William Albert Dembski (born July 18, 1960) is an American mathematician, philosopher and theologian. He was a proponent of intelligent design (ID) pseudoscience, specifically the concept of specified complexity, and was a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC). On September 23, 2016, he officially retired from intelligent design, resigning all his "formal associations with the ID community, including [his] Discovery Institute fellowship of 20 years". A February 2021 interview in the CSC's blog Evolution News announced "his return to the intelligent design arena".
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.
Biography
Dembski was born in Chicago, Illinois, the only child of Catholic parents, his mother an art dealer and his father a college professor and lecturer. His father held a D.Sc. in biology from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and taught evolutionary biology; while growing up Dembski was neither particularly religious nor did he question the theory of evolution. He attended an all-male Catholic preparatory school in Chicago. Dembski finished high school a year early, excelling in math and finishing a calculus course in one summer. After high school he attended the University of Chicago. There, Dembski experienced educational and personal difficulties, struggling with the advanced courses and finding the unfamiliar social milieu of college challenging. Dembski dropped out of school and worked at his mother's art business while reading works on creationism and the Bible. Finding the creationist works interesting in their challenge of evolution but their literal interpretations lacking, Dembski returned to school at the University of Illinois at Chicago, studying statistics.
It was in 1988 at a conference on randomness that Dembski began to believe that there was purpose, order, and design in the universe by the intervention of God. Remaining in academia, Dembski ultimately completed an undergraduate degree in psychology (1981, University of Illinois at Chicago) and master's degrees in statistics, mathematics, and philosophy (1983, University of Illinois at Chicago; 1985, University of Chicago; 1993, University of Illinois at Chicago, respectively), two PhDs, one in mathematics and one in philosophy (1988, University of Chicago; 1996, University of Illinois at Chicago, respectively), and a Master of Divinity in theology at the Princeton Theological Seminary (1996).
At the Princeton Theological Seminary, Dembski met his future wife, Jana. Dissatisfied with what he called the "free-swinging academic style" of the school, Dembski also was involved in a group known as the Charles Hodge Society. Based on the works of the 19th century thinker Charles Hodge, the group was devoted to strengthening the faith of students faced with what members believed to be the "theological disarray" of the times, and to providing an example of how to oppose "false and destructive ideas." It published a journal (a recreation of the Princeton Theological Review (1903–1929)) and met with considerable opposition on the campus, facing two lawsuits, threats of violence, accusations of racism and sexism; being denied funding; and hearing that membership "jeopardized their academic advancement."
Dembski and Jana have one daughter and two sons. One of his sons has autism and Dembski has attributed some of his son's problems to vaccines.
Early opposition to evolution
Dembski holds that his knowledge of statistics and his skepticism concerning evolutionary theory led him to believe that the extraordinary diversity of life was statistically unlikely to have been produced by natural selection. His first significant contribution to intelligent design was his 1991 paper, "Randomness by Design," published in the philosophy journal Noûs.