William A. Dembski

William A. Dembski

William Albert "Bill" Dembski (born July 18, 1960) is an American philosopher and theologian. He is a proponent of intelligent design, well known for promoting the concept of specified complexity. He is currently the Philip E. Johnson Research Professor in Culture & Science at the Southern Evangelical Seminary at Matthews, North Carolina, and a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. He is the author of a number of books about intelligent design, including The Design Inference (1998), Intelligent Design: The Bridge between Science and Theology (1999), The Design Revolution (2004), The End of Christianity (2009), and Intelligent Design Uncensored (2010).

The concept of intelligent design involves the argument that an intelligent mind is responsible for the complexity of life and that it can be detected empirically. Dembski postulates that probability theory can be used to prove irreducible complexity, or what he calls specified complexity. Intelligent design—and Dembski's concept of specified complexity—are seen by the scientific community as a form of conservative Christian creationism, attempting to portray itself as science.