Dr. Stephen Meyer

We test theories not only by the predictions they make, but also by their comparative explanatory power.

If you have one model that can explain facts that we already have better than another model, that confers support on the model that does the better job of explaining.

Mm-hmm.

We know, for example, that if we're talking about the digital code in DNA, we know of a cause that produces digital information, and that is intelligence or mind.

The alternative causes that have been proposed, those based on chance, those based on natural laws, those based on some combination of the two,

I go through this in great detail in some of my books – these have failed.

And this is why the origin of life research, as it's called, has reached a state of impasse.

There are no known materialistic causes that can explain the origin of digital information.

But we do know of a cause that can do that, and that is mind.

So we have this fact that we already know –

that DNA contains information in digital form, we know of only one cause that's sufficient to produce that, therefore only one thing that can provide an adequate explanation for the origin of that information.

And so that is itself a kind of test.

It's an important test.

It's the test of explanatory power.

Intelligent design provides a better explanation for the origin of information than other competing hypotheses.

But it also generates predictions.

And one of the predictions it generated was that the so-called junk DNA that scientists were talking about would turn out to be importantly functional.

And are we finding that?

Absolutely we're finding that.

It's a confirmed prediction of intelligent design over and against the prediction and expectation of the neo-Darwinists.