William A. Dembski Quote
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 , 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.
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 , 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.
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About William A. Dembski
In 2012, he taught as the Phillip E. Johnson Research Professor of Science and Culture at the Southern Evangelical Seminary in Matthews, North Carolina, near Charlotte.
Dembski has written books about intelligent design, including The Design Inference (1998), Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology (1999), The Design Revolution (2004), The End of Christianity (2009), and Intelligent Design Uncensored (2010).
Intelligent design is the argument that an intelligent cause is responsible for the complexity of life and that one can detect that cause empirically. Dembski postulated that probability theory can be used to prove irreducible complexity (IC) and what he called "specified complexity." The scientific community sees intelligent design—and Dembski's concept of specified complexity—as a form of creationism attempting to portray itself as science.