I may be a bit late to the party, but I’ve finally gotten a chance to read Stephen Meyer’s latest book, Darwin’s Doubt. Having read his previous book, Signature in the Cell, I had high expectations, and Meyer did not disappoint. Darwin’s Doubt takes a look at the longstanding enigma of the Cambrian explosion – a very brief time in history in which the majority of all major animal forms abruptly appear in the fossil record with no trace of simpler ancestral forms. Darwin recognized the problem the Cambrian fossils posed to his theory, but thought future discoveries would solve the problem. After 150 years, the problem hasn’t been solved. Instead, it’s been made more acute.
Scientists are increasingly coming to recognize that Darwin’s theory cannot explain the Cambrian explosion. Some are proposing alternative, naturalistic explanations. Others see the Cambrian explosion as powerful evidence for the intervention of an Intelligent Designer nearly 550 million years ago. Who’s right? Darwin? The Darwin doubters? Intelligent Design theorists? Stephen Meyer walks the reader through the evidence, and then evaluates competing explanations to see how they stack up against the evidence. It should be no surprise to those who know Stephen Meyer where the book concludes. The question is how he gets to his conclusion.
Thinking to Believe 