Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science Theology

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InterVarsity Press, 12/07/2002 - 312 páginas

Voted a Book of the Year by Christianity Today

The Intelligent Design movement is three things:

  • a scientific research program for investigating intelligent causes
  • an intellectual movement that challenges naturalistic evolutionary theories
  • a way of understanding divine action

Although the fast-growing movement has gained considerable grassroots support, many scientists and theologians remain skeptical about its merits. Scientists worry that it's bad science (merely creationism in disguise) and theologians worry that it's bad theology (misunderstanding divine action). In this book William Dembski addresses these concerns and brilliantly argues that intelligent design provides a crucial link between science and theology.

Various chapters creatively and powerfully address intelligent discernment of divine action in nature, why the significane of miracles should be reconsidered, and the demise and unanswered questions of British natural theology. Effectively challenging the hegemony of naturalism and reinstating design within science, Dembski shows how intelligent design can be unpacked as a theory of information.

Intelligent Design is a pivotal, synthesizing work from a thinker whom Phillip Johnson calls "one of the most important of the design theorists who are sparking a scientific revolution by legitimating the concept of intelligent design in science."

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Índice

Recognizing the Divine Finger
25
12 Signs in DecisionMaking
28
13 Ordinary Versus Extraordinary Signs
31
14 Moses and Pharaoh
35
15 The Philistines and the Ark
37
16 The Sign of the Resurrection
40
17 In Defense of Premodernity
44
The Critique of Miracles
49
Intelligent Design as a Theory of Information
153
62 Generating Information via Law
160
63 Generating Information via Chance
165
64 Generating Information via Law and Chance
167
65 The Law of Conservation of Information
170
66 Applying the Theory to Evolutionary Biology
174
67 Reconceptualizing Evolutionary Biology
179
Science Theology in Mutual Support
187

22 Spinozas Rejection of Miracles
51
23 Schleiennachers Assimilation of Spinoza
55
24 Unpacking Schleiermachers Naturalistic Critique
58
25 Critiquing the Naturalistic Critique
61
26 The Significance of the Naturalistic Critique
67
The Demise of British Natural Theology
70
32 From Contrivance to Natural Law
73
33 From Natural Law to Agnosticism
79
34 Darwin and His Theory
82
35 Design and Miracles
85
36 The Presupposition of Positivism
90
Naturalism Its Cure
97
42 The Root of Idolatry
99
43 Naturalism Within Western Culture
103
Intelligent Design
105
45 Not Theistic Evolution
109
46 The Importance of Definitions
114
47 A New Generation of Scholars
120
Reinstating Design Within Science
122
52 Why Reinstate Design?
124
53 The ComplexitySpecification Criterion
127
54 Specification
133
55 False Negatives and False Positives
139
56 Why the Criterion Works
144
57 Irreducible Complexity
146
58 So What?
149
72 Epistemic Support
192
73 Rational Compulsion
195
74 Explanatory Power
199
75 The Big Bang and Divine Creation
203
76 Christ as the Completion of Science
205
The Act of Creation
211
82 Naturalisms Challenge to Creation
212
83 Computational Reductionism
216
84 Our Empirical Selves Versus Our Actual Selves
220
85 The Resurgence of Design
222
86 The Creation of the World
224
87 The Intelligibility of the World
229
88 Creativity Divine and Human
234
Objections to Design
237
A1 The God of the Gaps
238
A2 Intentionality Versus Design
245
A3 Scientific Creationism
247
A4 But Is It Science?
252
A5 Dysteleology
261
A6 Just an Anthropic Coincidence
264
A7 Applying the Math to Biology
268
A8 David Humes Objections
271
A9 Mundane Versus Transcendent Designers
276
Notes
280
Index
303
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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 acclaimed The Design Inference (Cambridge), Intelligent Design (InterVarsity Press) and No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence (Rowman and Littlefield).

Behe earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University. Behe's research focuses on the structure and function of chromatin and has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. In his book Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (Free Press), Behe argues that the irreducible complexity of cellular biochemical systems shows that they were designed by an intelligent agent. Darwin's Black Box has been reviewed in Science, Nature, New Scientist, National Review, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. It was selected as Christianity Today's 1996 Book of the Year. Behe is a member of the Biophysical Society and the American Society for Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. He is also a fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture.

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