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Cambridge Publishes Neo-Creationism
Marty Rudin (martyrudin@hotmail.com)
Mon, 12 Oct 1998 16:09:42 +0000
Creationists have finally slipped one past the goalkeeper. Cambridge
University Press has just published William A. Dembski's THE DESIGN
INFERENCE. In it Dembski acknowledges such creationists as Phillip
Johnson,
Michael Behe, and A. E. Wilder-Smith. The creationist David Berlinski
wrote
the jacket endorsement (see below).
If you really want to see what Dembski is up to, compare this book to
his
blatantly theological MERE CREATION: SCIENCE, FAITH & INTELLIGENT DESIGN
(from the evangelical Christian publisher InterVarsity). This book has
also
just been published. In it Dembski lays out the theological agenda
behind
the so-called "intelligent design movement."
This neo-creationism is a lot more sophisticated and slickly packaged
than
the creationism that lost in the courts back in the 80s. Given that
50% of
Americans are creationists, this new-style creationism may not only slip
past the academic publishers (as it has here), but also past the
courts. The
threat to science education is real. I urge you to take this threat
seriously and meet it head on.
Marty Rudin
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Dembski's DESIGN INFERENCE -- the inside dustjacket reads:
(taken from Amazon.com; see also the reviews there)
How can we identify events due to intelligent causes and distinguish
them from events due to undirected natural causes? If we lack a causal
theory, how can we determine whether an intelligent cause acted? This
book presents a reliable method for detecting intelligent causes: the
design inference. The design inference uncovers intelligent causes by
isolating the key trademark of intelligent causes: specified events of
small probability. Just about anything that happens is highly
improbable, but when a highly improbable event is also specified (i.e.,
conforms to an independently given pattern) undirected natural causes
lose their explanatory power. Design inferences can be found in a range
of scientific pursuits from forensic science to research into the
origins of life to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. This
challenging and provocative book shows how incomplete undirected causes
are for science and breathes new life into classical design arguments.
It will be read with particular interest by philosphers of science and
religion, other philosophers concerned with epistemology and logic,
probability and complexity theorists, and statisticians.
"As the century and with it the millennium come to an end, questions
long buried have disinterred themselves and come clattering back to
intellectual life, dragging their winding sheets behind them. Just
what,
for example, is the origin of biological complexity and how is it to be
explained? We have no more idea today than Darwin did in 1859, which is
to say no idea whatsoever. William Dembski's book is not apt to be the
last word on the inference to design, but it will surely be the first.
It is a fine contribution to analysis, clear, sober, informed,
mathematically sophisticated and modest. Those who agree with its point
of view will read it with pleasure, and those who do not, will ignore
it
at their peril." --David Berlinski, Author of _The Tour of the Calculus_
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