Our British sister organization, the Centre for Intelligent Design UK (C4ID), posts a report on Stephen Meyer’s recent visit to London where he spoke at the Royal Horseguards Hotel. Dr. Meyer’s topic: “Is There a Signature in the Cell?” Interestingly, the lecture’s host, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, indirectly seems to have acknowledged that in Britain it can be no less dangerous to publicly voice sympathy for ID than it is in the United States. Perhaps even more so.
Some guests were evidently nervous about being known to have been in attendance, even as they judged that hearing Meyer’s lecture was worth the risk. Lord Mackay, who served as Britain’s Lord Chancellor under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, “stressed in his introduction, [that] their presence was not taken as an indication of support for the position of Intelligent Design.” C4ID director Dr. Alastair Noble noted:

The audience of some 90 invited guests included leading scientists, philosophers, Parliamentarians, educationalists, theologians, lawyers, and representatives of the media and business sectors. Given the controversial nature of the subject and the desire not to inhibit discussion, C4ID requested that the identity of the participants remain protected.

Delivering C4ID’s Inaugural Lecture, Dr. Meyer made the case for intelligent design at the origin of life itself:

Meyer elaborated on the other suggestions for the emergence of first life and the generation of biological information, showing that they are simply unequal to the task. These include chance and necessity contingent on natural law. While some features of life are explicable in these terms, the origin of the specified information in DNA, which is neither random nor repetitive, cannot be explained by these approaches.

Lord Mackay noted the serious scientific challenge ID poses to orthodox materailist explanations for life’s beginning:

In summing up the evening, Lord Mackay drew attention to the clarity of the proposition that the information in DNA is a real entity worthy of scientific investigation. He recognised that the lecture was a strong endorsement of the view that, as the only examples we know of sequences that work are produced by intelligent design, it was very reasonable to conclude that this was true of the DNA sequence that exists in living cells.