Please note that Design theorist Bill Dembski has just won a Templeton
grant! See excerpt below.
BTW, here's a plug for Bill's new book on "Intelligent Design" from
Intervarsity Press, which will be out soon:
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Welcome to Amazon.com's Book Store
[...]
Intelligent Design
by William A. Dembski, Michael J. Behe
Shopping with us is 100% safe. Guaranteed.
List Price: $18.99
Our Price: $13.29
You Save: $5.70 (30%)
Hardcover - 252 pages (November 1999)
Intervarsity Press; ISBN: 0830815813
This item will be published in November 1999. You may order it now and
we will ship it to you when it arrives.
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 46,238
[...]
Copyright and disclaimer (c) 1996-1999, Amazon.com, Inc.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0830815813/o/qid=93666578
2/sr=8-3/002-6205418-5086037
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Steve
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For immediate release
Saturday, September 04, 1999
Contact: William Grassie, <grassie@voicenet.com, 610.329.0555
Winners of the PCRS/Templeton Grants
for Research and Writing on the Constructive Interaction
of the Sciences and Religions
Unionville, PA - The Philadelphia Center for Religion and Science and the
John Templeton Foundation are pleased to announce the winners from a
competition for seven $100,000 grants for research and writing on the
constructive engagement of science and religion.
The winners, institutional affiliations, and proposed book titles are:
[...]
2) William Dembski, the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of
Science and Culture, Irving, Texas; Being as Communion: The Science and
Metaphysics of Information.
[...]
William Dembski
Being as Communion: The Science and Metaphysics of Information
Precis: Nature abounds with information that is both complex and
specified. Nevertheless, how nature generates complex specified
information remains a mystery. This is the information problem, and a
growing body of scientists regard it as the great unsolved problem of
science. The problem of consciousness, the mind-body problem, the origin
of life, the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in describing the
physical world, and the fine-tuning of cosmological constants are just a
few of the problems that promise resolution once the information problem is
resolved. The aim of Being as Communion is not to resolve the information
problem, but to develop a theoretical framework for properly understanding
and formulating it. This framework underwrites a relational ontology that
accommodates purpose. An important component of this framework is a model
of orthogonal causation in which physical mechanism and information
transmission constitute fundamental causal powers capable of interacting
coherently and without interfering with one another. When applied to
divine action, this model avoids the usual difficulties associated with
interventionism, but also renders divine action counterfactually definite
(i.e., God's action becomes free and effectual). The concluding chapters
apply this model to teleology, sacramental theology, the doctrine of God,
and the problem of being.
Biography: William Dembski holds doctorates in mathematics from the
University of Chicago and in philosophy from the University of Illinois at
Chicago together with a theological degree from Princeton Theological
Seminary. He writes and lectures, and is the author of The Design Inference
(Cambridge University Press, 1998) as well as editor of Mere Creation
(InterVarsity, 1998). Dr. Dembski has done postdoctoral work at MIT,
University of Chicago, Northwestern, Princeton, Cambridge, and Notre Dame.
He has been a National Science Foundation doctoral and postdoctoral fellow.
His publications range from mathematics (Journal of Theoretical
Probability) to philosophy (Nous) to theology (Scottish Journal of
Theology) to public policy (Rhetoric and Public Affairs). He frequently
contributes to books and encyclopedias (Routledge Encyclopedia of
Philosophy). He has made fundamental contributions to chaos and
randomness. In The Design Inference he describes the logic whereby
rational agents infer intelligent causes. His book Intelligent Design: The
Bridge between Science and Theology (InterVarsity) is schedule to appear
fall of 1999. He has several books in preparation, including Uncommon
Descent: The Intelligent Design of Biological Systems (with Stephen Meyer
and Paul Nelson). William Dembski is a fellow of the Discovery Institute's
Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, Seattle.
[...]
Permission is granted to reproduce this e-mail and distribute it without
restriction with the inclusion of the following credit line: <This is another
posting from the Meta-List <http://www.meta-list.org. Copyright 1997, 1998,
1999. William Grassie.
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Stephen E. (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ Email: sejones@iinet.net.au
3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ Web: http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
Warwick 6024 -> *_,--\_/ Phone: +61 8 9448 7439
Perth, Western Australia v "Test everything." (1 Thess. 5:21)
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