The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions About Intelligent Design

by Dembski, William A.; Colson, Charles W.

• ISBN13: 9780830823758
• ISBN10: 0830823751
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-01-01
• Publisher: Intervarsity Pr

Summary

Winner of a Christianity Today 2005 Book Award!A 2005 Gold Medallion finalist.Is it science? Is it religion? What exactly is the Design Revolution?Today scientists, mathematicians and philosophers in the intelligent design movement are challenging a certain view of science--one that limits its investigations and procedures to purely law-like and mechanical explanations. They charge that there is no scientific reason to exclude the consideration of intelligence, agency and purpose from truly scientific research. In fact, they say, the practice of science often does already include these factors!As the intelligent design movement has gained momentum, questions have naturally arisen to challenge its provocative claims. In this book William A. Dembski rises to the occasion clearly and concisely answering the most vexing questions posed to the intelligent design program. Writing with nonexperts in mind, Dembski responds to more than sixty questions asked by experts and nonexperts alike who have attended his many public lectures, as well as objections raised in written reviews.The Design Revolution has begun. Its success depends on how well it answers the questions of its detractors. Read this book and you'll have a good idea of the prospects and challenges facing this revolution in scientific thinking.

Author Biography

William A. Dembski is associate research professor in the conceptual foundations of science of Baylor University and a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Charles W. Colson	15	(4)
Preface	19	(10)
Acknowledgments	29	(4)
PART ONE: BASIC DISTINCTIONS
1 INTELLIGENT DESIGN	33	(5)
What is intelligent design?
2 CREATION	38	(3)
How does intelligent design differ from a theological doctrine of creation?
3 SCIENTIFIC CREATIONISM	41	(4)
Is intelligent design a cleverly disguised form of scientific creationism?
4 DISGUISED THEOLOGY	45	(5)
Even though intelligent design purports to be a scientific research program, isn't it really a theological enterprise?
5 RELIGIOUS MOTIVATION	50	(7)
Isn't the real driving force behind intelligent design a fear that evolutionary theories, and Darwinism in particular, will one day permanently displace any need for God?
6 OPTIMAL DESIGN	57	(7)
Why place the word intelligent infront of design? It seems that much of the design in nature is anything but intelligent.
7 THE DESIGN ARGUMENT	64	(11)
How does intelligent design differ from the design argument?
PART TWO: DETECTING DESIGN
8 THE DESIGN INFERENCE	75	(3)
What is the design inference? Hozo does the design inference differ from the design argument?
9 CHANCE AND NECESSITY	78	(3)
How does the scientific community conceive of natural causes, and why aren't intelligent causes among them?
10 SPECIFIED COMPLEXITY	81	(6)
What is specified complexity, and how does one determine whether something exhibits specified complexity?
11 THE EXPLANATORY FILTER	87	(7)
How does specified complexity function as a criterion for detecting design?
12 RELIABILITY OF THE CRITERION	94	(6)
Is specified complexity a reliable criterion for detecting design?
13 OBJECTIVITY AND SUBJECTIVITY	100	(6)
Does specified complexity describe an objective feature of the world or merely a subjective state of ignorance about the functioning of the world?
14 ASSERTIBILITY	106	(10)
Even if specified complexity is a well-defined, objective and reliable criterion for detecting design, why should we think that we could ever be justified in asserting that some natural object exhibits specified complexity?
15 THE CHANCE OF THE GAPS	116	(13)
Why must any scientific theory that aims to detect design be probabilistic?
PART THREE: INFORMATION
16 INFORMATION AND MATTER	129	(5)
What is the difference between information and matter, and what role does each play in the theory of intelligent design?
17 INFORMATION THEORY	134	(5)
Flow does the mathematical theory of information relate to intelligent design and, specifically, to intelligent design's criterion for detecting design, namely, specified complexity?
18 BIOLOGY'S INFORMATION PROBLEM	139	(6)
What is biology's information problem, and how do biologists attempt to resolve it?
19 INFORMATION EX NIHILO	145	(14)
Is nature complete in the sense of possessing all the capacities needed to bring about the information-rich structures that we see in the world and especially in biology? Or are there informational aspects of the world that nature alone cannot bridge but require the guidance of an intelligence?
20 NATURE'S RECEPTIVITY TO INFORMATION 150
What must nature be like for a designing intelligence to interact coherently with the world and generate the specified complexity we see in living things?
21 THE LAW OF CONSERVATION OF INFORMATION	159	(10)
What does it mean to say that specified complexity or complex specified information is conserved?
PART FOUR: ISSUES ARISING FROM NATURALISM
22 VARIETIES OF NATURALISM	169	(9)
Is naturalism in any guise compatible with intelligent design?
23 INTERVENTIONISM	178	(5)
Is intelligent design an interventionist theory in which design events punctuate an otherwise fully natural causal history?
24 MIRACLES AND COUNTERFACTUAL SUBSTITUTION	183	(5)
Does intelligent design require miracles? And if so, wouldn't that place it outside the bounds of science?
25 THE SUPERNATURAL	188	(4)
Isn't the designer to which intelligent design attributes biological complexity a supernatural agent and therefore outside the bounds of science?
26 EMBODIED AND UNEMBODIED DESIGNERS	192	(5)
Would the design produced by an unembodied designer be accessible to scientific investigation in the same way as the design produced by an embodied designer?
27 THE DESIGNER REGRESS	197	(3)
If nature exhibits design, who or what designed the designer?
28 SELECTIVE SKEPTICISM	200	(6)
Why is professional skepticism so antagonistic toward intelligent design? What are skepticism's prospects for unseating intelligent design?
29 THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE	206	(7)
Does scientific progress invariably vindicate naturalism and work against intelligent design?
PART FIVE: THEORETICAL CHALLENGES TO INTELLIGENT DESIGN
30 ARGUMENT FROM IGNORANCE	213	(6)
In attributing design to biological systems, isn't intelligent design just arguing from ignorance?
31 ELIMINATIVE INDUCTION	219	(4)
If the design inference isn't just an argument from ignorance, how is it more than an argument from ignorance?
32 HUME, REID AND SIGNS OF INTELLIGENCE	223	(26)
Didn't David Hume demolish not just the design argument for the existence of God but also any sort of inference to design based on features of the natural world?
33 DESIGN BY ELIMINATION VERSUS DESIGN BY COMPARISON 232
How are design hypotheses properly inferred-simply by eliminating chance hypotheses or by comparing the likelihood of chance and design hypotheses?
34 THE DEMAND FOR DETAILS: DARWINISM'S TU QUOQUE	249	(4)
Isn't it the height of hypocrisy for design theorists to complain that Darwinism provides no details about the emergence of biological complexity when their own theory, intelligent design, likewise provides no such details?
35 DISPLACEMENT AND THE NO FREE LUNCH PRINCIPLE.	253	(6)
How do the No Free Lunch theorems undercut Darwinian theory and support intelligent design?
36 THE ONLY GAMES IN TOWN	259	(10)
Isn't it crude and simplistic to cast the debate over biological evolution as merely between Darwinism and intelligent design? Surely evolutionary biology encourages many more options.
PART SIX: A NEW KIND OF SCIENCE
37 ASPIRATIONS	269	(6)
What does science stand to gain from intelligent design, and what is intelligent design aspiring to do for science?
38 MECHANISM	275	(5)
Since intelligent design is not a mechanistic theory of life's origin and development, how can it be scientific?
39 TESTABILITY	280	(11)
Is intelligent design testable? Is Darwinism testable?
40 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MICHAEL BENE	291	(9)
Why do evolutionary biologists think Michael Behe's work on irreducible complexity has been discredited?
41 PEER REVIEW	300	(6)
If intelligent design is a scientific research program, why don't design theorists publish or have their work cited in the peer-reviewed literature?
42 THE "WEDGE"	306	(4)
Isn't intelligent design really a political agenda masquerading as a scientific research program?
43 RESEARCH THEMES	310	(8)
What's a scientist interested in intelligent design supposed to do by way of scientific research?
44 MAKING INTELLIGENT DESIGN A DISCIPLINED SCIENCE	318	(8)
Granting that intelligent design is a scientific research program, or that it at least has the potential to become one, how can it avoid being swept away as part of a larger cultural and political agenda?
Select Bibliography	326	(6)
Index	332