Intelligent Design

by William A. Dembski

Book Overview

Intelligent Design is a pivotal, synthesizing work from a thinker whom Phillip Johnson calls "one of the most important of the design theorists who are sparking a scientific revolution by legitimating the concept of intelligent design in science."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0830815813
• ISBN13: 9780830815814
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: InterVarsity Press
• Length: 312 Pages
• Weight: 1.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

The Impending Demise of Scientific Naturalism

According to Darwin and the theory of evolution, biological systems may look designed, but that design is illusory because there's a purely undirected process, namely natural selection acting on random mutations that can produce that appearance without there being any actual guidance or intelligence behind it. The theory of Intelligent Design proposes in contrast that key features of living systems can be best explained by the activity of a designing intelligence, and that living systems look designed because they were designed. Prior to Darwin, British natural theology had also inferred design from biological features such as the eye, but because of the limits of scientific knowledge at that time, had not been able to establish that conclusion rigorously. This has now changed. Advances in biochemistry have revealed not only vastly increased complexity, but also a whole new level of organization to biology, and that is information. Dembski has developed a criterion, specified complexity, which can reliably distinguish information-rich structures from ones which exhibit only order. The questions then arise, what best accounts for structures exhibiting complex specified information, and does science currently have the tools to answer that question? To begin with, I.D. advocates invoke a procedural rule that was important to the formulation of the historical sciences in the nineteenth century, which is that we should explain things by reference to known cause and effect processes. This rule, sometimes called uniformitarianism, is that our present knowledge of cause and effect should guide our inferences about the past. What we know from our uniform and repeated experience in the present is that, for example, only intelligence produces information-rich digital code. So the presence of digital code in DNA is strong evidence of a prior designing intelligence. This conclusion is based entirely on a standard canon of scientific method. Nevertheless, the question of the design inference brings to light two opposing views of reality which contend to undergird science and its attempts to make sense of the natural world. Naturalism, the view that nature is a closed system and that what is basic is matter in mindless motion, is currently the default position of modern science and indeed in all of Western culture. At odds with naturalism is theism, the view that Logos, or Intelligence, is basic to reality. The former view allows only natural causes to be invoked in scientific explanations, not so much because of the so-called "limits of science", but because of the perceived limits of reality which preclude any other causes. Theism, on the other hand, allows for natural causes to be interwoven with intelligent causes in the natural world. The difference between Darwinism and I.D. is that the former cannot even consider intelligent causes because of the restrictions placed upon it by naturalism. Intelligent Design, howev

An Investigation of Intelligent Design from the Perspectives of Science and Theology

In this popular treatment of intelligent design, Discovery Fellow William Dembski combines his Ph.D. in philosophy with his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago and his Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary to elucidate how the scientific theory of intelligent design interacts with his personal Christian faith. Dembski explains that design is empirically detectable in nature by seeking for specified and complex information. "Choice" is the primary characteristic of intelligent action, for "intelligent agency always entails discrimination, choosing certain things, ruling out others." (pg. 144) By analyzing the patterns produced by such "choice", Dembski constructs reliable criteria by which we recognize when intelligent choices have been made. Dembski then peers at design theory through the "lens" of his personal Christian faith. After discussing various models for the interface between science and religion, he decides that the best model concludes that science and religion provide "epistemic support" for one another. A trained theologian and philosopher, Dembski is careful to distinguish between "epistemic support" and "rational compulsion," explaining that even established scientific theories like the Big Bang can provide epistemic support for the Christian doctrine of creation, even if they do not mandate belief in Christianity. Dembski views the scientific theory of intelligent design in a similar fashion. Design theory provides epistemic support for Christianity, while it does not mandate belief in such. Thus Dembski acknowledges that a scientific approach to studying design in nature has innate limitations, for design theory "nowhere attempts to identify the intelligent cause responsible for the design in nature" because "the nature, moral character and purposes of this intelligence lie beyond the remit of science" (pg. 246). For those interested in understanding both the scientific nature of intelligent design and also its support and limitations for theological investigations, this book is a must read.

Flawed, but a must read and worth the price

The first four of the eight chapters along with the appendix are well worth the price. The book as a whole is a must read for those who feel the need to keep up with the resurgence of scientific apologetics in the scientific community. This book should be added to a list that includes other foundational works by Fred Herren, Michael Behe, and at least one each from the prolific Hugh Ross and Phillip Johnson. To the list of books should be added a subscription to the new Faith and Reason magazine.Unfortunately, I found the arguments surrounding CSI or Complex Specified Information and the Law of Conservation of Information in Chaps. 5 & 6 to still be unconvincing although frequently thought provoking. At least for now, design for me will have to be an inference from the evidence rather than a deduction from any information theory postulates. Hopefully progress from the Santa Fe Institute at one end and people building off Dembski's work on the other end will create more fertile ground for the Design Debate.I enjoyed the last two chapters. For those coming from non-Christian belief systems, the last two chapters will not be edifying regarding the Design Debate and perhaps will only cause rancor. These chapters are however examples of how many scientists and science enthusiasts are making faith implications on scientific discovery.I highly recommend this book to anyone who would not be terribly disappointed to discover that the author's premise might be true.

Outstanding--makes me want to investigate more deeply

This book has really opened my eyes. I now believe that Intelligent Design is a legitimate field of scientific study, and is extremely promising for both scientists and believers. I knew virtually nothing of this idea before reading this book. However, I had read quite extensively (for a non-academic, anyway) among many scientists/authors challenged by Dembski in this book--Darwin, Dawkins, Dennett, Kauffman, and various researchers within the Sante Fe Institute. I had read their work in a very sympathetic manner and found their work quite compelling. However, Dr. Dembski has issued a challenge to their lines of thought that simply cannot be ignored. In fact, in this book's appendix, Dembski carefully lists all major objections to design theory and skillfully defends against each.I read through the other reviews and find fault with every one of the more negative reviews. To counter a few of them ... This book wasn't meant to be complete or final. Dembski previously published a much more detailed and thorough work; this book is meant for an audience who needs a simpler introduction. Dembski clearly is laying the groundwork for future work in a new approach in scientific inquiry. He hardly asserts to have all the answers or to have proven anything beyond refuting. Attempting to confuse this book with "Christian fundamentalism" is just lazy.I am a professional engineer. Engineers understand design about as well as any profession--maybe better than most. Dembski's insights into design are solid. I had suspected before that many scientists see design as something "less than" science, but never questioned why. Dembski has revealed what I see as an ugly bias, a close-mindedness in some scientists, that surely can only obstruct their view of the truth. It's about time science (scientists) opened its eyes. I believe Dembski and his colleagues are doing revolutionary work. If you're at all intrigued by the topic of this book--buy it and read it.

Dembski's revolutionary defense of design made easy

In Intelligent Design, William Dembski makes his revolutionary insights on detecting design, first articulated in The Design Inference (Cambridge, 1998), accessible to the general reader. (He even opens with Homer Simpson!) But he also develops his ideas more broadly, perhaps most importantly by connecting his notion of specified complexity with a robust form of information. By doing so, he refutes the shallow claim that laws of self-organization can generate the relevant kind of complexity needed to explain biology. Since he spends his entire chapter six on the subject, only a reviewer who didn't bother to read the book could complain that he ignores the work of complexity theorists such as Stuart Kauffman and others. Dembski is intimately conversant with these works, and offers the best refutation to date of the aspirations of complexity and self-organizational theory. Periodic order, easily explained by self-organizational scenarios, isn't the aperiodic, information-rich complexity we have before us in DNA and biological systems. Self-organization explains what doesn't need explaining. When a critical reviewer fails to engage Dembski's concept of "specified complexity" and deal with his actual arguments, one should assume that the putative "reviewer" is either unacqainted with, or unwilling to confront the devastating case Dembski makes against materialism. In future years, his work will be recorded in the intellectual history of the late 20th century. Let's hope there's also some mention of the snide and ineffectual responses it initially received.