William Dembski
William Albert Dembski (born July 18, 1960), Ph.D., is a mathematician and philosopher. He earned his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1988, and also earned a master of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1996. He has held National Science Foundation graduate and postdoctoral fellowships, and has taught at Northwestern University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Dallas. He has done postdoctoral work in mathematics at MIT, in physics at the University of Chicago, and in computer science at Princeton University. "Design inference" is the theme of his work.
Dr. Dembski has published articles in mathematics, philosophy, and theology journals and is the author/editor of more than ten books. His chief insight has been to observe that design may be inferred with a reasonable degree of confidence if origins other than design have very small probabilities.
- William Dembski is a senior fellow with Seattle's Discovery Institute. Dr. Dembski has published articles in mathematics, philosophy, and theology journals and is the author/editor of more than ten books. In The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities (Cambridge University Press, 1998), he examines the design argument in the post-Darwinian context and analyzes the connections linking chance, probability, and intelligent causation. His work has been cited in numerous newspaper and magazine articles, including three front-page stories in the New York Times. He has made frequent television appearances.[1]
He wrote:
- Materialistic ideology has subverted the study of biological and cosmological origins so that the actual content of these sciences has become corrupted. The problem, therefore, is not merely that science is being used illegitimately to promote a materialistic world view, but that this world view is actively undermining scientific inquiry, leading to incorrect and unsupported conclusions about biological and cosmological origins. At the same time, intelligent design (ID) offers a promising scientific alternative to materialistic theories of biological and cosmological evolution—an alternative that is finding increasing theoretical and empirical support. Hence, ID needs to be vigorously developed as a scientific, intellectual, and cultural project.
Selected books
- The Design of Life: Discovering Signs of Intelligence In Biological Systems (with Jonathan Wells).
- How to be an Intellectually Fulfilled Atheist (Or Not) (with Jonathan Wells).
