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William Albert "Bill" Dembski (born July 18 1960) is an American proponent of intelligent design, and its opposition to the theory of evolution through natural selection. He is the author of several books concerning intelligent design, theology, and mathematics. From 1999 to 2005, he was on the faculty of Baylor University, where he was a 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).Creationist to will lead seminary science center Peter Smith. The Courier-Journal, April 17, 2006 (article available for a fee at The Courier-Journal archive) On 1 June 2006 Dembski became research professor in philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.Tomlin, Gregory; and Thompson, Brent (undated). SWBTS trustees elect new deans, faculty, and vice president;expands program in San Antonio. Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Retrieved on 2006-12-01. The Southern Baptist Convention operates both seminaries.
According to Dembski, the scientific study of nature reveals evidence of design, and he 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 many leading scientific and scientific education organizations including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and National Science Teachers Association rejecting intelligent design, describing it as "not science", "lack[ing] scientific warrant" and "pseudoscience", and his work has been characterised by by prominent mathematician David H. Wolpert as "written in jello".William Dembski\'s treatment of the No Free Lunch theorems is written in jello, David H. Wolpert, Talk Reason Mathematician, computer scientist and number theorist Jeffrey Shallit, a former teacher of Dembski\'s, submitted in an court expert witness report that Dembski\'s work should not be regarded as significant.Shallit, Jeffrey (2005-06-16). Expert Report for case of Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al. NO.: CV 04-2688 (pages 3,5). .... Retrieved on 2006-12-09.
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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).Intelligent Design Coming Clean, William A Dembski, Access Research Network He was educated at the Portsmouth Abbey School, at the time an all-male Catholic preparatory school.In God’s Country], Center for Science and Culture In 1988 he delivered one of the school\'s Dom Luke Child\'s series of lectures for that year.William Dembski Curriculum Vitae
Finishing high school a year early, he attended the University of Chicago, but he struggled at it, 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:
"Nonetheless, it was their literature that first got me thinking about how improbable it is to generate biological complexity and how this problem might be approached scientifically. A.E. Wilder-Smith was particularly important to me in this regard. Making rigorous his intuitive ideas about information has been the impetus for much of my research." Intelligent Design\'s contribution to the debate over evolution: a reply to Henry Morris, William A. Dembski, 1 February 2005]
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 from 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.Reclaiming Theological Education, William A. Dembski, Jay Richards 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.[citation needed] 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.The Logical Underpinnings of Intelligent Design, William A. Dembski, Baylor University 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.Randomness by Design, William A. Dembski, March 1991 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[citation needed] 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.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
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.
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.Politicized Scholars Put Evolution on the Defensive, Jodi Wolgoren, New York Times, August 21, 2005 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.
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. 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.Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, p87Intelligent Design and Peer Review, American Association for the Advancement of Science 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. Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design (Annotated), Discovery Institute. 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.William A. Dembski Curriculum Vitae August 2006
Computer scientist and number theorist Jeffrey Shallit describes Dembski\'s published mathematical output as "extremely small" for a research mathematician, and remarks that "[i]t is very unlikely that his meagre output would merit tenure at any major university."Shallit expert report in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District Dembski insists that The Design Inference has in fact been peer reviewed.Peer Review -- Response to Eugenie Scott and the NCSE, William Dembski, October 10, 2003 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 manuscript of The Design Inference at Cambridge University Press, who asserted that the book received “normal” review without being willing to give any detail as to what sort of process was “normal”.Desperately Dissing Avida - The Panda\'s Thumb. Retrieved on 2007-12-06. In his expert report, Shallit states "I know that book manuscripts typically do not receive the same sort of scrutiny that research articles do. ..it is not uncommon for a 10-page paper to receive 5 pages or more of comments whereas a book manuscript of 200 pages often receives about the same number..."."
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.The Michael Polanyi Center Peer Review Committee report 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." Polanyi official\'s e-mail concerns some faculty, Blair Martin, The Baylor Lariat, Baylor University
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."Email from William A. Dembski, 19 Oct 2000 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."Email from William Grassie, October 19, 2000 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."Louisville Courier-Journal
In November, 2007, a graduate student named S. A. Smith brought an apparent case of wholesale academic misuse of unlicenced content to public attention. She noticed that a video used by William Dembski in lecturing was identical to one produced by Harvard University and a company called XVIVO. The audio track giving a scientific explanation was stripped off and the video was used with an alternative narration. The matter has been mentioned to Harvard and XVIVO; they have not yet responded. Copies of the original video and the re-narrated one are available from The Panda\'s ThumbThe Panda\'s Thumb: DI--expelled for Plagiarism, 20 November, 2007, an evolutionary discussion group
In response to the allegations, Dembski has claimed that he downloaded the video from the Internet, and added a voiceover narration that he deemed appropriate for his audience. According to Dembski, the downloaded version omitted the opening credits but contained the closing credits, which were shown to the audience.News Release: Harvard\'s XVIVO Video However, Smith later documented several instances where images from the Harvard/XVIVO animation were apparently removed from his book The Design of Life but the related footnotes and references were not.Smith, S.A. 2007. Dembski, Copyright, and \'Design of Life\'Smith, S.A. 2007. Discovery Institute, Dembski, Copyright, and \'Design of Life\' indicating that Dembski was already aware that permission had been denied for him to use the animation when he delivered his presentation at the University of Oklahoma.
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), which appears to have ceased publication with its November 2005 issue.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.
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,
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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.Theology Department Faculty, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary\'Teaching\' page, Dembski\'s personal website
In July and August 2007, Dembski played a central role in the short-lived and controversialFollow the money: more Dembski/Baylor-related mischief? Andrea Bottaro. Panda\'s Thumb, September 7, 2007. Evolutionary Informatics Lab (EIL), formed by Baylor University Engineering Professor Robert J. Marks II. The EIL website hosted at Baylor 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 has said that they will permit Marks to repost his website on their server, provided a disclaimer accompany any ID-advancing research to make clear that the work does not represent the university\'s position.William Dembski Addresses Forthcoming Intelligent Design Research that Advances ID and Answers Critics, Evolution News & Views, Discovery InstituteCrisis averted, Mark Bergin, World Magazine Baylor U. Removes a Web Page Associated With Intelligent Design From Its Site by Elizabeth F. Farrell. Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 4, 2007. onlinesubscription access Dembski\'s participation was funded by a $30,000 grant from the Lifeworks Foundation, which is controlled by researcher Brendan Dixon of the Biologic Institute (which has close ties to the Discovery Institute).Follow the money: more Dembski/Baylor-related mischief?, Andrea Bottaro, Panda\'s ThumbLifeworks Foundation 990 form for the year 2006
In September 2007, the SWBTS hosted 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.http://www.swbts.edu/index.cfm?pageid=920
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 Godless: The Church of Liberalism. Approximately one-third of the book is devoted to polemical attacks on evolution, which Coulter, as Dembski often does, terms "Darwinism."Ann Coulter: The Wedge for the Masses Dembski. Uncommondescent.com, June 12, 2006
Dembski participated in the 2008 upcoming film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Dembski told the Southern Baptist Texan that those who need to see the movie are the "parents of children in high school or college, as well as those children themselves, who may think that the biological sciences are a dispassionate search for truth about life but many of whose practitioners see biology, especially evolutionary biology, as an ideological weapon to destroy faith in God.""Baptist professors featured in new film", Southern Baptist Texan, January 28, 2008. Retrieved on 2008-02-17.
| “ | My thesis is that the disciplines find their completion in Christ and cannot be properly understood apart from Christ ... The point to understand here is that Christ is never an addendum to a scientific theory but always the completion. | ” |
| —William Dembski, Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology, William Dembski, Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology, quoted in Creationism\'s Trojan Horse, p85 | ||
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 descenthttp://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1438. His mainstream scientific critics have accused him of dishonesty in his representation of scientific facts and writing,Why Do Scientists Get So Angry When Dealing With ID Proponents at the Internet Archive, Jason Rosenhouse and he has also been criticised by some in the traditional creationist community for not supporting the "Young Earth" creationist position, ID theorist blunders on Bible, Jonathan Sarfati, Answers in Genesis though he is also defended on other grounds by the same creationist community.Divining design, Royal Truman, Answers in GenesisDesigner science, Royal Truman, Answers in GenesisBaptist school afraid of creation, Answers in Genesis, October 28, 2000
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:
I\'m waiting for the day when the hearings are not voluntary but involve subpoenas in which evolutionists are deposed at length on their views. On that happy day, I can assure you they won\'t come off looking well.Kansas Hearings: Scopes in Reverse? — Yes and No William Dembski. Uncommon Descent, May 7, 2005.
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.The "Vise Strategy" Undone: Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District Barbara Forrest. Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 31, Number 1 January/February 2007.
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:
The elite in our culture are materialistic and atheistic. Intelligent design challenges their materialistic science and materialistic evolutionary theory. If you look at discipline after discipline, it\'s been evolutionized — medicine, business, religion, literature. [...] If we are right, all these superstructures built on evolution need to be questioned. [...] Intelligent design is the only view opposed to the reductionist materialism that prevails in the academy and in the scientific view the elites of the culture. Most of the unwashed masses, and I count myself among them, believe there\'s a sense of purpose. We\'re giving a voice to those people, saying: \'The science backs you up.\'Evolution Revolution, Las Vegas City Life, February 24 2005
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"What every theologian should know about creation, evolution and design, William A. Dembski 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."Dembski to head seminary\'s new science & theology center, Jeff Robinson, Baptist Press, Sep 16, 2004
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:
My commitment is to see intelligent design flourish as a scientific research program. To do that, I need a new generation of scholars willing to consider this, because the older generation is largely hidebound. So I would like to see textbooks, certainly at the college level and even at the high school level, which reframe introductory biology within a design paradigm.Houston Press, December 14 2000
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
Specified complexity is an argument proposed by Dembski and used by him in his works promoting intelligent design. According to Dembski, the concept is intended to formalize a property that singles out patterns that are both specified and complex. Dembski states that specified complexity is a reliable marker of design by an intelligent agent, a central tenet to intelligent design and which Dembski argues for in opposition to modern evolutionary theory. The concept of specified complexity is widely regarded as mathematically unsound and has not been the basis for further independent work in information theory, complexity theory, or biology.Rich Baldwin, (2005). Information Theory and CreationismMark Perakh, (2005). Dembski "displaces Darwinism" mathematically -- or does he?Jason Rosenhouse, (2001). How Anti-Evolutionists Abuse Mathematics The Mathematical Intelligencer, Vol. 23, No. 4, Fall 2001, pp. 3-8. Specified complexity is one of the two main arguments used by intelligent design proponents, the other being irreducible complexity. Concerning his work in these two areas, 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 Koons University of Texas listing dubs Dembski as "the Isaac Newton of information theory."
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, and in it he states that "The conceptual soundings of the [intelligent design] theory can in the end only be located in Christ"Intelligent Design; the Bridge Between Science and Theology, p. 210, William Dembski. He has expanded on this theme in a 2005 article for the pro-intelligent design designinference.com website:
Not only does intelligent design rid us of this ideology, which suffocates the human spirit, but, in my personal experience, I\'ve found that it opens the path for people to come to Christ. Indeed, once materialism is no longer an option, Christianity again becomes an option. True, there are then also other options. But Christianity is more than able to hold its own once it is seen as a live option. The problem with materialism is that it rules out Christianity so completely that it is not even a live option. Thus, in its relation to Christianity, intelligent design should be viewed as a ground-clearing operation that gets rid of the intellectual rubbish that for generations has kept Christianity from receiving serious consideration.Intelligent Design\'s Contribution to the Debate Over Evolution, William Dembski, Designinference.com website, February 2005
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:
I think at a fundamental level, in terms of what drives me in this is that I think God\'s glory is being robbed by these naturalistic approaches to biological evolution, creation, the origin of the world, the origin of biological complexity and diversity. When you are attributing the wonders of nature to these mindless material mechanisms, God\'s glory is getting robbed. [...] And so there is a cultural war here. Ultimately I want to see God get the credit for what he’s done — and he\'s not getting it.The design revolution?, Mark Perakh, TalkReason.org 2004
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 also indicated an interest in the discredited Bible code. In a favorable book review of Jeffrey Satinover\'s Cracking the Bible Code Dembski noted:
At the same time that research in the Bible Code has taken off, research in a seemingly unrelated field has taken off as well, namely, biological design. These two fields are in fact closely related. Indeed, the same highly improbable, independently given patterns that appear as the equidistant letter sequences in the Bible Code appear in biology as functionally integrated ("irreducibly complex") biological systems, of the sort Michael Behe discussed in Darwin’s Black Box.Cracking the Bible Code, William A. Dembski, First Things
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."
Dembski has stated he employs various strategies to deal with objections to his work before it gets published:
Critics and enemies are useful. The point is to use them effectively. In our case, this is remarkably easy to do. The reason is that our critics are so assured of themselves and of the rightness of their cause. As a result, they rush into print their latest pronouncements against intelligent design when more careful thought, or perhaps even silence, is called for. The Internet, especially now with its blogs (web logs), provides our critics with numerous opportunities for intemperate, indiscreet, and ill-conceived attacks on intelligent design. These can be turned to advantage, and I’ve done so on numerous occasions. I’m not going to give away all my secrets, but one thing I sometimes do is post on the web a chapter or section from a forthcoming book, let the critics descend, and then revise it so that what appears in book form preempts the critics’ objections. An additional advantage with this approach is that I can cite the website on which the objections appear, which typically gives me the last word in the exchange. And even if the critics choose to revise the objections on their website, books are far more permanent and influential than webpages.Dealing with the Backlash, William Dembski
Dembski\'s style in response to his critics (particularly of his mathematical papers) is polemical.Unapologetic Apologetics, William Dembski, Jay Richards For instance, in reply to a critique of the "law of conservation of information" posted on talkreason.org On Dembski’s Law of Conservation of Information, TalkReason, 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:
Here\'s a prediction. Erik is a close reader of my work and, despite all his protestations against it, is actually researching its ramifications. I expect he\'ll be publishing something in the peer-reviewed literature inspired by the ideas of No Free Lunch, though no doubt with the requisite sneers in my direction — if only to help it through the peer-review process.If Only Darwinists Scrutinized Their Own Work as Closely: A Response to "Erik", William Dembski
Another critic, Mark Perakh, is a frequent target of Dembski\'s:
Mark Perakh, the Boris Yeltsin of higher learning, has weighed in with yet another screed against me (go here). The man is out of his element. I’m still awaiting his detailed critique of "Searching Large Spaces" — does he even understand the relevant math?The Boris Yeltsin of Higher Learning, William Dembski
Dembski has also shown a hostility for providing a mechanistic explanation for intelligent design theory. In one ISCID exchange Dembski remarked:
You\'re asking me to play a game: "Provide as much detail in terms of possible causal mechanisms for your ID position as I do for my Darwinian position." ID is not a mechanistic theory, and it\'s not ID\'s task to match your pathetic level of detail in telling mechanistic stories. If ID is correct and an intelligence is responsible and indispensable for certain structures, then it makes no sense to try to ape your method of connecting the dots. True, there may be dots to be connected. But there may also be fundamental discontinuities, and with IC [irreducibly complex] systems that is what ID is discovering.ISCID messageboard post, William Dembski, September 18 2002
Dembski\'s critics maintain that he has yet to provide a means of determining if ID is correct.[citation needed]
In late 2006 Dembski created and published a Flash animation, The Judge Jones School of Law at his intelligent design website, OverwhelmingEvidence.com.The Judge Jones School of LawBwa ha ha!, Nick Matzke, The Panda\'s Thumb 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. This prompted critics, among them Richard Dawkins, to question Dembski\'s motive and the scholarliness of such tactics.Christmas Present to Defenders of DarwinismDembski’s motive, The Panda\'s Thumb
On having lent expertise to Ann Coulter for her polemic Godless: The Church of Liberalism on the topics of evolution and intelligent design, Dembski said "I take all responsibility for any errors in those chapters."Ann Coulter weighs in on Darwinism, William Dembski 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."Secondary Addiction: Ann Coulter on Evolution, Part I, James Downard, TalkReasonSecondary Addiction Part II: Ann Coulter on Evolution, James Downard, TalkReason 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."For sheer smarminess, this one is hard to beat, William DembskiMore entertainment from Jim Downard . . ., William Dembski
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.Dispatches from the Culture Wars 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. 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.Uncommon DescentUncommon Descent Dembski maintained that his blog was not intended as an open forum.Comments about Comments, William DembskiAbout This Blog, William DembskiWhy I ruthlessly edit comments on this blog, William Dembski
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.Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District/6:Curriculum, Conclusion
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.The Resurrection of Uncommon Descent, William Dembski 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.Dissent Out of Bounds on Uncommon Dissent (Oops, make that "Descent"), Richard B. Hoppe, The Panda\'s Thumb
Personal attacks are not atypical of Dembski\'s responses to opponents on his blog.Kevin Padian: The Archie Bunker Professor of Paleobiology at Cal Berkeley, William DemsbkiKevin Padian is Archie Bunker!, William Dembski 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,Jerry Coyne — The Herman Munster of Evolutionary Theory, William DembskiThe Shocking Truth, Harold Henderson, Chicago Reader, while responding to an argument the former had made.
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.Eric Pianka: The Department of Homeland Security needs to interview you, William Dembski This resulted in the Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewing Pianka in Austin.Professor\'s population speeches unnerve some at the Internet Archive
On 5 April Dembski offered a wager concerning Pianka:
I\'m willing to wager $1000 with David Hillis that sympathy not just nationally but at UTAustin for Pianka will take a nose dive once his TAS speech goes public. Of course, we need to set the terms of this wager more precisely. But it\'s a wager easily settled -- Pianka needs merely to make his speech before the TAS public (the actual speech -- not a bowdlerized version of it).$1000 reward and $1000 bet — Pianka again William Dembski. Uncommon Descent.
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