William A. Dembski

William Albert " Bill" Dembski ( born July 8, 1960 in Chicago) is an American mathematician, philosopher and theologian. Dembski is known as a representative of Intelligent Design. His core message is that specified complexity can serve as evidence for intelligent design criterion.

Life

Dembski grew up as a Catholic. He was the only child of a biology professor who accepted evolution. He left college at seventeen and worked in the art dealer of his mother. He says that he originally had no relation to Christianity, but during his " difficult phase of life " fell back to the Bible and to creationist literature in order to understand the world. He accepted the teachings of the young-earth creationists do not, but their criticism of evolutionary theory spoke to him.

" Still, it was their literature, which for the first time for reflection took me about how unlikely it is to generate biological complexity, and how scientific approaches this problem. A. E. Wilder -Smith was particularly important for me in this relationship. Strict work out his intuitive ideas about information that has been for much of my research in the offense. "

At the University of Illinois, Chicago ( UIC), he began to study again. He earned a bachelor's degree in psychology in 1981, 1983, receiving a master's degree in statistics and a master's degree in mathematics in 1985. In 1988 he received his doctorate in mathematics in Chicago at Patrick Billingsley ( Chaos, Uniform Probability, and Weak Convergence ). In Postdoctoral Fellowships in mathematics he worked until 1991 for the National Science Foundation, and then from 1992 to 1993 in History and Philosophy of Science at Northwestern University. He earned a master's in 1993 and 1996, a Ph.D. in philosophy, both at the UIC, and a master's degree in theology, also in 1996, at the Princeton Theological Seminary, a training center for clergy under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church.

In 1999, Dembski was on the initiative of R. Sloan, Rector at Baylor University in Waco (Texas ), Director of the newly established Michael Polanyi Center. As this Center was established by the Rector Sloan, without the consultation of the faculty and many members of the faculty because of the " intelligent design think-tanks " feared for the reputation of the university, both Dembski and the new Institute were quickly target of strong criticism. After the Faculty Senate with 26:2 votes voted for a resolution of the Michael Polanyi Center, sat Rector R. Sloan an advisory committee made ​​up of scientists from outside the Baylor University. The experts came to the Recommendation, the Michael Polanyi Center to leaven the Baylor Institute for Faith and Learning and to end the inappropriate use of the name " Michael Polanyi ". Dembski, however, saw the evaluators' report as a triumph for " intelligent design" and accused his colleagues of the same dogmatic rejection of his work, which led to a scandal. Dembski counter the accusation was of some colleagues, in turn, charged that he was a " creationist with stealth ". This was followed by his removal from office of the Director and the suspension of the Institute in October 2000.

Since 1 June 2006, Dembski professor of philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, which is maintained by the Southern Baptist Convention.

Advocate of creationism

Dembski believes that it is statistically unlikely that natural selection could produce the extraordinary diversity of life. This position is crystallized at a conference on randomness ( Randomness ) at Ohio State University in 1988 out where the statistician Persi Diaconis said at the end: " We know what randomness is not. What it is, we do not know. " Dembski calls this event the catalyst for his subsequent work on design. He put the result on the hypothesis that randomness is a derived term that could only be with recourse to design than the more fundamental concept, understood. He presented in his 1991 paper " Randomness by Design ," which appeared in the journal Nous These thoughts. These thoughts led him to his concept of specified complexity, which he developed in the book The Design Inference, a revision of his dissertation in philosophy.

Published in 1998, Dembski published his first book, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities, in which he is not, as in his later books, open Intelligent Design touted as the origin of the universe, but rather a hypothetical discussion about the possibilities of detection of design offers. This book became a best-selling philosophical textbook of the publisher, Cambridge University Press. The title of another book, Mere Creation, is an allusion to C. S. Lewis ' book Mere Christianity ( Sorry, I am a Christian ). In No Free Lunch, Dembski discusses the alleged consequences of the No -Free - Lunch theorems from the theory of combinatorial optimization for the propagated by him, " Theory of specified complexity." David Wolpert, who discovered along with MacCready no- free- lunch theorems, commenting on the work of Dembski 's with the words: " I say Dembski ' Attempts to ' turn this trick Because Despite his invoking the NFL theorems, his arguments are fatally informal and imprecise. Like monographs on any philosophical topic in the first category, Dembski 's is written in jello. There simply is not enough did is firm in his text, not Sufficient precision of formula tion, to allow one to declare unambiguously 'right' or ' wrong 'When reading through the argument. All one can do is squint, furrow one's brows, and then shrug. " The philosopher Robert Koons on the other hand, Fellow of the Center for the Renewal neokreationistischen of Science and Culture, Dembski described it as the " Isaac Newton" information theory. His concept was criticized by the computer scientist Jeffrey Shallit.

Dembski is a Senior Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture, a division of the conservative Christian Discovery Institute in Seattle, Washington, and Managing Director of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design ( ISCID ), one in the U.S. than in 2003 "non- profit organization " registered intelligent design think-tanks.

Writings (selection )

  • The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities, Cambridge University Press, 1998
  • Mere Creation, InterVarsity Press, 1998
  • Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology, InterVarsity Press, 1999
  • Unapologetic Apologetics: Meeting the Challenges of Theological Studies ( with Jay Wesley Richards ), InterVarsity Press, 2001
  • No Free Lunch, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002
  • The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions about Intelligent Design, InterVarsity Press, 2004
  • The Design of Life, 2008 ( with Jonathan Wells )
  • The Patristic Understanding of Creation, Erasmus Press, 2008 ( with Wayne J. Downs and Mrs. Justin BA Frederick)
  • Understanding Intelligent Design ( with Sean McDowell ), Harvest House Publishers, 2008
  • The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in to Evil World, Nashville, Tennessee: B & H Publishing, 2009
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