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These
are links to articles by Dr. Dembski which have
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Bill Dembski has a Ph.D. in mathematics from the
University of Chicago, a Ph.D. in philosophy from
the University of Illinois at Chicago, and an
M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary. Bill
has done post-doctoral work at MIT, University of
Chicago, Northwestern, Princeton, Cambridge, and
Notre Dame. He has been a National Science
Foundation doctoral and post-doctoral fellow.
His publications range from mathematics to
philosophy to theology. His monograph The Design
Inference appeared with Cambridge University
Press September 1998. In it he describes the logic
whereby rational agents infer intelligent causes.
He is working with Stephen Meyer and Paul Nelson on
a book entitled Uncommon Descent, which
seeks to reestablish the legitimacy and
fruitfulness of design within biology. He is a
fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for the
Renewal of Science and Culture and adjunct
professor in philosophy at the University of
Dallas.
- Why
President Bush Got It Right about Intelligent
Design by William A. Dembski, Ph.D.:
Intelligent Design pioneer and spokesperson Bill
Dembski responds to President Bush's comments
favorable to teaching Intelligent Design in
schools.
- The
problem with Darwinian solutions: Sean Carroll
and Michael Ruse argue that "evo devo"
undermines intelligent design - ID advocate
William Dembski begs to differ, by William A.
Dembski: Despite its early potential,
evolutionary developmental biology &emdash; evo
devo for short -- has yet to make good on its
promise. In his review of Endless Forms Most
Beautiful, Sean Carroll's new book on evo
devo, Michael Ruse faults intelligent design
(ID) for harping on evolution's unsolved
problems. Moreover, Carroll as well as Ruse
suggest that evo devo has now resolved one of
the major problems on which design theorists
have been harping. Wrong on both counts.
Intelligent design does not have a problem with
problems. It has a problem with bogus solutions
that Darwinists like Ruse and Carroll dress up
as real solutions to the problems of biological
origins.
- What
Can We Reasonably Hope for? A Millennium
Symposium - First Things, January 2000:
William Dembski predicts that the future of
science will be directed toward making use of
and formulating theories about information.
- Are
We Spiritual Machines? - First Things, October
1999: William Dembski examines the metaphor
common to scientific and philosophical
discussions of the person that man is a kind of
machine and criticizes this view as entirely
inadequate.
- The
Chance of the Gaps, by William A. Dembski:
The keynote address given at Society of
Christian Philosopher's in Boulder, Colorado,
October 2001. This is an Adobe Acrobat PDF file
[PDF - 217K]. Statistical reasoning must
be capable of eliminating chance when the
probability of events gets too small. If not,
chance can be invoked to explain anything.
Scientists rightly resist invoking the
supernatural in scientific explanations for fear
of committing a god-of-the-gaps fallacy (the
fallacy of using God as a stop-gap for
ignorance). Yet without some restriction on the
use of chance, scientists are in danger of
committing a logically equivalent fallacy?one we
may call the ?chance-of-the-gaps fallacy.?
Chance, like God, can become a stop-gap for
ignorance.
- Why
Natural Selection Can't Design Anything, by
William A. Dembski: Why Natural Selection
Can't Design Anything [PDF - 214K]
Society of Christian Philosopher's keynote
address - Boulder, Colorado, October. In "The
Fifth Miracle," Paul Davies suggests that any
laws capable of explaining the origin of life
must be radically different from scientific laws
known to date. The problem, as he sees it, with
currently known scientific laws, like the laws
of chemistry and physics, is that they cannot
explain the key feature of life that needs to be
explained. That feature is specified complexity.
Life is both complex and specified.
- ID
as a Theory of Technological Evolution, by
William A. Dembski: In Aristotle's
distinction between art and nature lies the
central issue in the debate over biological
evolution. The central issue is whether nature
has sufficient resources in herself to generate
all of biological diversity or whether in
addition nature requires art to complete what
nature alone cannot bring to a finish.
- Teaching
Intelligent Design -- What Happened When? - A
Response to Eugenie Scott, by William A.
Dembski: A response to Eugenie Scott's
posting in Metaviews (METAVIEWS 008, 02.12.01).
The clarion call of the intelligent design
movement is to "teach the controversy." There is
a very real controversy centering on how
properly to account for biological complexity
(cf. the ongoing events in Kansas), and it is a
scientific controversy. Eugenie Scott regularly
pretends that it will only confuse students to
teach intelligent design in public school
science curricula. In fact, what confuses
students is to be taught only the party line
while being aware that the party line is under
serious critical scrutiny.
- Is
Intelligent Design Testable? - A Response to
Eugenie Scott, by William A. Dembski: A
response to Eugenie Scott's key criticism
against intelligent design, that intelligent
design is untestable.
- Intelligent
Design Coming Clean, by William A. Dembski:
I hope with this essay to reassure our culture?s
guardians of scientific correctness that they
have nothing to fear from intelligent
design.
- Finding
Ken Miller's Point, by William A. Dembski:
Dembski responds to criticisms of his work in
Ken Miller's "Finding Darwin's God." "Finding
Darwin's God" is currently the best critique of
intelligent design in book form, but still comes
up short. My concern here is with two references
to my own work in Miller's book, references
which to my mind cut to the heart of Miller's
critique of intelligent design, but also point
up his need for further careful thinking.
- Pennock's
Convenient Distortion, by William A.
Dembski: William Dembski responds to Robert
Pennock's misquote in Books & Culture
(Sep/Oct 99, p. 31). It makes a huge difference
whether one refuses friendship with an idea or
with a group of people. As a design theorist I
disagree with theistic evolution but value
theistic evolutionists not only as persons but
also as dialogue partners.
- Pigliucci's
Intemperate Remarks, by William A. Dembski:
Massimo Pigliucci's review of "The Design
Inference" appeared on the Internet and is
supposed to be appearing in BioScience. Rather
than rebut it myself, I leave it to one of
Pigliucci's fellow skeptics, Mark Vuletic, to
rebut it. This article contains links to both
Pigliucci's initial review and Vuletic's
response.
- Design
as a Research Program, by William A.
Dembski: Contrary to popular accusations by
critics, intelligent design theory suggests a
number of questions that can be pursued as part
of a research program. This article contains
fourteen such questions.
- Who's
Got the Magic?, by William A. Dembski:
Rebuttal to Robert Pennock in "Tower of Babel."
Pennock wants to explain the appearance of
design in nature without admitting actual
design. That's why Richard Dawkins begins "The
Blind Watchmaker" with "Biology is the study of
complicated things that give the appearance of
having been designed for a purpose," whereupon
he requires an additional three hundred pages to
show why it is only an appearance of
design.
- Disbelieving
Darwin - And Feeling No Shame!, by William A.
Dembski: Whether intelligent design is the
theory that ultimately overturns Darwinism is
not the issue. The issue is whether the
scientific community is willing to eschew
dogmatism and admit as a live possibility that
even its most cherished views might be
wrong.
- Because
It Works. That's Why!, by William A.
Dembski: Book review of "The Concept of
Probability in Statistical Physics" by Y.M.
Guttmann. Reviewed by William A. Dembski.
- Intelligent
Design is not Optimal Design, by William A.
Dembski: The design in nature is actual.
More often than we would like, that design has
gotten perverted. But the perversion of design -
dysteleology - is not explained by denying
design, but by accepting it and meeting the
problem of evil head on. The problem of evil is
a theological problem. To force a resolution of
the problem by reducing all design to apparent
design is an evasion. It avoids both the
scientific challenge posed by specified
complexity, and it avoids the hard work of
faith, whose job is to discern God's hand in
creation despite the occlusions of evil.
- Detecting
Design? - A First Response to Elliott Sober, by
William A. Dembski: In The Design Inference
(Cambridge, 1998), I argue that specified
complexity is a reliable empirical marker of
intelligent design. Not everyone agrees. Elliott
Sober holds that specified complexity is exactly
the wrong instrument for detecting design. In
this piece I want to consider the main
criticisms of specified complexity as a reliable
empirical marker of intelligence, show how they
fail, and argue that not only does specified
complexity pinpoint how we detect design, but it
is also our sole means for detecting
design.
- Alchemy
and the Emergence of Complex Systems, by William
A. Dembski: Alchemy and the Emergence of
Complex Systems Appeared as Metaviews 158
(www.meta-list.org). 1999/11/30.
- Why
Evolutionary Algorithms Cannot Generate
Specified Complexity, by William A. Dembski:
Why Evolutionary Algorithms Cannot Generate
Specified Complexity Appeared as Metaviews 152
(www.meta-list.org). 1999/11/1.
- How
Not to Analyze Design, by William A.
Dembski: How Not to Analyze Design Reply to
Ellery Eell's review of The Design Inference,
which appeared in Philosophical Books, Vol. 40,
No. 4, October 1999.
- Explaining
Specified Complexity, by William A. Dembski:
Does nature exhibit actual specified complexity?
This article explores the concept of specified
complexity.
- Another
Way to Detect Design?, by William A.
Dembski: Another Way to Detect Design?
Preliminary reply to review by Branden Fitelson,
Christopher Stephens, and Elliott Sober of The
Design Inference in the September 1999 issue of
Philosophy of Science.
- The
Last Magic, by William A. Dembski: Book
Review of "The Applicability of Mathematics as a
Philosophical Problem" by Mark Steiner (Harvard
University Press, 1999). Reviewed by William A.
Dembski.
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