The Design Revolution: Answering The Toughest Questions About Intelligent Design - Softcover

Dembski, William A.; Colson, Charles W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0830832165 ISBN 13: 9780830832163

Publisher: IVP, 2004

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review

"Dembski, a philosopher/mathematician who has been an important theorist for the intelligent design movement, handles a wide range of questions and objections that should give both fans and detractors of ID plenty to chew on."--Publishers Weekly (Dec 22, 2003)

"I find William Dembski's writing and argumentation on behalf of intelligent design to be careful, erudite, thorough and a formidable challenge to the theistic evolution camp I normally defend."--Ted Peters, Professor of Systematic Theology, Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union

"William Dembski examines the challenges to intelligent design and, in turn, unveils the increasing difficulties with once-accepted Darwinian theory. Students will be especially encouraged here to find manageable tools to help them engage the often uncontested Darwinian establishment in the university. I enthusiastically recommend this resource for what is certainly one of the most critical discussions of our day."--Ravi Zacharias, author and speaker

"This is the most brilliant defense of the intelligent design movement in print. Dr. Dembski systematically dismantles virtually every known objection to the argument for intelligent design. There is nothing like it in print. It is the latest and greatest on the topic."--Norman Geisler, philosopher and author of When Skeptics Ask

"Bill Dembski poses all the tough questions that critics ask about intelligent design in biology, and brilliantly answers them all!"--Phillip Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial

"This book spells out clearly for the general public how and why the progress of modern science points strongly toward an intelligent designer. It answers the most common criticisms of design theory so deftly that it makes one wonder if dogged opponents of design have something on their minds other than pure science."--Michael Behe, Professor of Biology, Lehigh University, and author of Darwin's Black Box

"The view that intelligence must be intrinsic to the essential nature of the universe is a perspective that is slowly gaining a wider acceptance among serious scholars within the community of scientists and philosophers. For such an inference concerning the intrinsic effects of intelligence on nature and her laws to be truly scientifically acceptable, however, requires that it be placed within a rigorous theoretical framework and that specific criteria for validating the truth of it be clearly enunciated. It is precisely this task that William Dembski undertakes in The Design Revolution. He asks the hard questions and answers them in a clear, frank and straightforward way. His responses to the toughest of queries concerning the investigation of intelligent phenomena intrinsic to the natural world are both lucid and sophisticated. He meaningfully moves the community of scientists and scholars along the path of investigating and understanding the momentous possibility that intelligence is an irreducible aspect of reality."--Jeffrey M.Schwartz, M.D., Research Professor, UCLA Department of Psychiatry, and author of The Mind and The Brain

"In this book, Dembski marshals the evidence for intelligent design, clarifying its detection as well as its potential impact on science. This book comes at an opportune time as the debate intensifies over naturalism's role in fully explaining (or not) intelligence and very complex information-bearing systems. The author's commitment to open the natural sciences to intelligent causation will generate lively discussion for a readership spanning many disciplines."--Conrad Johanson, Professor of Clinical Neuroscience, Brown University

"Through his techniques of design detection as well as his organizational efforts, William Dembski is making the revolution he describes in this book happen. If Thomas Huxley was 'Darwin's Bulldog, ' Dembski is the man with the leash and the obedience training techniques to bring Darwinism into check."--Edward Sisson, law firm partner, Washington, D.C.

"For the past decade or so 'intelligent design' has stirred a storm of controversy. Is it nothing more than gussied-up creationism, as its critics charge, or a new scientific paradigm, as its advocates maintain? This sprightly catechism, written by the movement's leading theoretician, offers believers and skeptics alike (and I count myself among the latter) an authoritative, if one-sided, introduction to what the fuss is all about."--Ronald L. Numbers, Coleman Professor of the History of Science and Medicine, University of Wisconsin

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 acclaimedThe Design Inference (Cambridge), Intelligent Design (InterVarsity Press) and No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence (Rowman and Littlefield).

Edition details

• Publisher: IVP
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0830832165
• ISBN 13: 9780830832163
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 334