William A. Dembski

In the epilogue to Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley’s The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force, we read: “Finally, after a generation or more in which biological materialism has had neuroscience—indeed, all the life sciences—in a chokehold, we may at last be . . . . Continue Reading »

In Nonzero Robert Wright argues convincingly that certain patterns in biological and cultural evolution cannot properly be attributed to contingency or accident but rather point to an underlying teleology”for him, a fully naturalized teleology. Most teleologies of the past have looked to some . . . . Continue Reading »

In a memorable scene from the movie The Graduate , Dustin Hoffman’s parents throw him a party to celebrate his graduation from college. The parents’ friends are all there congratulating him and offering advice. What should Hoffman do with his life? One particularly solicitous guest is . . . . Continue Reading »

William A. Dembski Copyright (c) 1999 First Things 96 (October 1999): 25-31. For two hundred years materialist philosophers have argued that man is some sort of machine. The claim began with French materialists of the Enlightenment such as Pierre Cabanis, Julien La Mettrie, and Baron d’Holbach . . . . Continue Reading »

When the physics of Galileo and Newton displaced the physics of Aristotle, scientists tried to explain the world by discovering its deterministic natural laws. When the quantum physics of Bohr and Heisenberg in turn displaced the physics of Galileo and Newton, scientists realized they needed to . . . . Continue Reading »

Cracking the Bible Code By Jeffrey Satinover Morrow. 346 pp. $23 The “Bible Code” is the name for computer-generated sequences of letters taken from the Hebrew Bible. Researchers string all the letters together, deleting spaces between words. Then, instead of running through the text . . . . Continue Reading »