Well, the news out of Oklahoma about Stephen Meyer’s intelligent design presentation at the University last night is quite encouraging. Over three hundred people reportedly turned out for the lecture and discussion following. For all the potty-mouthed bluster that local Darwin activists offered up ahead of time, almost everyone in attendance, whether for or against ID, was civil and respectful during the presentation and discussion last night.

The local daily paper, The Norman Transcript, has two stories today, one about the event last night and one about the screening of Darwin’s Dilemma this evening.

Intelligent design is the most likely explanation of the origin of life, an author and speaker at the University of Oklahoma said Monday night.

The way Stephen C. Meyer came to that conclusion, was using Charles Darwin’s own scientific method of determining which cause to accept for scientific questions in the remote past.
“The irony of that is that a conclusion that points to intelligent design” is reached by Darwin’s own methods, Meyer said.

The event was also covered by the student paper, The Oklahoma Daily:

Stephen Meyer, director and senior fellow of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, outlined his belief in the scientific authenticity of intelligent design, which he explains in his new book, “Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design.”

“If you apply Charles Darwin’s method of reasoning to what we know now that he didn’t, you come to exactly the opposite conclusion that he did,” Meyer said. “There is evidence of design in nature, and you find that evidence most obviously on display in the digital code that is stored in the DNA.”

I suspect both reporters and both papers are all in for a surprise from the feedback they’re likely to get from the biology department at the university.

Over at the OU IDEA Club’s website last night club president Josh Malone live-blogged his notes and thoughts about the event and gave a brief rundown of the Q&A session that followed. The photo here was sent in by him.
Remember that tonight is the screening of Darwin’s Dilemma at 7pm in Kerr Auditorium at the Sam Noble Natural History Museum.