WILLIAM A. DEMBSKI

William A. Dembski

'William Albert "Bill" Dembski' (born July 18 1960) is an American mathematician, philosopher, theologian and proponent of intelligent design in opposition to the theory of evolution through natural selection. From 1999 to 2005, he was on the faculty of Baylor University, where he was a constant focus of attention and controversy. For the academic year 2005-6, he was briefly the Carl F. H. Henry Professor of Theology and Science at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, as well as the first director of the school's new Center for Theology and Science (since taken over by the well known creationist Kurt Wise).^[1] On 1 June 2006 Dembski became research professor in philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.^[2] The Southern Baptist Convention operates both seminaries.
According to Dembski, the scientific study of nature reveals evidence of design, and opposes what he regards as mainstream science's commitment to "atheistic" materialism or naturalism, which he believes rules out "Intelligent Design" ''a priori''. His main proposal is that specified complexity, a type of information, is the hallmark of an intelligent designer. His work is controversial: the mainstream scientific community largely rejects his ideas, with leading scientific organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science describing intelligent design as pseudoscience, and voices within the science community challenging his qualifications as a commentator on science, philosophy, and mathematics.
Dembski's supporters include intelligent design proponent Robert Koons, a Fellow along with Dembski at the Discovery Institute and Dembski's International Society for Complexity, Information and Design, and University of Texas at Austin philosopher [2]. Koons has referred to Dembski as "the Isaac Newton of information theory." However, mathematician, number theorist Jeffrey Shallit has studied Dembski's work, arguing that it should not be regarded as significant.^[3]

Biography

Discovery Institute

Peer-review controversy

Baylor University controversy

Activities since 2001

Views and statements

Responses to critics

Uncommon Descent

Dembski's role in the Mims-Pianka controversy

Bibliography

References

Biography

Dembski was born in Chicago, Illinois. He was brought up as a Catholic, the only child of a college biology professor (who accepted and taught evolution). He was educated at Portsmouth Abbey School, at the time an all-male Catholic preparatory school in Rhode Island, but left the school a year early before graduating to enter the University of Chicago, which admitted exceptional students who had not graduated high school (Kurt Wise, who heads Dembski's former theology and science center at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary was in the same 1977 incoming class at the University of Chicago as Dembski). In 1988, as a postdoctoral fellow at MIT, he delivered Portsmouth Abbey's Dom Luke Child's lecture for that year. After the lecture, the school awarded him his high school diploma, ten years after he would have graduated.
He struggled socially at the college level and dropped out at the age of seventeen to work in his mother's art dealership. He says that he did not initially accept the precepts of Christianity, but during this "difficult period" he turned to the Bible in an effort to understand the world around him. Later, after becoming an Evangelical Christian, he read creationist literature. He did not accept the doctrines of literal creationists, though their criticisms of evolutionary theory did strike a chord in him. He says of Young Earth creationism:
He returned to school at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), where he studied psychology (in which he received a B.A. in 1981) and statistics (receiving an M.S. in 1983). He was awarded an S.M. in mathematics in 1985, and a Ph.D., also in mathematics, in 1988, both from the University of Chicago, after which he held a postdoctoral fellowship in mathematics at the National Science Foundation from 1988 until 1991, and another in the history and philosophy of science at Northwestern University from 1992–1993. He was awarded an M.A. in philosophy in 1993, and a Ph.D. in the same subject in 1996, both from UIC, and an M.Div from Princeton Theological Seminary, also in 1996.
Dissatisfied with the "free-swinging academic style" of the Princeton Theological Seminary, Dembski was involved in forming a group known as the "Charles Hodge Society", by and large a group concerned with resurrecting positive evaluations of Old Princeton Theology. The Society organized discussions and informal colloquia, but its primary work centered on reviving Hodge's own journal, the Princeton Theological Review. The PTR primarily wrote from a conservative angle on theological issues of the day. [4] In the ''Unapologetic Apologetics'' Dembski claims that "members of the Charles Hodge Society were threatened with two lawsuits for their work on the Princeton Theological Review, threatened with physical violence, accused of racism and sexism, denied funding that other campus groups readily received, had posted signs destroyed and removed, and were explicitly informed by faculty that membership in the Charles Hodge Society jeopardized their academic advancement."
Dembski holds that his knowledge of statistics, and general scepticism concerning evolutionary theory, led him to believe that the extraordinary diversity of life was statistically unlikely to have been produced by natural selection. A key turning point for him was reached at a conference on randomness at Ohio State University in 1988, where statistician Persi Diaconis concluded the event by saying, "We know what randomness ''isn't''. We don't know what it ''is''." Dembski cites this event as a catalyst for his subsequent work on design. [5] He concluded that randomness is a derivative notion, which can only be understood in terms of design, a more fundamental concept. He presented these thoughts in his 1991 paper "Randomness by Design", which appeared in the journal ''Noûs''. These ideas led to his notion of specified complexity, which he developed in ''The Design Inference'', a revision of his Ph.D. dissertation in philosophy.
Lawyer Phillip E. Johnson's first book ''Darwin on Trial'' attracted a group of "scholars" who shared his view that the exclusion of supernatural explanations by the scientific method was unfair and had led to the Edwards v. Aguillard ruling that teaching creation science in public schools was unconstitutional. Dembski was part of that group at a landmark symposium at Southern Methodist University in Dallas in March 1992, before they came to call themselves "The Wedge".Barbara Forrest, The Wedge at Work. Talk Reason, Chapter 1 of the book "Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics" (MIT Press, 2001), Retrieved 2007-05-28. The phrase "intelligent design" had been introduced in 1987 in drafts of the high school textbook ''Of Pandas and People'' as a substitute for "creation science" to refer to the idea that there is scientific evidence that life was created through unspecified processes by an intelligent but unidentified designer without infringing the Edwards v. Aguillard ruling, and the textbook had been published in 1989 amidst campaigning by the publisher for the introduction of "intelligent design" into school science classes. Biochemist Michael Behe, another member of "The Wedge", contributed the argument which he subsequently called "irreducible complexity" (IC) to the second edition of ''Pandas'' in 1993. The textbook already contained concepts which Dembski elaborated into his doctrine of "specified complexity" (SC) as a supporting element. Dembski's mathematical arguments rest on Behe's assertion that irreducibly complex systems cannot evolve gradually. Dembski's specified complexity rides on Behe's claim, and its validity is dependent on the validity of irreducible complexity.^[4]
In 1998, Dembski published his first book, ''The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities'', which became a Cambridge University Press bestselling philosophical monograph. Another book, ''Mere Creation'', echoed the book ''Mere Christianity'' by C.S. Lewis. Dembski has published several popular books, but has published no papers on intelligent design within the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

Discovery Institute

During the three years after completing graduate school in 1996 Dembski was unable to secure a university position and so until 1999 he received what he calls "a standard academic salary" of $40,000 a year as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Discovery Institute's, Center for Science and Culture (CSC). "I was one of the early beneficiaries of Discovery largess," says Dembski.[6]
Dembski serves now as a senior fellow at the CSC, where he plays a central role in the center's extensive public and political campaigns advancing the concept of intelligent design and its teaching in public schools through its "Teach the Controversy" campaign as part of the institute's Wedge strategy.

Peer-review controversy

One of the common objections to intelligent design being accepted as valid science is that ID proponents have published no scientific papers in the peer-reviewed scientific literature in support of their conjectures. [7] The ruling in the Dover trial, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, found that to date, the intelligent design movement has yet to have an article published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.[8][9] Despite the Dover trial ruling, the Discovery Institute claims that Dembski's book The Design Inference has in fact been peer reviewed, and represents it as peer reviewed. [10]. Although the Discovery Institute touts Dembski's credentials as a mathematician and scientist, he has no peer reviewed scientific publications and no recent mathematical publications.[11]
As a mathematician and scientist he holds degrees but has contributed little to these fields. Jeffrey Shallit, after searching academic databases has said "In terms of mathematical output, Dembski is far below the median." [12] Dembski insists that The Design Inference has in fact been peer reviewed [13]. Dembski states: "this book was published by Cambridge University Press and peer-reviewed as part of a distinguished monograph series, Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction, and Decision Theory". Wesley R. Elsberry contacted the person in charge of the The Design Inference manuscript at Cambridge University Press, who declined to describe what a normal review process at Cambridge University Press consisted of.

Baylor University controversy

In 1999, Dembski was invited by Robert Sloan, President of Baylor University, to establish the Michael Polanyi Center at the university. Named after the Hungarian physical chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi (1891–1976), Dembski described it as "the first intelligent design think tank at a research university". Dembski had known Sloan for about three years, having taught Sloan's daughter at a Christian study summer camp not far from Waco, Texas. Sloan was the first Baptist minister to serve as Baylor's president in over 30 years, had read some of Dembski's work and liked it; according to Dembski, Sloan "made it clear that he wanted to get me on the faculty in some way."
The Polanyi Center was established without much publicity in October 1999, initially consisting of two people — Dembski and a like-minded colleague, Bruce L. Gordon, who were hired directly by Sloan without going through the usual channels of a search committee and departmental consultation. The vast majority of Baylor staff did not know of the center's existence until its website went online, and the center stood outside of the existing religion, science, and philosophy departments.
The center's mission, and the lack of consultation with the Baylor faculty, became the immediate subject of controversy. The faculty feared for the university's reputation – it has historically been well-regarded for its contributions to mainstream science – and scientists outside the university questioned whether Baylor had "gone fundamentalist". Faculty members pointed out that the university's existing interdisciplinary Institute for Faith and Learning was already addressing questions about the relationship between science and religion, making the existence of the Polanyi Center somewhat redundant. In April 2000, Dembski hosted a conference on "naturalism in science" sponsored by the broadly theistic Templeton Foundation and the pro-ID Discovery Institute, seeking to address the question "Is there anything beyond nature?". Most of the Baylor faculty boycotted the conference.
A few days later, the Baylor faculty senate voted by a margin of 27–2 to ask the administration to dissolve the center and merge it with the Institute for Faith and Learning. President Sloan refused, citing issues of censorship and academic integrity, but agreed to convene an outside committee to review the center. The committee recommended setting up a faculty advisory panel to oversee the science and religion components of the program, dropping the name "Michael Polanyi" and reconstituting the center as part of the Institute for Faith and Learning. [14] These recommendations were accepted in full by the university administration.
In a subsequent press release, Dembski asserted that the committee had given an "unqualified affirmation of my own work on intelligent design", that its report "marks the triumph of intelligent design as a legitimate form of academic inquiry" and that "dogmatic opponents of design who demanded that the Center be shut down have met their Waterloo. Baylor University is to be commended for remaining strong in the face of intolerant assaults on freedom of thought and expression." [15]
Dembski's remarks were criticized by other members of the Baylor faculty, who protested that they were both an unjustified attack on his critics at Baylor and a false assertion that the university endorsed Dembski's controversial views on intelligent design. Charles Weaver, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor and one of the most vocal critics of the Polanyi Center, commented: "In academic arguments we don't seek utter destruction and defeat of our opponents. We don't talk about Waterloos."
President Sloan asked Dembski to withdraw his press release, but Dembski refused, accusing the university of "intellectual McCarthyism" (borrowing a phrase that Sloan himself had used when they first tried to dissolve the center). He declared that the university's action had been taken "in the utmost of bad faith ... thereby providing the fig leaf of justification for my removal."[16] Professor Michael Beaty, director of the Institute for Faith and Learning, said that Dembski's remarks violated the spirit of cooperation that the committee had advocated and stated that "Dr. Dembski's actions after the release of the report compromised his ability to serve as director." [17] Dembski was removed as the center's director, although he remained an associate research professor until May 2005. He was not asked to teach any courses in that time and instead worked from home, writing books and speaking around the country. "In a sense, Baylor did me a favor," he said. "I had a five-year sabbatical."[18]

Activities since 2001

In December 2001, Dembski launched the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design (ISCID), of which he is Executive Director. Dembski is also the editor-in-chief of ISCID's journal, ''Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design'' (PCID).
In 2002, Dembski published his book ''No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence''. It was ''No Free Lunch'' that prompted Dembski's Discovery Institute colleague Robert C. Koons deeming of Dembski the "Isaac Newton of information theory." Dembski's work, however, was strongly criticized within the scientific community, which argued that there were a number of major logical inconsistencies and evidential gaps in Dembski's hypothesis. David Wolpert, co-creator of the No Free Lunch Theorem on which Dembski based his book, characterised his arguments as "fatally informal and imprecise", "written in jello", reminiscent of philosophical discussion "in art, music, and literature, as well as much of ethics" rather than of scientific debate.^[5]
Dembski became the Carl F. H. Henry Professor of Theology and Science at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky in June 2005, and established a new Center for Science and Theology. The seminary teaches creationism but its professors vary on the details, with most adhering to the Young Earth creationist viewpoint of a relatively recent creation which occurred literally as described in Genesis; Dembski does not hold to Young Earth creationism. Despite such "acceptable" differences, Dembski noted in a statement when he was hired that "this is really an opportunity to mobilize a new generation of scholars and pastors not just to equip the saints but also to engage the culture and reclaim it for Christ."
On his position at Southern, Dembski also remarked,
Since taking up a position within Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary's (SWBTS) School of Theology in June 2006, Dembski has taught a number of courses within its Department of Philosophy of Religion.[19][20]
In July 2007, Dembski became involved in the short-lived Evolutionary Informatics Lab, formed by Baylor University Engineering Professor Robert J. Marks. The lab was shut down and its website was deleted because Baylor's administration considered that it violated university policy forbidding professors from creating the impression that their personal views represent Baylor as an institution. Baylor will however permitted Marks to resume work in the informatics lab on his own time and repost his website, provided a disclaimer accompany any ID-advancing research to make clear that the work does not represent the university's position.^[6]^[7]
In September 2007, the SWBTS will be hosting a conference on 'Intelligent Design in Business Practice', presented by Dembski, Acton Institute theologian Jay Richards, and three business academics presently or formerly teaching at universities in the Southern United States.^[8]
Dembski frequently gives public talks, principally to religious and pro-ID groups, and has several more books in preparation as well as producing a string of Flash animations mocking his detractors. He is also a member of American Scientific Affiliation, the Evangelical Philosophical Society, and the American Mathematical Society, and is a senior fellow of the Wilberforce Forum.
Dembski, along with fellow Discovery Institute associates Michael Behe and David Berlinski, "tutored" Ann Coulter on science and evolution for her book . Approximately one-third of the book is devoted to polemical attacks on evolution, which Coulter, as Dembski often does, terms "Darwinism."^[9]

Views and statements

Dembski's views on evolution have been a source of considerable controversy within both the mainstream scientific and creationist communities. Dembski does not accept universal common descent^[10]. His mainstream scientific critics have accused him of dishonesty in his representation of scientific facts and writing [21], and he has also been criticised by some in the traditional creationist community for not supporting the "Young Earth" creationist position, [22] though he is also defended on other grounds by the same creationist community. [23] [24] [25]
For his part, Dembski has attacked the refusal of mainstream scientists to debate ID proponents in public forums which his critics regard as undeservedly presenting ID and evolution as equally worthwhile hypotheses. He has called for a "vise strategy" (illustrated with a picture of a plush Darwin doll with its head in a vise) in which supporters of evolution would be subpoenaed to appear before such forums:
About Dembski's "vise strategy" Barbara Forrest wrote that when presented the opportunity to put his "vise strategy" into action in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, "Dembski 'escaped critical scrutiny by not having to undergo cross-examination' when he withdrew from the case on June 10." Dembski had been scheduled to be deposed on June 13, the next business day.^[11]
Like many other intelligent design advocates, Dembski regards evolution as being an undesirable ideology being promoted by an atheistic liberal elite, rather than it being a factually based scientific theory. He summarises his position (in an article in the ''Las Vegas City Life'' newspaper) thus:
He has also admitted that "So long as methodological naturalism sets the ground rules for how the game of science is to be played, IDT has no chance in Hades"[26] and has made statements that encourage undermining established scientific methodological rules, "The real significance of intelligent design theory and its related movement is the success with which it undermines the materialistic and naturalistic worldview central to the theory of evolution.”[27]
Dembski's position on intelligent design's relationship with Christianity has been somewhat inconsistent. He has suggested that the "intelligent designer" was not necessarily synonymous with God: "It could be space aliens. There are many possibilities." (''San Francisco Chronicle'', March 17, 2002) In other forums, however, he has been very specific about linking intelligent design with a Christian revival through which Christianity can be restored to its formerly pre-eminent place in society, supplanting "materialist" science. Indeed, one of his books is entitled ''Intelligent Design; the Bridge Between Science and Theology'' (Dembski, 1999), and in it he states that "The conceptual soundings of the [intelligent design] theory can in the end only be located in Christ" (p. 210). He has expanded on this theme in a 2005 article for the pro-intelligent design ''designinference.com'' website:
Dembski has also spoken of his motivation for supporting intelligent design in a series of Sunday lectures in the Fellowship Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, the last of which took place on Sunday, March 7, 2004. Answering a question, Dembski said:
Although intelligent design proponents (including Dembski) have made little apparent effort to publish peer-reviewed scientific research to support their hypotheses, in recent years they have made vigorous efforts to promote the teaching of intelligent design in schools. Dembski is a strong supporter of this drive as a means of making young people more receptive to intelligent design:
Dembski sees intelligent design as being a popular movement as well as a scientific hypothesis and claims that it is in the process of dislodging evolution from the public imagination. At the Fourth World Skeptics Conference, held on June 20–June 23, 2002 in Burbank, California, he told the audience that "over the next twenty-five years ID will provide the greatest challenge to skepticism". He asserted that "ID is threatening to be mainstream", and that polls show 90 percent support for the hypothesis, indicating that it has "already becom[e] mainstream within the public themselves". "The usual skeptical retorts are not going to work against ID" and ID "turns the tables on skepticism". Evolution, in his view, "is the ultimate status quo" and "squelches dissent". Young people, who "love rebellion". see that and are attracted to ID as a result. "The public supports intelligent design. The public is tired of being bullied by an intellectual elite". He contends that skeptics resort to rhetoric and "artificially define ID out of science," allowing in only material matters. ID "paints the more appealing world picture", whereas skepticism works by being negative, which "doesn't set well with the public... To most people evolution doesn't provide a compelling view". (''Skeptical Inquirer'', September 1 2002)
Dembski has so far failed to explain the origin of the intelligent designer that created the universe, something he argues as unnecessary since such an intelligent designer is likely outside the dimensions of space and time, or to have any of his pro-intelligent design articles published in the peer-reviewed mainstream scientific journals. While this is often claimed to be due to a pro-evolution conspiracy, Dembski himself has said that he prefers to disseminate his ideas in non-peer-reviewed media: "I've just gotten kind of blase about submitting things to journals where you often wait two years to get things into print. And I find I can actually get the turnaround faster by writing a book and getting the ideas expressed there. My books sell well. I get a royalty. And the material gets read more." (''The Chronicle of Higher Education'', December 21 2001)
Dembski has also indicated an interest in the discredited Bible code [28][29][30][31]. In a favorable book review [32].of Jeffrey Satinover's ''Cracking the Bible Code'' Dembski noted
In that review Dembski also suggested "The philosopher Bertrand Russell was once asked why he didn’t believe in God. He replied, "Not enough evidence." Satinover’s fascination with the Bible Code is that it may provide evidence for God’s existence that would have convinced even a Bertrand Russell."

Responses to critics

Dembski has stated he employs various strategies to deal with objections to his work before it gets published:
Dembski's style in response to his critics (particularly of his mathematical papers) is polemical.[34] For instance, in reply to a critique of the "law of conservation of information" posted on talkreason.org [35], Dembski states: "I'm not and never have been in the business of offering a strict mathematical proof for the inability of material mechanisms to generate specified complexity", adding later:
Another critic, Mark Perakh, is a frequent target of Dembski's:
Dembski has also shown a hostility for providing a mechanistic explanation for intelligent design theory. In one ISCID exchange Dembski remarked:
Dembski's critics maintain that he has yet to provide a means of determining if ID is correct.
In late 2006 Dembski created and published a Flash animation, ''The Judge Jones School of Law'' at his intelligent design website, OverwhelmingEvidence.com. [37] [38][39][40] In it he originally depicted John E. Jones III, the presiding judge in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, as a flatulent mouthpiece of the ACLU. In an email Dembski, after it was published that he provided the voiceover, offered to let Judge Jones provide his own voice for the animation and to reduce the frequency of flatulence in the animation if Jones agreed to participate. [41] This prompted critics, among them Richard Dawkins, to question Dembski's motive and the scholarliness of such tactics. [42][43][44]
On having lent expertise to Ann Coulter for her polemic '' on the topics of evolution and intelligent design, Dembski said "I take all responsibility for any errors in those chapters." [45] Subsequently, James Downard in reviewing and debunking the representation of science in ''Godless'' criticized Coulter's favoring of secondary sources over primary sources, saying "she compulsively reads inaccurate antievolutionary sources and accepts them on account of their reinforcement of what she wants to be true."[46] [47] Downard approached Dembski to account for what Downard called "Coulter’s remarkable unfamiliarity with the range of the ID controversy and apparent unawareness of the biogeographical underpinning of speciation, as well as a consistent inattention to any of the available fossil information." Dembski's response was not to take responsibility for the apparent errors made by Coulter but to publish both of Downard's e-mails to his blog, characterizing them as "sheer smarminess" and "entertainment."[48][49]

Uncommon Descent

Dembski has been accused of censoring his critics on his personal blog, uncommondescent.com. One of them, Ed Brayton, said that Dembski as a matter of course removed reasonable criticisms and questions as well as "trackback" links to other blogs where his claims were discussed.[50] Posts by Dembski supporters from the uncommondescent blog have been called trolling at blogs and forums critical of Dembski, notably ''Dispatches from the Culture Wars''.[51] At Dembski's blog those whose comments are in opposition to Dembski's own views but not disruptive have been blocked by Dembski from contributing [52] [53]. Dembski maintained that his blog was not intended as an open forum.[54][55][56]
Dembski shut down his blog on December 26, 2005, six days after the conclusion of the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, where it was ruled that presenting intelligent design as an alternative to evolution was a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution because intelligent design is not science and is essentially religious in nature.[57]
On January 4, 2006 Dembski announced that the blog would be restarted and run largely by supporters with limited participation from himself and renamed from "Bill Dembski" to "Bill Dembski and Friends" thus becoming a group blog. [58] Many participants at the most notable weblog of intelligent design's critics, The Panda's Thumb, said one of the moderators of Dembski's blog censored any discussion critical of intelligent design. [59]
Personal attacks are not atypical of Dembski's responses to opponents on his blog.[60][61]
For example, Dembski described Jerry Coyne as "The Herman Munster of Evolutionary Theory," citing a purported physical resemblance of the noted biologist to the television character,[62][63], while responding to an argument the former had made.

Dembski's role in the Mims-Pianka controversy

Main articles: Mims-Pianka controversy

On 2 April 2006, Dembski stated on his blog that he reported Eric Pianka to the Department of Homeland Security because he and fellow Discovery Institute Fellow Forrest Mims felt that Pianka's speech while accepting the Texas Academy of Sciences Distinguished Scientist of the Year award in 2006 fomented bioterrorism.[64] This resulted in the Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewing Pianka in Austin.[65]
On 5 April Dembski offered a wager concerning Pianka:

Bibliography

★ ''Are We Spiritual Machines?: Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong A.I.'' by Jay W. Richards, George F. Gilder, Ray Kurzweil, Thomas Ray, John Searle, William Dembski, Michael Denton. Discovery Institute. ISBN 0-9638654-3-9

★ "The Chance of the Gaps". In Neil Manson, ed., ''God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science''. (London: Routledge, 2002), 251–274.

★ . William A. Dembski and Michael Ruse (eds) ISBN 0-521-82949-6

★ ''The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-521-62387-1

★ ''The Design of Life: Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Systems''. (biology textbook co-authored with Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, Percival Davis, and Dean Kenyon). Dallas: Foundation for Thought and Ethics, expected 2007.

★ ''The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions about Intelligent Design''. Downer's Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8308-2375-1

★ "Fourth World Skeptics Conference in Burbank a lively foment of ideas: Scams, intelligent design, urban legends, fringe psychotherapies get critical attention", ''Skeptical Inquirer'', September 1 2002

★ "Inconvenient Facts: Miracles and the Skeptical Inquirer", ''Philosophia Christi'' 13, 1990: 18-45.

★ "In God's Country". ''Houston Press'' (Texas), December 14, 2000

★ ''Intelligent Design: The Bridge between Science and Theology''. Downer's Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8308-2314-X

★ ''Mere Creation''. Downer's Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8308-1515-5

★ ''Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists'' ISBN 0-8308-2666-1

★ "Nature's diversity beyond evolution", ''San Francisco Chronicle'', March 17, 2002

★ ''No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence''. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.

★ "Not Even False? Reassessing the Demise of British Natural Theology", ''Philosophia Christi'', Series 2, 1 (1), 1999: 17-43.

★ "Randomness". ''Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', ed. Edward Craig. London: Routledge, 1998.

★ "Randomness by Design", ''Nous'' 25(1), 1991: 75-106.

★ Science and Design, ''First Things'' 86, October 1998.

★ "Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe", Proceedings of the Wethersfield Institute, vol. 9 (coauthored with Michael J. Behe and Stephen C. Meyer). San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000. ISBN 0-89870-809-5

★ "Seminary site to explore cosmic designer concept; Scholar contends Darwin was wrong", ''The Courier-Journal'' (Louisville, KY) February 20, 2005

★ ''Signs of Intelligence: Understanding Intelligent Design''. William A. Dembski, James M. Kushiner, 2001. ISBN 1-58743-004-5

★ Testimony of William Dembski before Texas State Board of Education, September 10 2003 (Adobe PDF)

★ ''Unapologetic Apologetics: Meeting the Challenges of Theological Studies''. William A. Dembski, Jay Wesley Richards. Downer's Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8308-1563-5

★ ''What Darwin Didn't Know'' (2004) ISBN 0-7369-1313-0

References

1. Creationist to will lead seminary science center Peter Smith. The Courier-Journal, April 17, 2006 (article available for a fee: [1] The Courier-Journal archive)
2. SWBTS trustees elect new deans, faculty, and vice president;expands program in San Antonio
3. Expert Report for case of Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al. NO.: CV 04-2688 (pages 3,5)
4. Understanding the Intelligent Design Creationist Movement: Its True Nature and Goals. (pdf) A Position Paper from the Center for Inquiry, Office of Public Policy Barbara Forrest. May, 2007.
Design on Trial in Dover, Pennsylvania by Nicholas J Matzke, NCSE Public Information Project Specialist
5. William Dembski's treatment of the No Free Lunch theorems is written in jello By David Wolpert, talkreason.org
6. William Dembski Addresses Forthcoming Intelligent Design Research that Advances ID and Answers Critics, Evolution News & Views, Discovery Institute
7. Crisis averted, Mark Bergin, World Magazine
8. http://www.swbts.edu/index.cfm?pageid=920
9. Ann Coulter: The Wedge for the Masses Dembski. Uncommondescent.com, June 12, 2006
10. http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1438
11. The "Vise Strategy" Undone: Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District Barbara Forrest. Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 31, Number 1 January/February 2007.

External links

★ Design Inference — Dembski's website, containing articles

★ ID Blog of William Dembski, Denyse O'Leary & Friends

★

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WILLIAM A. DEMBSKI

Biography

Discovery Institute

Peer-review controversy

Baylor University controversy

Activities since 2001

Views and statements

Responses to critics

Uncommon Descent

Dembski's role in the Mims-Pianka controversy

Bibliography

References

See also

External links

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Criticising Dembski

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