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Intelligent Design Uncensored: An Easy-to-Understand Guide to the Controversy by William A. Dembski
What is ID? Why is it controversial?Intelligent design is surrounded by a storm of debate. Proponents and opponents have both sought to have their voices heard above the din. Is it unscientific? Is it a danger to real Christian faith? Is it trying to smuggle God into the classroom?Controversy can create confusion rather than clarity. So here to clear things up is Bill Dembski, one of the founders of intelligent design, who joins with Jonathan Witt to answer these questions and more. They plainly lay out just what intelligent design is and is not. They answer objections with straight talk that is down to earth.You'll be surprised at how often smart people have misrepresented ID. You might be surprised to see exactly how they respond to what turns out to be misleading arguments. Here is the book to make you intelligent about the whole fuss
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First published April 7, 2010
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About the author
William A. Dembski
51 books117 followersA mathematician and philosopher, Dr. William Dembski has 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. A graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago where he earned a B.A. in psychology, an M.S. in statistics, and a Ph.D. in philosophy, he also received a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1988 and a master of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1996. He has held National Science Foundation graduate and postdoctoral fellowships. He is the recipient of a $100,000 Templeton research grant. In 2005 he received Texas A&M’s Trotter Prize.
Dr. Dembski has published articles in mathematics, engineering, philosophy, and theology journals and is the author/editor of over twenty books.
His most comprehensive treatment of intelligent design to date, co-authored with Jonathan Wells, is titled The Design of Life: Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Systems.
As interest in intelligent design has grown in the wider culture, Dr. Dembski has assumed the role of public intellectual. In addition to lecturing around the world at colleges and universities, he is frequently interviewed on the radio and television. His work has been cited in numerous newspaper and magazine articles, including three front page stories in the New York Times as well as the August 15, 2005 Time magazine cover story on intelligent design. He has appeared on the BBC, NPR (Diane Rehm, etc.), PBS (Inside the Law with Jack Ford; Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson), CSPAN2, CNN, Fox News, ABC Nightline, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Dr. Dembski has published articles in mathematics, engineering, philosophy, and theology journals and is the author/editor of over twenty books.
His most comprehensive treatment of intelligent design to date, co-authored with Jonathan Wells, is titled The Design of Life: Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Systems.
As interest in intelligent design has grown in the wider culture, Dr. Dembski has assumed the role of public intellectual. In addition to lecturing around the world at colleges and universities, he is frequently interviewed on the radio and television. His work has been cited in numerous newspaper and magazine articles, including three front page stories in the New York Times as well as the August 15, 2005 Time magazine cover story on intelligent design. He has appeared on the BBC, NPR (Diane Rehm, etc.), PBS (Inside the Law with Jack Ford; Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson), CSPAN2, CNN, Fox News, ABC Nightline, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 23, 2010
Intelligent Design Uncensored
Dubbed as “an easy to understand guide to the controversy”, it lives up to its name.
Perhaps the only difficulty will be with the numbers. Giving us mathematical probability concerning various things happening takes us into the realm of numbers that few of us can probably understand. In the end, however, what is shown is that evolution is mathematically improbable to the point of being impossible.
Dembski and Witt do a very good job of making the issue of ID understood. At the same time they present to us a view of the controversy that surrounds it. ID is not accepted by many in the scientific community. They reject it on philosophical grounds instead of scientific grounds. Many scientists have embraced ID because that's where their research has led them. Those scientists who believe in ID are censored by the Darwinists, however.
On the other side of the coin, sometimes Christians oppose ID because it does not necessarily embrace Christian Theism. Dembski and Witt argue that ID is not necessarily anti-Christian. Christians who are creationists can certainly profit from examining the case for ID.
The authors state their case, present their arguments, then give us a guide to do battle with Darwinism. The directions in the guide are good directions. Sometimes those who wish to have all of the evidence regarding origins presented go too far and fail. ID Uncensored shows how we can fight the battle at the schoolboard meeting or in the statehouse.
This book is recommended reading for those who are interested in the debate about origins.
Dubbed as “an easy to understand guide to the controversy”, it lives up to its name.
Perhaps the only difficulty will be with the numbers. Giving us mathematical probability concerning various things happening takes us into the realm of numbers that few of us can probably understand. In the end, however, what is shown is that evolution is mathematically improbable to the point of being impossible.
Dembski and Witt do a very good job of making the issue of ID understood. At the same time they present to us a view of the controversy that surrounds it. ID is not accepted by many in the scientific community. They reject it on philosophical grounds instead of scientific grounds. Many scientists have embraced ID because that's where their research has led them. Those scientists who believe in ID are censored by the Darwinists, however.
On the other side of the coin, sometimes Christians oppose ID because it does not necessarily embrace Christian Theism. Dembski and Witt argue that ID is not necessarily anti-Christian. Christians who are creationists can certainly profit from examining the case for ID.
The authors state their case, present their arguments, then give us a guide to do battle with Darwinism. The directions in the guide are good directions. Sometimes those who wish to have all of the evidence regarding origins presented go too far and fail. ID Uncensored shows how we can fight the battle at the schoolboard meeting or in the statehouse.
This book is recommended reading for those who are interested in the debate about origins.
July 2, 2016
The Challenge of Intelligent Design
This book is intended to show that Intelligent Design is a legitimate scientific challenge to current evolutionary biology. As the authors put it:
Intelligent Design Accepts Most of Evolutionary Theory
Intelligent design is not simply a repackaging of creationism. It accepts geology and its implications, including the long gradual development of life as seen in the fossil record. The “missing links” have been moved deep into the genetic code.
Evolutionary theory proposes that the natural selection of small genetic mutations is sufficient to explain how life has changed over time. Intelligent Design accepts that these natural forces do exist and produce some variation within species. This is how organisms cope with a changing environment. But it claims this kind of change is not capable of creating new complexity, and therefore cannot explain the origin of new species. It says the complex designs that we see in nature could only have been produced with intervention of an intelligent designer.
Who (or What) is the Designer?
Life clearly appears to be designed. The question is by what process? Evolutionary biology claims that design process was done by natural selection.
This book makes two arguments that an intelligent agent was required to design life. One is by comparing life forms with human designed machines, and concluding that each must have a designer. He does a nice job of this, but ultimately an argument by analogy is a very weak form of evidence. The other is the claim that life forms contain “Complex Specified Information” that could not have arisen by natural forces. While it sounds impressive, it is really just another way of saying something very complicated was designed. It does not address the question of what process did the designing. This question cannot be settled with logic, no matter how clever the terminology or mathematics. An evidence-based test to distinguish between a natural and a supernatural design process is required. None is ever provided.
Science is Limited to the Material World
Design is a plan to achieve a goal. Such a plan is outside the realm of science. Science observes the material results of that plan, and tries to discover the laws behind it. In this sense, science is by definition materialistic. You cannot inject non-material explanations and still call it science. The book charges that this is “methodological materialism,” which creates a bias against discovering any non-material cause. But science does not (or should not) claim to be a complete description of everything. That which is outside the material realm must be left to the philosophers and theologians.
Where the Designed Rubber Hits the Material Road
Evolutionary biology provides a clear physical explanation of how in principle the natural selection of gradual changes could produce such a mechanism. To be taken seriously, Intelligent Design must do the same. The only clue about how it is actually supposed to work is buried in a brief diversion into the evolution of primates, on page 86:
One cannot argue with this because it can explain anything. Any evidence that supports evolutionary theory can also be attributed to the whims of a designer. Contradictory evidence is pushed down into the unknown. Thus the claim that evidence for ID is growing simply means that science is discovering new things faster that it can explain them.
The Question of Irreducible Complexity
The scientific test that is actually proposed is called “irreducible complexity”, meaning some part of an organism is too complex for it to have been created by natural forces. This is not a positive test for an intelligent designer, as there could be other explanations (such as genes from space). If it were true it would only show that the current evolutionary theory is not complete. Most of the theory would still be intact. And as no real scientific theory is complete, nothing much changes.
The classic example used to illustrate this argument is the bacterial flagellum, essentially a tiny rotary engine that allows bacteria to move. Author William Dembski calculates the probability of a bacterial flagellum self-assembling from its constituent proteins to be astronomically small. It seems convincing when one reads that there are not enough of the smallest (Planck) time units in the universe for something to happen. But the calculation does not measure what evolutionary theory actually claims, that it was assembled in a series of small steps (rather than all at once), each resulting in a viable organism.
Unlocking the Evolutionary Pathway
Imagine trying to open a combination lock. If you simply try lots of random numbers, it will take forever. On the other hand, if you turn it slowly until you hear a click, then turn it in the other direction, it will not take long to find the combination. That is because you are avoiding most of the combinations that do not work.
A viable organism is the evolutionary equivalent of hearing the click. The non-viable organisms are ignored in the same way as the numbers you passed over. Therefore the vast majority of the wrong pathways do not need to be followed. If there is a viable pathway, there is a good chance evolution will find it.
Proving there is no Proof of Irreducible Complexity
A proof of irreducible complexity would require specifying every possible pathway and showing that none of them are viable. Dembski’s calculation shows that there are so many possible paths that it is impossible to evaluate them all. His achievement is to demonstrate that there can be no practical proof for the presence of irreducible complexity.
Evolutionary theory gives scientists a framework for asking useful questions that can be tested. Irreducible Complexity only says there is some component that cannot be explained. The only prediction it makes is that any effort to find an evolutionary mechanism is futile. The only way to test this prediction is continue doing science as usual, working with the best and only testable explanation that we have.
The Poison of Blaming Materialism
When we reach chapter five, “The Poison of Materialism”, science is left behind for philosophy and theology. The term Materialism can be applied to a variety of things, from an abstract view that the universe has a material basis to a lifestyle based on acquiring as many goods as possible. Here is the interpretation taken in this book:
The same word game can be played with other branches of science. Einstein’s theory of relativity, which is about objects moving in space and time, can be used as an excuse for moral relativism. The Uncertainty Principle in quantum mechanics is abused to claim we cannot be certain about anything. Seriously, when you find out that physicists have trouble telling exactly where an electron is, does that make anything you know worthless? So why does discovering you have a long ancestry, shaped by seemingly random events, somehow make your life meaningless? Surely there have been random opportunities and setbacks in your personal life. Meaning comes from how you handle these challenges.
Bad Philosophy from Good Science
There really are people out there telling us we have no purpose or significance, that life has no meaning. These people abuse concepts from both science and philosophy to undermine everything that has meaning, including science itself. Please do not blame science for the actions those who distort it for their own purposes.
There are also people who distort religious principles for their own purposes. Does it follow that there is no God, and religion is evil? The fact that you might not like the idea that you cannot go faster than light, or think moral relativism is a bad thing, does not invalidate Einstein’s theory of relativity. Nor do imagined moral consequences make the factual observations of evolutionary biology untrue. Challenge the bad philosophy that exploits the scientific theory.
What is the Point of it All?
What is the point of Intelligent Design theory? You still have a four billion year old Earth, and a long chain of ancestry from single celled organisms. ID only claims that there had to be divine intervention to create each new species. So what happened to the uniqueness of humanity’s origins? Humans were the result of yet one more of countless small divine interventions. In this account, we still emerged from the slime, and are derived from creatures similar to monkeys.
The people who complain so vociferously about materialism have given us only the materialist hypothesis of irreducible complexity. In the old days a golden calf was used as a material representation of God. Now the bacterial flagellum has been recruited to serve as the new idol. Perhaps that is the reason why believing Christians, derided as “theistic Darwinists”, are the most outspoken opponents of Intelligent Design.
A Challenge for Mature Audiences Only
I personally found the book useful because it forced me to think hard about how science really works. Some of the arguments here are clever and subtle. With some work on my part, I got a clear view of what Intelligent Design theory is all about. But ultimately the philosophy is misplaced, and there is little of value for practicing science. I think by trying to corrupt science with non-material explanations they are also corrupting religion with materialism. This book can seriously mislead people who have little understanding of science. I recommend it for people who have some idea how science works, looking to understand what ID is all about, or for an intellectual challenge.
This book is intended to show that Intelligent Design is a legitimate scientific challenge to current evolutionary biology. As the authors put it:
“The theory of Intelligent Design holds that many things in nature carry a clear signature of design. The theory isn’t based on what scientists don’t know about nature but on what they do know. It’s built on a host of scientific discoveries in everything from biology to astronomy, and some of them are very recent discoveries.”However, the book goes well beyond scientific issues in evolutionary biology to raise fundamental philosophical questions and even to challenge scientific method itself. This review will be confined to the scientific and philosophical content of the book. I strongly recommend Kenneth Miller’s Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul to understand the broader implications of Intelligent Design.
Intelligent Design Accepts Most of Evolutionary Theory
Intelligent design is not simply a repackaging of creationism. It accepts geology and its implications, including the long gradual development of life as seen in the fossil record. The “missing links” have been moved deep into the genetic code.
Evolutionary theory proposes that the natural selection of small genetic mutations is sufficient to explain how life has changed over time. Intelligent Design accepts that these natural forces do exist and produce some variation within species. This is how organisms cope with a changing environment. But it claims this kind of change is not capable of creating new complexity, and therefore cannot explain the origin of new species. It says the complex designs that we see in nature could only have been produced with intervention of an intelligent designer.
Who (or What) is the Designer?
Life clearly appears to be designed. The question is by what process? Evolutionary biology claims that design process was done by natural selection.
This book makes two arguments that an intelligent agent was required to design life. One is by comparing life forms with human designed machines, and concluding that each must have a designer. He does a nice job of this, but ultimately an argument by analogy is a very weak form of evidence. The other is the claim that life forms contain “Complex Specified Information” that could not have arisen by natural forces. While it sounds impressive, it is really just another way of saying something very complicated was designed. It does not address the question of what process did the designing. This question cannot be settled with logic, no matter how clever the terminology or mathematics. An evidence-based test to distinguish between a natural and a supernatural design process is required. None is ever provided.
Science is Limited to the Material World
Design is a plan to achieve a goal. Such a plan is outside the realm of science. Science observes the material results of that plan, and tries to discover the laws behind it. In this sense, science is by definition materialistic. You cannot inject non-material explanations and still call it science. The book charges that this is “methodological materialism,” which creates a bias against discovering any non-material cause. But science does not (or should not) claim to be a complete description of everything. That which is outside the material realm must be left to the philosophers and theologians.
Where the Designed Rubber Hits the Material Road
Evolutionary biology provides a clear physical explanation of how in principle the natural selection of gradual changes could produce such a mechanism. To be taken seriously, Intelligent Design must do the same. The only clue about how it is actually supposed to work is buried in a brief diversion into the evolution of primates, on page 86:
“If the primate body plan is a good one, and if a designer chose to work variations on it, who is to say that the designer had no interest in non-human primates with brain capacities a bit larger than today’s non-human primates? There are untold thousands of species from various animal groups that have gone extinct since the appearance of primates, so the real surprise would be if we found no evidence any primates somewhat closer to the human form than now exists.”This account accepts the entire Darwinian view that life is ancient, that there have been countless new species that have arisen and gone extinct, and that each variation is similar to the one before. The only difference is that the designer has had to intervene many millions of times to create each new species.
One cannot argue with this because it can explain anything. Any evidence that supports evolutionary theory can also be attributed to the whims of a designer. Contradictory evidence is pushed down into the unknown. Thus the claim that evidence for ID is growing simply means that science is discovering new things faster that it can explain them.
The Question of Irreducible Complexity
The scientific test that is actually proposed is called “irreducible complexity”, meaning some part of an organism is too complex for it to have been created by natural forces. This is not a positive test for an intelligent designer, as there could be other explanations (such as genes from space). If it were true it would only show that the current evolutionary theory is not complete. Most of the theory would still be intact. And as no real scientific theory is complete, nothing much changes.
The classic example used to illustrate this argument is the bacterial flagellum, essentially a tiny rotary engine that allows bacteria to move. Author William Dembski calculates the probability of a bacterial flagellum self-assembling from its constituent proteins to be astronomically small. It seems convincing when one reads that there are not enough of the smallest (Planck) time units in the universe for something to happen. But the calculation does not measure what evolutionary theory actually claims, that it was assembled in a series of small steps (rather than all at once), each resulting in a viable organism.
Unlocking the Evolutionary Pathway
Imagine trying to open a combination lock. If you simply try lots of random numbers, it will take forever. On the other hand, if you turn it slowly until you hear a click, then turn it in the other direction, it will not take long to find the combination. That is because you are avoiding most of the combinations that do not work.
A viable organism is the evolutionary equivalent of hearing the click. The non-viable organisms are ignored in the same way as the numbers you passed over. Therefore the vast majority of the wrong pathways do not need to be followed. If there is a viable pathway, there is a good chance evolution will find it.
Proving there is no Proof of Irreducible Complexity
A proof of irreducible complexity would require specifying every possible pathway and showing that none of them are viable. Dembski’s calculation shows that there are so many possible paths that it is impossible to evaluate them all. His achievement is to demonstrate that there can be no practical proof for the presence of irreducible complexity.
Evolutionary theory gives scientists a framework for asking useful questions that can be tested. Irreducible Complexity only says there is some component that cannot be explained. The only prediction it makes is that any effort to find an evolutionary mechanism is futile. The only way to test this prediction is continue doing science as usual, working with the best and only testable explanation that we have.
The Poison of Blaming Materialism
When we reach chapter five, “The Poison of Materialism”, science is left behind for philosophy and theology. The term Materialism can be applied to a variety of things, from an abstract view that the universe has a material basis to a lifestyle based on acquiring as many goods as possible. Here is the interpretation taken in this book:
“According to materialism, humans are not made in the image of God. We are just a collection of atoms, a messy bundle of instincts and urges without higher purpose or significance. Ideas like free will, personal responsibility and even the intrinsic value of human life have no place in a materialistic worldview.”This is more accurately known as reductionism. Scientists use reductionist thinking as part of their job. The fallacy is to confuse a word used to describe an investigative tool with a complete philosophy of life.
The same word game can be played with other branches of science. Einstein’s theory of relativity, which is about objects moving in space and time, can be used as an excuse for moral relativism. The Uncertainty Principle in quantum mechanics is abused to claim we cannot be certain about anything. Seriously, when you find out that physicists have trouble telling exactly where an electron is, does that make anything you know worthless? So why does discovering you have a long ancestry, shaped by seemingly random events, somehow make your life meaningless? Surely there have been random opportunities and setbacks in your personal life. Meaning comes from how you handle these challenges.
Bad Philosophy from Good Science
There really are people out there telling us we have no purpose or significance, that life has no meaning. These people abuse concepts from both science and philosophy to undermine everything that has meaning, including science itself. Please do not blame science for the actions those who distort it for their own purposes.
There are also people who distort religious principles for their own purposes. Does it follow that there is no God, and religion is evil? The fact that you might not like the idea that you cannot go faster than light, or think moral relativism is a bad thing, does not invalidate Einstein’s theory of relativity. Nor do imagined moral consequences make the factual observations of evolutionary biology untrue. Challenge the bad philosophy that exploits the scientific theory.
What is the Point of it All?
What is the point of Intelligent Design theory? You still have a four billion year old Earth, and a long chain of ancestry from single celled organisms. ID only claims that there had to be divine intervention to create each new species. So what happened to the uniqueness of humanity’s origins? Humans were the result of yet one more of countless small divine interventions. In this account, we still emerged from the slime, and are derived from creatures similar to monkeys.
The people who complain so vociferously about materialism have given us only the materialist hypothesis of irreducible complexity. In the old days a golden calf was used as a material representation of God. Now the bacterial flagellum has been recruited to serve as the new idol. Perhaps that is the reason why believing Christians, derided as “theistic Darwinists”, are the most outspoken opponents of Intelligent Design.
A Challenge for Mature Audiences Only
I personally found the book useful because it forced me to think hard about how science really works. Some of the arguments here are clever and subtle. With some work on my part, I got a clear view of what Intelligent Design theory is all about. But ultimately the philosophy is misplaced, and there is little of value for practicing science. I think by trying to corrupt science with non-material explanations they are also corrupting religion with materialism. This book can seriously mislead people who have little understanding of science. I recommend it for people who have some idea how science works, looking to understand what ID is all about, or for an intellectual challenge.
August 11, 2011
The debate between evolution and intelligent design (ID) can become quite intellectual and academic, quickly passing over the heads of your average reader (including yours truly).
William A. Dembski and Jonathan Witt have done all those interested in the discussion a favor in writing Intelligent Design Uncensored. Perhaps the best aspect of this book is that it doesn't focus on just one aspect of ID. Not only does it cover some of the most compelling arguments (the origin of the universe, the bacterial flagellum motor, etc.), it also addresses the stranglehold of materialism and evolution presupposed into much of academia. And it does so in language that usually won't outpace the reader.
And finally, the last chapter of the book is intended as a "how-to manual for using the investigative tools of intelligent design to reinvigorate our culture by awakening it to the powerful evidence of design in the natural world". They have pointers for aspiring scientists, parents, teachers and the rest of us.
This book is as good an introduction into the ID position as I have read and at just 154 pages it's a perfect loaner that won't intimidate as well.
Rating: Five of five stars
Recommended for: Apologists, the scientifically inclined, anyone looking for an introductory resource for intelligent design
William A. Dembski and Jonathan Witt have done all those interested in the discussion a favor in writing Intelligent Design Uncensored. Perhaps the best aspect of this book is that it doesn't focus on just one aspect of ID. Not only does it cover some of the most compelling arguments (the origin of the universe, the bacterial flagellum motor, etc.), it also addresses the stranglehold of materialism and evolution presupposed into much of academia. And it does so in language that usually won't outpace the reader.
And finally, the last chapter of the book is intended as a "how-to manual for using the investigative tools of intelligent design to reinvigorate our culture by awakening it to the powerful evidence of design in the natural world". They have pointers for aspiring scientists, parents, teachers and the rest of us.
This book is as good an introduction into the ID position as I have read and at just 154 pages it's a perfect loaner that won't intimidate as well.
Rating: Five of five stars
Recommended for: Apologists, the scientifically inclined, anyone looking for an introductory resource for intelligent design
March 9, 2025
Good introduction to ID
ID is the obvious answer to many complicated (and a few simple) questions generated by the study of nature, both living and in fossils.
This book introduces the reader as gently as possible to the world of arguments and counter arguments related to ID.
The end of the book is heavily oriented towards academia and can be skipped in part or entirely if you aren't involved in public education.
ID is the obvious answer to many complicated (and a few simple) questions generated by the study of nature, both living and in fossils.
This book introduces the reader as gently as possible to the world of arguments and counter arguments related to ID.
The end of the book is heavily oriented towards academia and can be skipped in part or entirely if you aren't involved in public education.
October 20, 2023
There is so much in this book, I don’t know if I understand most of it. However, it indeed taught me a lot. Nevertheless, I understand that modern science wants to look at things, away from the divine natural elements, but only through the earthly material lens. And, because of this, we lose a lot of wisdom, and appreciation of God, as Man’s Creation, such as Mankind.
April 6, 2019
A good primer on strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory as well as an understanding about the rationality of the theory of Intelligent design
A good primer on intelligent design vs evolution. Presents
Positive case for ID. Easy to understand by a lay man.
A good primer on intelligent design vs evolution. Presents
Positive case for ID. Easy to understand by a lay man.
November 5, 2017
A great book to jump start any person of Christian faith into understanding the basic standpoint on why intelligent design is a logical argument.
November 3, 2020
Read this a while ago, it was a unique perspective and fun book to read.
February 9, 2011
The very best book I've read on the particulars of the Intelligent Design movement. It is thorough and careful, and makes very clear both what ID is and what it is not. Well footnoted for further research, and well-written for enjoyable as well as edifying reading. Highly recommended!
November 4, 2010
An awesome and well thought out
book on ID by William Dembski!!
book on ID by William Dembski!!
November 11, 2012
This is both poorly written and a poorly articulated argument for intelligent design -- something I certainly believe in. Reads like a high school research paper. There are better books.
November 10, 2012
A very enjoyable read. If only it would change some people's minds - but for most it will not.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews