Quotessence
Home / Authors / William A. Dembski Books
William A. Dembski

William A. Dembski Books

Mathematician

Related Quotes

“Johnson is a radical skeptic, insisting, in the best Socratic tradition, that everything be put on the table for examination. By contrast, most skeptics opposed to him are selective skeptics, applying their skepticism to the things they dislike (notably religion) and refusing to apply their skepticism to the things they do like (notably Darwinism). On two occasions I’ve urged Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine, to put me on its editorial board as the resident skeptic of Darwinism. Though Shermer and I know each other and are quite friendly, he never got back to me about joining his editorial board.”

ReligionEvolutionSkepticismBiasCritical ThinkingDarwinismScepticismMacroevolutionMacro Evolution
Author:William A. Dembski
Create image

“Regardless of one's point of view, it's quite easy to see that Darwinism is not in the same league as the hard sciences. For instance, Darwinists will often compare their theory favorably to Einsteinian physics, claiming that Darwinism is just as well established as general relativity. Yet how many physicists, while arguing for the truth of Einsteinian physics, will claim that general relativity is as well established as Darwin’s theory? Zero.”

ScienceEvolutionDarwinismScientific TheoryEinsteinMacroevolutionGeneral RelativityMacro EvolutionSpeciationScientific TheoriesHard Science
Book:Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing
Create image

“Even if we have a reliable criterion for detecting design, and even if that criterion tells us that biological systems are designed, it seems that determining a biological system to be designed is akin to shrugging our shoulders and saying God did it. The fear is that admitting design as an explanation will stifle scientific inquiry, that scientists will stop investigating difficult problems because they have a sufficient explanation already. But design is not a science stopper. Indeed, design can foster inquiry where traditional evolutionary approaches obstruct it. Consider the term "junk DNA." Implicit in this term is the view that because the genome of an organism has been cobbled together through a long, undirected evolutionary process, the genome is a patchwork of which only limited portions are essential to the organism. Thus on an evolutionary view we expect a lot of useless DNA. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, we expect DNA, as much as possible, to exhibit function. And indeed, the most recent findings suggest that designating DNA as "junk" merely cloaks our current lack of knowledge about function. For instance, in a recent issue of the Journal of Theoretical Biology, John Bodnar describes how "non-coding DNA in eukaryotic genomes encodes a language which programs organismal growth and development." Design encourages scientists to look for function where evolution discourages it. Or consider vestigial organs that later are found to have a function after all. Evolutionary biology texts often cite the human coccyx as a "vestigial structure" that hearkens back to vertebrate ancestors with tails. Yet if one looks at a recent edition of Gray’s Anatomy, one finds that the coccyx is a crucial point of contact with muscles that attach to the pelvic floor. The phrase "vestigial structure" often merely cloaks our current lack of knowledge about function. The human appendix, formerly thought to be vestigial, is now known to be a functioning component of the immune system.”

SciencePurposeEvolutionBiologyDnaDarwinismIntelligent DesignAppendixIdJunk DnaVestigial OrgansCoccyxHuman AppendixHuman CoccyxScientific Prediction
Author:William A. Dembski
Create image

“To establish evolutionary interrelatedness invariably requires exhibiting similarities between organisms. Within Darwinism, there's only one way to connect such similarities, and that's through descent with modification driven by the Darwinian mechanism. But within a design-theoretic framework, this possibility, though not precluded, is also not the only game in town. It's possible for descent with modification instead to be driven by telic processes inherent in nature (and thus by a form of design). Alternatively, it's possible that the similarities are not due to descent at all but result from a similarity of conception, just as designed objects like your TV, radio, and computer share common components because designers frequently recycle ideas and parts. Teasing apart the effects of intelligent and natural causation is one of the key questions confronting a design-theoretic research program. Unlike Darwinism, therefore, intelligent design has no immediate and easy answer to the question of common descent. Darwinists necessarily see this as a bad thing and as a regression to ignorance. From the design theorists' perspective, however, frank admissions of ignorance are much to be preferred to overconfident claims to knowledge that in the end cannot be adequately justified. Despite advertisements to the contrary, science is not a juggernaut that relentlessly pushes back the frontiers of knowledge. Rather, science is an interconnected web of theoretical and factual claims about the world that are constantly being revised and for which changes in one portion of the web can induce radical changes in another. In particular, science regularly confronts the problem of having to retract claims that it once confidently asserted.”

ScienceIgnoranceEvolutionEvidenceBiologyInterpretationSimilarityDarwinismIntelligent DesignOrigin Of LifeIdSimilaritiesConclusionsKnowldgeHomologyUniversal Common Descent
Author:William A. Dembski
Create image

“Even if the intelligent design of some structure has been established, it still is a separate question whether a wise, powerful, and beneficent God ought to have designed a complex, information-rich structure one way or another. For the sake of argument, let's grant that certain designed structures are not simply, as Gould put it, "odd" or "funny," but even cruel. What of it? Philosophical theology has abundant resources for dealing with the problem of evil, maintaining a God who is both omnipotent and benevolent in the face of evil.”

ScienceBiologyIntelligent DesignId
Book:Signs of Intelligence: Understanding Intelligent Design
Create image

“If we take seriously the word-flesh Christology of Chalcedon (i.e., the doctrine that Christ is fully human and fully divine) and view Christ as the telos toward which God is drawing the whole of creation, then any view of the sciences that leaves Christ out of the picture must be seen as fundamentally deficient.”

IfsHumansWholeChristViewsCreationDivineDrawingFleshDoctrine
Book:Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology
Create image

“The scientific picture of the world championed since the Enlightenment is not just wrong but massively wrong. Indeed entire fields of inquiry, especially in the human sciences, will need to be rethought from the ground up in terms of intelligent design.”

WorldNeedsHumansTermDesignFieldsEnlightenmentIntelligentInquiryIntelligent Design
Book:Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology
Create image

“How a designer gets from thought to thing is, at least in broad strokes, straightforward: (1) A designer conceives a purpose. (2) To accomplish that purpose, the designer forms a plan. (3) To execute the plan, the designer specifies building materials and assembly instructions. (4) Finally, the designer or some surrogate applies the assembly instructions to the building materials. What emerges is a designed object, and the designer is successful to the degree that the object fulfills the designer's purpose.”

FormPurposeSuccessfulPlansObjectsBuildingMaterialsDegreesAccomplishDesignerBroadsInstructionStrokesAssemblyStraightforwardSurrogatesBuilding Materials
Book:No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased Without Intelligence
Create image

“Thus, in a crucial way, the Kansas hearings repeat the pattern set by the Scopes Trial, which has been repeated many times since, namely, evolutionists escaped critical scrutiny by not having to undergo cross-examination. In this case, they accomplished the feat by boycotting the hearings. I therefore await the day when the hearings are not voluntary but involve subpoenas that compel evolutionists to be deposed and interrogated at length on their views.”

WayHas BeensViewsCasesCrossesPatternsHearingCriticalTrialsRepeatsAccomplishedLengthCrucialScopeExaminationScrutinyFeatsKansasSubpoenasScopes Trial
Author:William A. Dembski
Create image

“You have to understand, in the current academic climate, Intelligent Design is like leprosy or heresy in times past. To be tagged as an ID supporter is to become an academic pariah, and this holds even at so-called Christian institutions that place a premium on respectability at the expense of truth and the offense of the Gospel.”

ChristianPastDesignIntelligentInstitutionsClimateCurrentsExpensesAcademicOffenseSupporterHeresyRespectabilityPremiumIntelligent DesignTimes PastPariahsLeprosyTagged
Author:William A. Dembski
Create image

“The fundamental claim of intelligent design is straightforward and easily intelligible: namely, there are natural systems that cannot be adequately explained in terms of undirected natural forces and that exhibit features which in any other circumstance we would attribute to intelligence.”

ForceTermNaturalDesignCircumstancesClaimsIntelligentFundamentalsFeaturesAttributesStraightforwardExhibitsIntelligent Design
Book:The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions about Intelligent Design
Create image

“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.”

MayUseChanceDangerIgnoranceScientistExplanationGapsRestrictionFallacySerendipity
Author:William A. Dembski
Create image

“The very comprehensibility of the world points to an intelligence behind the world. Indeed, science would be impossible if our intelligence were not adapted to the intelligibility of the world. The match between our intelligence and the intelligibility of the world is no accident. Nor can it properly be attributed to natural selection, which places a premium on survival and reproduction and has no stake in truth or conscious thought. Indeed, meat-puppet robots are just fine as the output of a Darwinian evolutionary process.”

IfsWorldWould BeProcessNaturalBehindsImpossibleFineSurvivalConsciousAccidentsMeatStakesRobotsSelectionPuppetsAdaptedNatural SelectionReproductionSerendipityOutputPremium
Author:William A. Dembski
Create image

“Constrained optimization is the art of compromise between conflicting objectives. This is what design is all about. To find fault with biological design - as Stephen Jay Gould regularly does - because it misses some idealized optimum is therefore gratuitous. Not knowing the objectives of the designer, Gould is in no position to say whether the designer has proposed a faulty compromise among those objectives.”

DoeArtKnowingMissingDesignPositionBalanceFaultsObjectivesCompromiseDesignerNot KnowingOptimumOptimizationJay Gould
Author:William A. Dembski
Create image

“Naturalism is the view that the physical world is a self-contained system that works by blind, unbroken natural laws. Naturalism doesn't come right out and say there's nothing beyond nature. Rather, it says that nothing beyond nature could have any conceivable relevance to what happens in nature. Naturalism's answer to theism is not atheism but benign neglect. People are welcome to believe in God, though not a God who makes a difference in the natural order.”

PeopleWorldBelieveSelfHappensLawOrderNaturalDifferencesAnswersViewsAtheismBlindAtheistWelcomeMaking A DifferenceNeglectBelieve In GodRelevanceNatural LawNaturalismUnbrokenBenignTheismNatural OrderSelf Contained
Author:William A. Dembski
Create image

“The young earth-solution to reconciling the order of creation with natural history makes good exegetical and theological sense. Indeed, the overwhelming consensus of theologians up through the Reformation held to this view. I myself would adopt it in a heartbeat except that nature seems to present such strong evidence against it.”

SeemsEarthYoungOrderStrongNaturalViewsCreationSolutionsEvidenceOverwhelmingTheologianConsensusHeartbeatReformationTheologicalNatural History
Book:The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World
Create image

“The positive evidence for Darwinism is confined to small-scale evolutionary changes like insects developing insecticide resistance....Evidence like that for insecticide resistance confirms the Darwinian selection mechanism for small-scale changes, but hardly warrants the grand extrapolation that Darwinists want. It is a huge leap going from insects developing insecticide resistance via the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection and random variation to the very emergence of insects in the first place by that same mechanism.”

WantFirstsNaturalHugeEvolutionEvidenceScalesResistanceDevelopingLeapMechanismSelectionInsectsVariationConfinedNatural SelectionEmergenceWarrantsDarwinismInsecticides
Author:William A. Dembski
Create image

“I'm not saying that atheists can't act morally or have moral knowledge. But when I ascribe virtue to an atheist, it's as a theist who sees the atheist as conforming to objective moral values. The atheist, by contrast, has no such basis for morality. And yet all moral judgments require a basis for morality, some standard of right and wrong.”

ValuesMoralVirtueMoralityJudgmentStandardsBasesAtheistObjectivesContrastConformMoral ValuesTheistMoral Judgment
Author:William A. Dembski
Create image