It’s been years now but what I remember of Signature in the Cell was just another lame “It’s too complex to have happened naturally so it must have been an intelligent designer”. (Keep in mind that I’m a born-again Christian and probably share much of Stephen Meyer’s theology. If he can’t even convince a Christian theist like me, what are his prospects with others?)
I think that was the book where Meyer listed a bunch of predictions of “ID theory” in an appendix. So many of them were not only lame, they weren’t even clearly derived from his alleged ID theory. (I say alleged because I’ve never seen Meyer be all that rigorous about presenting any sort of scientific theory, just a hodge podge of philosophical ideas that he relates to science topics.)
By the way, a friend of mine is a leading comparative anatomist (known for her research and textbook on vertebrate anatomy) and she multiplied my examples of basic science errors in Meyer’s Darwin’s Doubt book a hundred-fold. (That is, I noticed a lot of factual errors in Meyer’s books but her vast knowledge of the biology topics which Meyer’s addressed meant that she could identify piles and piles of errors, chapter by chapter. Meyer falls into the same bad habit of far too many of my Christian colleagues who have waded into academic territories far removed from their areas of training and expertise. I was very guilty of that early in my career—my confidence far exceeded my competence as a cocky young professor—but I’d like to think that I am much more humble and careful now. I hope.)
As to Darwin’s Dilemma, I only recall the quote-mining and cherry-picking of evidence. However, it is not easy to produce a documentary that doesn’t come across as nothing but a propaganda piece. So I would treat it very differently from a book. People should rarely depend on documentaries for their conclusions about controversial topics. The very nature of video production and the medium’s limitations make depth of analysis virtually impossible.
Once again, if ID “theory” is so compelling as valid science, why has it (1) totally failed in peer-review, and (2) why do its strongest supporters tend to come from those outside of the relevant fields of study? (For example, Stephen Meyer is not a biologist. He’s a philosopher.)
If you had to identify the #1 most powerful “moment” (i.e. compelling argument) in those ID promoting works, what would it be? What is the very strongest of the ID arguments which I should consider?