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Voted a Book of the Year by Christianity Today
The Intelligent Design movement is three things:a scientific research program for investigating intelligent causes
an intellectual movement that challenges naturalistic evolutionary theories
a way of understanding divine action
Although the fast-growing movement has gained considerable grassroots support, many scientists and theologians remain skeptical about its merits. Scientists worry that it's bad science (merely creationism in disguise) and theologians worry that it's bad theology (misunderstanding divine action). In this book William Dembski addresses these concerns and brilliantly argues that intelligent design provides a crucial link between science and theology.
Various chapters creatively and powerfully address intelligent discernment of divine action in nature, why the significane of miracles should be reconsidered, and the demise and unanswered questions of British natural theology. Effectively challenging the hegemony of naturalism and reinstating design within science, Dembski shows how intelligent design can be unpacked as a theory of information.
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."
About the author
William Dembski (Ph.D., mathematics, University of Chicago; Ph.D., philosophy, University of Illinois at Chicago) is senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture.He has previously 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, and he has been a National Science Foundation doctoral and postdoctoral fellow. Dembski has written numerous scholarly articles and is the author of the critically acclaimed
The Design Inference (Cambridge),
Intelligent Design (InterVarsity Press) and
No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence (Rowman and Littlefield).
Behe earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University. Behe's research focuses on the structure and function of chromatin and has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. In his book
Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (Free Press), Behe argues that the irreducible complexity of cellular biochemical systems shows that they were designed by an intelligent agent.
Darwin's Black Box has been reviewed in
Science, Nature, New Scientist, National Review, the
Wall Street Journal and the
New York Times. It was selected as
Christianity Today's 1996 Book of the Year. Behe is a member of the Biophysical Society and the American Society for Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. He is also a fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture.
Summary
In this book William A. Dembski brilliantly argues that intelligent design provides a crucial link between science and theology. This is a pivotal work from a thinker whom Phillip Johnson calls "one of the most important of the `design' theorists."
