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  • Darwin's Doubt

  • The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design
  • By: Stephen C. Meyer
  • Narrated by: Derek Shetterly
  • Length: 14 hrs and 59 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (33 ratings)

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Darwin's Doubt

By: Stephen C. Meyer
Narrated by: Derek Shetterly
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Publisher's Summary

When Charles Darwin finished The Origin of Species, he thought that he had explained every clue but one. Though his theory could explain many facts, Darwin knew that there was a significant event in the history of life that his theory did not explain. During this event, the "Cambrian explosion", many animals suddenly appeared in the fossil record without apparent ancestors in earlier layers of rock.

In Darwin's Doubt, Stephen C. Meyer tells the story of the mystery surrounding this explosion of animal life - a mystery that has intensified not only because the expected ancestors of these animals have not been found but because scientists have learned more about what it takes to construct an animal. During the last half century, biologists have come to appreciate the central importance of biological information - stored in DNA and elsewhere in cells - to building animal forms.

Expanding on the compelling case he presented in his last book, Signature in the Cell, Meyer argues that the origin of this information, as well as other mysterious features of the Cambrian event, are best explained by intelligent design rather than purely undirected evolutionary processes.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2013 Stephen C. Meyer (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers

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A detailed analysis of the Cambrian explosion

Meyer argues that intelligent design is a better explanation than naturalistic evolution.
I found this a little technical to fully follow as an audio book (Especially the first part, part three was easier to follow). The book has good content, but is easier to grasp from actually reading it.
It would be better if audible could add chapter titles instead of just chp 1, chp 2... They should be:
1 - Prologue
2 - Darwin’s Nemesis
3 - The Burgess Bestiary
4 - Soft Bodies and Hard Facts
5 - The Not Missing Fossils?
6 - The Genes Tell the Story?
7 - The Animal Tree of Life
8 - Punk Eek!
9 - The Cambrian Information Explosion
10 - Combinatorial Inflation
11 - The Origin of Genes and Proteins
12 - Assume a Gene
13 - Complex Adaptations and the Neo-Darwinian Math
14 - The Origin of Body Plans
15 - The Epigenetic Revolution
16 - The Post-Darwinian World and Self-Organization
17 - Other Post-Neo-Darwinian Models
18 - The Possibility of Intelligent Design
19 - Signs of Design in the Cambrian Explosion
20 - The Rules of Science
21 - What’s at Stake

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brilliant

Intelligent Design is well presented as a competitive scientific theory with more compelling evidence to be the most possible interpretation of the big questions regarding origins in general than the pseudo-scientific theory of evolution. the Cambrian explosion of complex and diverse body plans and well-developed organs cannot be explained by the fairy tale random mutation. Bravo S Mayer.

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Creationism Pseudoscience not intelligent

Started off interestingly enough then lost the plot as the old creationism tropes continually crept in, even a self educated inquiring mind can see the holes in this poorly executed work, belongs in the fiction section along with the bible.

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Scientific text, not for public reader

Struggled to understand and finish, this is a book written by scientist to scientist, a textbook, that shouldn't be narrated, the narration directs you many times to look at the picture being described, pictures are included in the pdf attached to the audio book, this is very frustrating when you are listening to the narration as most of the you relying on listening only to get the info.

Terminology is very heavy, difficult and uncommon for public readers like me.

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Makes logical sense

Really enjoyed this book ,although sometimes over my head.
I’ve often looked at the natural world and it’s complexity and thought that it was a wonderful mind who created it , so often products of our design are copy’s from the natural world around us .
Your comments of Atheism/macro evolution provides no hope or purpose..... so true.

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Survival of the fittest theory

Stephen C Meyer establishes clearly why Darwin’s theory of evolution, and the neo-Darwinist, and punctuated equilibrium, and every other variation of the theory evolution is not fit to describe the actual mathematically definable complexity of life. The palaeontology of the Cambrian explosion together with the number of permutations required to be randomly tried to produce one new workable protein (10^37 while using every living cell that existed) makes the theory evolution essentially a dead theory. David Gerlernter, professor of Computer Science at Yale, concluded his review of this book in the Claremont Review of Books: “(Stephen C Meyer) now poses a final challenge. Whether biology will rise to this last one as well as it did to the first, when (Darwin’s) theory upset every apple cart, remains to be seen. How cleanly and quickly can the field get over Darwin, and move on?—with due allowance for every Darwinist’s having to study all the evidence for himself? There is one of most important questions facing science in the 21st century.”

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Masterful and Persuasive

Superbly and authoritatively researched and explained. Highly technical in places - but this is required to meticulously substantiate the arguments which I find to be overwhelmingly cogent: Darwin's theory is simply and glaringly insufficient to explain what we see in nature and the fossil record. This work takes an axe to the base of the materialistic tree that is generally accepted by the majority and masterfully but sensitively expounds why the mainstream Darwinian world view falls woefully short in its explanatory power.

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Knowledge of science is required

I have to admit that I have a Bachelor Degree is Biological Sciences, but still some of the scientific ideas are concepts flew past over my head. Never less the ideas in this book are very well presented and anyone with an open mind and some knowledge of science will see that Darwin's idea of evolution has never left the sea. So to speak.

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Excellent

Very detailed. Very evidence-based. Very compelling. I’m currently reading it again, this time I’m making some summary notes.

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