In a previous post here at TSZ Mark Frank asked why people doubt common descent.

A more interesting question is why did Charles Darwin doubt common descent?

Stephen Meyer has written two books which I think adequately answer both questions.

Those two books are:

Signature in the Cell

Darwin’s Doubt

In this thread I am willing to discuss either book, but I’d prefer to limit discussion to Meyer’s most recent book, Darwin’s Doubt

While Signature in the Cell concentrated on the origin of life, Darwin’s Doubt concentrates on the “Cambrian Explosion,” the sudden appearance of numerous distinct phyla and their subsequent diversification.

Neo-Darwinism offers no realistic account of origins, with the difference being that Darwinists can in the case of the origin of life assert that their theory does not apply while that excuse fails to apply to the appearance of different animals in the Cambrian and their subsequent diversification.

Just to prove I can – [Edited 09/15/2013]

Deleted from the OP – [Edited 09/201/2013] – Just to prove I can. “The arguments are the same for both:”

The origin of the genetic code seems to be a hot issue in the ID community. Take a look at this and tell us what you think.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0072225

The genetic code shapes the genetic repository. Its origin has puzzled molecular scientists for over half a century and remains a long-standing mystery. Here we show that the origin of the genetic code is tightly coupled to the history of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase enzymes and their interactions with tRNA.

A timeline of evolutionary appearance of protein domain families derived from a structural census in hundreds of genomes reveals the early emergence of the ‘operational’ RNA code and the late implementation of the standard genetic code. The emergence of codon specificities and amino acid charging involved tight coevolution of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases and tRNA structures as well as episodes of structural recruitment.

Remarkably, amino acid and dipeptide compositions of single-domain proteins appearing before the standard code suggest archaic synthetases with structures homologous to catalytic domains of tyrosyl-tRNA and seryl-tRNA synthetases were capable of peptide bond formation and aminoacylation.

Results reveal that genetics arose through coevolutionary interactions between polypeptides and nucleic acid cofactors as an exacting mechanism that favored flexibility and folding of the emergent proteins. These enhancements of phenotypic robustness were likely internalized into the emerging genetic system with the early rise of modern protein structure.

I realize their conclusions are speculative. So feel free to point out where they are wrong.

Simple question, but surely the most important of all questions. If there are objective moral truths, what are they?

I challenge theists to present their moral structure in this thread – what principles their moral system is based on (if any), how they come to understand/decide what they “ought” to do; whether or not they are “obligated” to act morally, and if so, to whom/what is that obligation owed, and why anyone should care or act according to their moral system. Or, if their moral system doesn’t follow any of these conventions, then explain their moral system/views.

I challenge atheists to present their moral structure in this thread – what principles their moral system is based on (if any), how they come to understand/decide what they “ought” to do; whether or not they are “obligated” to act morally, and if so, to whom/what is that obligation owed, and why anyone should care or act according to their moral system. Or, if their moral system doesn’t follow any of these conventions, then explain their moral system/views.

The Fallacy of the Stolen Concept was coined by Ayn Rand, to point out the absurdity of arguing against a position when the argument depends upon that position – setting up a kind of indirect (and hence not so obviously paradoxical) version of Epiminedes-style “this sentence is false”. For example, to argue that all consciousness is really dreaming requires that there be some state one could recognise as ‘waking’, in order that dreaming could be distinct from it. One steals the concept of ‘waking’ (on whose existence ‘dreaming’ depends) in an attempt to argue there is no such thing.
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