligence there for tt' the best explanation.

the fallacy from ignorance, erefore it isn't a god of the gaps, rather indifferento the best explanation which is a standard on salacious form of reasoning. excellent question. >> yes, steve, i was amazed you would actually answer my e-mails, and i sent you -- >> did you send me a nasty objection? that was the one. [laughter] know, i asked you what i wish he would make some comment here even if all the pieces and parts and elements to nsl, are there it was still not to be alive. life uses the infortion and i made the parallel over to the fact t mauy andses the brain, the bravest of the mind, they are sepate and i wish you would say something about that. >> it is an astute observation and one of the cutting age areas

we are involved with. we are careful to qualify prickly about dna. dna contains told the cell but there are higher levels of formation necessary to arrange the byproducts of gene expression and of the protein and so the cell is a system that coains machines. it contains indormation, but it may be somethingeyond that. a very richlyntegrated system so it's imrtant to say dna, explain the origin is a necessary condition of understanding of life buthere may be much more wneed to investigat and i would mention in particular the work of john of the wells and richard looking at what is called on to a genetic information, the blueprint information that is reonsible r organizing the proteins a cell types into

tissues and tissues and organs into body plans. theres a rich hierarchy of information involved in every living system and it's one of the things that makes the subject fascinating. i ink maybe we are getting the que t sp. >> i.t. we are happy and i want to ask a question about this exciting period the are in and your boois kind of a flagship for. can you mentioned some of the other thgs that support particularly athe science and culture enterprises that you think people should know about, the works in progress coming along that shore up and help fend this exemplary argument. >> we have charles thaxton hoppin with young scientists just last week in which weut his book and my book togher. his epilogue s the ipiration for my book. my book has a book that is coming and what they call

that with movi, the sequel and that is the work richard is doing on the myth of junk dna s look for that. he and jonathan walz, paul nelson involved in a very interesting research project on higher levels of information. sothing by the way that isn't readily explainedy neo-darwinism because they explain the biological for bye reference to nutations at the lowest level of information in the hierarchy, mutations in the genome but ito build a whole organism youeed higher levels of organization you can you take a dna indefinitely without respect to timand trials and never build a new organism because y're not proding that higher level of information the blueprint information required so those gentlemen have exciting projects. doug atkinson also have fantastic work both experimentally on proteins and computional lee on modeling

what mutatio can and can't do and 4 billion years of history. this whole program of research isn't just an argument for intligent design is a research program that leads in directions for science. .. please thank you, steve, and all of you for coming tonight. >> thank you, bruce. i also -- [applause] >> stephen meyer is director for the center of science and culture at discovery institute. his books inexclu, darwinism, design and public education. for more information, visit discovery.org.

>> michael jason overseet is there a med bias agnst back obama? >> i would say that it doesn't, it's not borne necessarily frothe media but there is a perception out there that the formation starts but i think that there is a percepon not there that the information stored somewhere and were led to believe it is the media that is generating yet so i don't know if it ishe media per se but i think my book says that becau that is the only place whee can get our information from, it must be and so i think the answer, the very long answer is yes, i believe there is a med asslt on obama. i would say this, for the 71 daysy book covers from the democratic election to election day i felt there was an

misinformation that was out there that wa completely unacceptable. om himeing possibly a domestic terrost to, i want to get into quoting individual people from various networks but ere was just informational allowed to float out there and i absolutely think you did some damage. i think he n despite that but had not maybe the book would even be bigger but i think ty are ill, history will sh there were a lot of things said during the 71 days that barack obama had to overcome. >> what is an example ofhose things? >> i think one of the examples is, i am a big fan of chris matthews. i like chris matthews. one particular day i was watcng and he mentioned the word immigrant and obama in the same sentence. i think the person on theanel said no obama was bor in hawaii he said this is a story about an immigrant. he is not an immigrant. the casual viewer may take that

information and say i'm not going to vote for obama, he is an immrant. at is just lazy journalism. i was a broadcast journalism major. i think the idea and the concept of immigrant just floated out there is not responsible. granted mosof us kw he wasn'tut i don't think a was a story about an immigrant. hawaii is the state. where did the word immigrant come from? if i am correct his father was an even in immigrant. he was an exchange student. he was not an immigrant so it was the use the words that form the media assault recruit is not in your face like fox news. obvisly that is an assault. that is an in-ur-face, barack obama is this, this and this but it is t casual, subtle stuff like showing a republican ad that shows oba with a photo of children behind him about a sex ed, some conpt of sex said that when on during the election and then cnn ran that actual ad and the republican rtyad

to-- their right to putt out. i don't believe cnn or any other networks had it right. it is not responsible journalism. that had come to me, showed obaa looking like a pedophile. by mean he is standi there like this,heir childrenehind him and it is barack obama wants to teach children about sex education. well, fine, show that. if you are the republican party but cnn, msnbc, fox, no, don't show that. >> mr. overstreet you self-published this book. what was the process like? >> i had to self-publishing it because the idea came from me-- to me from wating re and i watch the debates and i would always say george bush he rlly didn't, gore really one that debate becausee was really professorial and informative so with the end of the dete i would waitor the post debate coverage ensure nothing would say things like george bush was

really funny, he really did a good job in that debate. i am looking, going the media is telling people, so i get calls from people sayinjason i don't know, looksike george bush won that debate and they are getting the information from the media so i got the idea then but once i saw obama at th cvention give a speech back in 04 iust thought wow, if he ever got a chance to run i would be interested toee how the media parsed what he says and taken monford of the book road itself from the first day of the democratic conntion. the first chapter the book is called tse people because every network that would check, i just kept hearing that theme, who are these people? so i said to myself the would be interesting o see it ne week at the republican convention they say who are these people, but i never heard that, these people and i'm talking about i heard it from, i heard judy woodruff say it and i love judy odruff by herger sade the words these people and for

african-americans, i myself am bicial, my father is like my mother is white and i consider myself a black man but to hear that word just come of these people, i want to hear that. it definitely was a passionate project of mine so when i woke up the morning of that demrathc convention i said thi is the first d at wi wte and i will write for 71 days and i can't help myself hostage. each chapter in the book is a day and they hava a different theme and a lot of people will remember the lipstick on a pig is the theme for the day, and so it is a interesting project. if i had not self-published a don't think i could've gotten it out on time. mostublisherone of meo wait for tee months. >> explain the self-publishing process for us. >> for me i would say it is an easy process at first because i want your book search, wch they were very good.

th allowed me to really kind of the creative and then i would send off to them via e-mailed said from en they would get back to mwith information and that process and back and forth for a month after i finished the book on election day and after that i was able to go through an editing process with my editor, you michael's. we went through an editing process for another month, so all in a of is able to get the month-- book out by late nuary, early februarynd slowly there has been is growing momentumor the book and people are very interested in the book. it is in some local bookstores in l.a. but the more hear people at the festival, the more i realize this is a hot-button issue. people remember these specific days. i remember that, i remember that, i remember that. it is a history book and years from now peopl will look back and say you know what, maybe i should not have said that. maybe tom brokaw should not have

said that. i am not a member of t media and if work for cnn doubt whatever about cnn but i don't work for anybody so i brought about everyone from the "l.a. times" writing a headline that said starslaka see sarah palin. of course i opened up the "l.a. times," what start came to see sarah palin? there was johfoyt i think in three people i didn't know, three people and the headline is stars flock to seearah palin. when is three people lay flock? that is misleading, the headline itself but that is the kind of stuff i writebout. i don't write thi stuff about fox news that much because it is kind of easto do. sean hannity is not a hard target, let's be honest. i would love to go initio and talk to him. that was myself publishing process. if there's anyone out there who wants to self-published be read to do lot of work because they gained a lot of respect for publishers. if you can find any mistakes

my book, please lete know, but and it is probably six or seven editing procesbut i would encourage anybody out there who has no idea their passionate about, go for >> help us out a little bit. you've got a boost, yohad to put this together. how much have you put into it? >> call in all it is probably about two or $3,0. to get tohis point. i would s that if i had to do over again i would do exactly the same way. i think would prefer to self-published this book. in the book andefer to myself as a political activist for the self-publishg is part of the political activists procs so i would encourage those out there if you are passionate about it, you have got to go for it come you can't wait. >> whais a political activist in your view? >> i think it is someone that staysn top of daily events and is oysters about it.

i have 20 people at aime and i talkedoud enough for the peopleround me to hear to bring the men and they can disagree. baathified. there's a book out called e slobbering love affair. i read the book. it is a good book. bernard goldberg. it is about two or three chaptersf my book. >> you have to tell the who story. i talked about how the media looked obama one day but t next day, no. to bernard goldberg i would say you did a great job on your book but there is much more to tell the unjust the part where the media ved him. the arican people loved him. i don't know so much of the media loved him. i think barack obama would argue that are sir members of the media that love him and i don't agree with that. >> what do you dwhen you are not publishing books? the i write screenplays. i live here an los angeles. my girlfriend, chy, is someone who is very supportive of everything i want to do and she has been someone w has really pushed me for. and i would say part of t

self-publishing process is having someone to support you in terms of emotionally and pushier and keep you going. that is a very important thing so between my writing screenplays and now doing a book and hopefully doing a lot of talking on talk shows about my book-- i'm very passionate about this book. that is my life and i love that. >> of somebody's interested in purchang your book, where can they get i >>ou can get it amazon.com. the local bookstore here in l.a. but i love feazel it is called, the bookstore is a greattore. is probably going to be in books soup and thosere local bookstores. nationally i think that is going to change. >> michael jas overstreet "71 days" the media assault on obama, a self-published book. >> in your book, "the body toxic" nena baker contends the chemical makeup of several of

the products we use today may be responsible for serious health problems. >> event hosted by google in mountain view california is 45 minutes. >> i am really delighted to be here at googleoday. it is freehling to get a chance to peek behind the big g that cy on computer screen but i've been wonderi if you are buglers, what are the rest of us? muggles. okay, alright. so it is an honor that he would come and spend youlunchtime to hear about my new book, "the body toxic" how the hardous chemisy of everyday things threatens r alth and well-being. rst i will tell you little bit about why i wrote the book and iill read briefly from it and tn i'm gng to sha deils about the hazardous chemistry of everydayhings in our homes and offices. in my book i focus on five hollimon destructing chemicals, bisphenol a which is a carbon it plastic. you may fertbouthis chemical recently because candidate

banned it from baby bottles. perfluorinated chemicals or pfc coscom increase oil and water resistance to fd wrapping fabrics in nonstick pan and flame retardant called polybrominated diphenyl ethers which are used in upholstered furniture and erocs. phthalates it's in everything from pvc plastic to personal care products and at shazeena which is the besselling agricultural weed killer. finally i will explain some simple changes i'vmade my own life as a result of doing the search for "the body toxic" and after that i will do my best to answer your questions before i do any this that would like to see a show of hands. how manyf you eat microwave popcorn? okay, that is what i thought. it is a quick and easy stack and when we are done talking her today it might be on of t things you think about chaing. is one of the thing