Dembski was born in Chicago, Illinois, the only child of Catholic parents, his mother an art dealer and his father a college professor and lecturer. His father held a D.Sc in biology from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and taught evolutionary biology; while growing up Dembski was neither particularly religious nor did he question the theory of evolution. Dembski finished high school a year early, excelling in math and finishing a full course of calculus in a single summer. After high school he was educated at an all-male university-preparatory school in Chicago and pursued advanced mathematics courses at the University of Chicago. It was during this time that Dembski experienced educational and personal difficulties, struggling with the advanced courses and finding the unfamiliar social milieu of college challenging. An unhappy time in his life, Dembski dropped out of school and worked at his mother's art business while reading works on creationism and the Bible. Finding the creationist works interesting in their challenge of evolution but their literal interpretations lacking, Dembski returned to school at the University of Illinois at Chicago, studying statistics. It was in 1988 at a conference on randomness that Dembski began to believe that there was purpose, order and design in the universe due to the intervention of God. Remaining in academia Dembski pursued multiple degrees, ultimately completing an undergraduate degree in psychology (1981, University of Illinois at Chicago), masters degrees in statistics, mathematics and philosophy (1983, University of Illinois at Chicago; 1985, University of Chicago; 1993, University of Illinois at Chicago respectively), a PhD in mathematics (1988, University of Chicago) and a Master of Divinity in theology at the Princeton Theological Seminary (1996).

It was at the latter that Dembski met his wife Jana. Dissatisfied with the "free-swinging academic style" of the school, Dembski also was involved a group known as the "Charles Hodge Society". Based on the works of the 19th century thinker Charles Hodge, the group was devoted to strengthening the faith of students faced with what members believed to be the "theological disarray" of the times, and to provide an example of how to oppose "false and destructive ideas." It published a journal (a recreation of the Princeton Theological Review) and met with considerable opposition on the campus, facing two lawsuits, threats of violence, accusations of racism and sexism, denied funding and told that membership "jeopardized their academic advancement".

Dembski and his wife have one daughter and two sons. One of his sons is autistic and Dembski has attributed some of his son's problems to vaccines.

Early opposition to evolution

Dembski holds that his knowledge of statistics, and general skepticism concerning evolutionary theory, led him to believe that the extraordinary diversity of life was statistically unlikely to have been produced by natural selection. He presented these thoughts in his 1991 paper 'Randomness by Design', which appeared in the journal Noûs. These ideas led to his notion of specified complexity, which he developed in The Design Inference, a revision of his PhD dissertation in philosophy.

Lawyer Phillip E. Johnson's first book Darwin on Trial (published in 1991) attracted a group of scholars who shared his view that the exclusion of supernatural explanations by the scientific method was unfair and had led to the Edwards v. Aguillard ruling that teaching creation science in public schools was unconstitutional. Dembski was part of that group at a symposium at Southern Methodist University in Dallas in March 1992, before they came to call themselves "The Wedge". The phrase "intelligent design" had been adopted in 1987 in drafts of the high school textbook Of Pandas and People as a substitute for "creation science" to refer to the idea that there is scientific evidence that life was created through unspecified processes by an intelligent but unidentified designer. This change was intended to obviate the Edwards v. Aguillard ruling, and the textbook was published in 1989 amidst campaigning by the publisher for the introduction of "intelligent design" into school science classes. Biochemist Michael Behe, another member of "The Wedge", contributed the argument that he subsequently called "irreducible complexity" (IC) to the second edition of Pandas in 1993. The textbook contained concepts which Dembski later elaborated in his treatment of "specified complexity" (SC). Understanding the Intelligent Design Creationist Movement: Its True Nature and Goals. (pdf) A Position Paper from the Center for Inquiry, Office of Public Policy Barbara Forrest. May, 2007. Design on Trial in Dover, Pennsylvania by Nicholas J Matzke, NCSE Public Information Project Specialist

Discovery Institute

After completing graduate school in 1996, Dembski was unable to secure a university position; from then until 1999 he received what he calls "a standard academic salary" of $40,000 a year as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC). "I was one of the early beneficiaries of Discovery largess," says Dembski.As of 2008, Dembski serves as a senior fellow at the CSC, where he plays a central role in the center's extensive public and political campaigns advancing the concept of intelligent design and its teaching in public schools through its "Teach the Controversy" campaign as part of the institute's wedge strategy.

Baylor University

Michael Polanyi Center controversy

In 1999, Dembski was invited by Robert B. Sloan, President of Baylor University, to establish the Michael Polanyi Center at the university. Named after the Hungarian physical chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi (1891–1976), Dembski described it as "the first intelligent design think tank at a research university". Dembski had known Sloan for about three years, having taught Sloan's daughter at a Christian study summer camp not far from Waco, Texas. Sloan was the first Baptist minister to serve as Baylor's president in over 30 years, had read some of Dembski's work and liked it; according to Dembski, Sloan "made it clear that he wanted to get me on the faculty in some way".

The Polanyi Center was established without much publicity in October 1999, initially consisting of two people — Dembski and a like-minded colleague, Bruce L. Gordon, who were hired directly by Sloan without going through the usual channels of a search committee and departmental consultation. The vast majority of Baylor staff did not know of the center's existence until its website went online, and the center stood outside of the existing religion, science, and philosophy departments.

The center's mission, and the lack of consultation with the Baylor faculty, became the immediate subject of controversy. The faculty feared for the university's reputation – it has historically been well-regarded for its contributions to mainstream science – and scientists outside the university questioned whether Baylor had "gone fundamentalist". Faculty members pointed out that the university's existing interdisciplinary Institute for Faith and Learning was already addressing questions about the relationship between science and religion, making the existence of the Polanyi Center somewhat redundant. In April 2000, Dembski hosted a conference on "naturalism in science" sponsored by the Templeton Foundation and the hub of the intelligent design movement, the Discovery Institute, seeking to address the question "Is there anything beyond nature?". Most of the Baylor faculty boycotted the conference.

A few days later, the Baylor faculty senate voted by a margin of 27–2 to ask the administration to dissolve the center and merge it with the Institute for Faith and Learning. President Sloan refused, citing issues of censorship and academic integrity, but agreed to convene an outside committee to review the center. The committee recommended setting up a faculty advisory panel to oversee the science and religion components of the program, dropping the name "Michael Polanyi" and reconstituting the center as part of the Institute for Faith and Learning. These recommendations were accepted in full by the university administration.

In a subsequent press release, Dembski asserted that the committee had given an "unqualified affirmation of my own work on intelligent design", that its report "marks the triumph of intelligent design as a legitimate form of academic inquiry" and that "dogmatic opponents of design who demanded that the Center be shut down have met their Waterloo. Baylor University is to be commended for remaining strong in the face of intolerant assaults on freedom of thought and expression."

Dembski's remarks were criticized by other members of the Baylor faculty, who protested that they were both an unjustified attack on his critics at Baylor and a false assertion that the university endorsed Dembski's controversial views on intelligent design. Charles Weaver, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor and one of the most vocal critics of the Polanyi Center, commented: "In academic arguments, we don't seek utter destruction and defeat of our opponents. We don't talk about Waterloos."

President Sloan asked Dembski to withdraw his press release, but Dembski refused, accusing the university of "intellectual McCarthyism" (borrowing a phrase that Sloan himself had used when they first tried to dissolve the center). He declared that the university's action had been taken "in the utmost of bad faith ... thereby providing the fig leaf of justification for my removal." Professor Michael Beaty, director of the Institute for Faith and Learning, said that Dembski's remarks violated the spirit of cooperation that the committee had advocated and stated that "Dr. Dembski's actions after the release of the report compromised his ability to serve as director." Dembski was removed as the center's director, although he remained an associate research professor until May 2005. He was not asked to teach any courses in that time and instead worked from home, writing books and speaking around the country. "In a sense, Baylor did me a favor," he said. "I had a five-year sabbatical."

Seminary teaching

From 1999 to 2005, he was on the faculty of Baylor University, where he was a focus of attention and controversy. During the academic year 2005-6, he was briefly the Carl F. H. Henry Professor of Theology and Science at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, as well as the first director of the school's new Center for Theology and Science (since replaced by prominent creationist Kurt Wise).Creationist to will lead seminary science center Peter Smith. The Courier-Journal, April 17, 2006 (article available for a fee at The Courier-Journal archive) The seminary teaches creationism but its professors vary on the details, with most adhering to the Young Earth creationist viewpoint of a relatively recent creation which occurred literally as described in Genesis; Dembski does not hold to Young Earth creationism. On his position at Southern, Dembski also remarked that "Theology is where my ultimate passion is and I think that is where I can uniquely contribute." He left Southern in May 2006. Starting in June 2006 he became a professor in philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. Since taking up a position within Southwestern's School of Theology in June 2006, Dembski has taught a number of courses within its Department of Philosophy of Religion. For some of his courses, he requires that his students promote Intelligent Design on "hostile" websites for course credit. The Southern Baptist Convention operates both seminaries.

In September 2007, the SWBTS hosted a conference on 'Intelligent Design in Business Practice', presented by Dembski, Acton Institute theologian Jay Richards, and three business academics presently or formerly teaching at universities in the Southern United States.

Mims—Pianka controversy

On April 2, 2006, Dembski stated on his blog that he reported Eric Pianka to the Department of Homeland Security because he and fellow Discovery Institute Fellow Forrest Mims felt that Pianka's speech while accepting the Texas Academy of Sciences Distinguished Scientist of the Year award in 2006 fomented bioterrorism. This resulted in the Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewing Pianka in Austin.

On April 5 Dembski wagered that Pianka's popularity would drop if the full text of his speech to the Texas Academy of Sciences was made public.

Baylor Evolutionary Informatics Lab controversy

Subsequently in July and August 2007, Dembski played a central role in the formation of the Evolutionary Informatics Lab (EIL), formed by Baylor University Engineering Professor Robert J. Marks II. According to Baylor administration, the EIL website hosted at Baylor was deleted because it violated university policy forbidding professors from creating the impression that their personal views represent Baylor as an institution. Dembski says the website was removed because it dealt with intelligent design. Baylor said they would permit Marks to repost his website on their server, provided a 108 word disclaimer accompany any intelligent design-advancing research to make clear that the work does not represent the university's position. The sitenow resides on a third-party server and still contains the material advancing intelligent design. Dembski's participation was funded by a $30,000 grant from the Lifeworks Foundation, which is controlled by researcher Brendan Dixon of the Biologic Institute (which has close ties to the Discovery Institute).

In December 2001, Dembski launched the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design (ISCID), of which he is Executive Director. Dembski is also the editor-in-chief of ISCID's journal, Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design (PCID), which appears to have ceased publication with its November 2005 issue. He has several more books in preparation as well as producing a string of Flash animations mocking his detractors. He is also a member of American Scientific Affiliation, the Evangelical Philosophical Society, and the American Mathematical Society, and is a senior fellow of the Wilberforce Forum.

Dembski frequently gives public talks, principally to religious, pro-ID groups, and creationists. Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross noted that Dembski has not been hesitant in associating with young Earth creationists, such as attending conferences with Carl Baugh. His lectures have been met with criticism by scientists for being half-hearted, lackluster, containing numerous errors and distortions, lacking positive evidence for intelligent design, and for evading questions.

Dembski, along with fellow Discovery Institute associates Michael Behe and David Berlinski, "tutored" Ann Coulter on science and evolution for her book The Church of Liberalism. Approximately one-third of the book is devoted to polemical attacks on evolution, which Coulter, as Dembski often does, terms "Darwinism".

Dembski participated in the film No Intelligence Allowed, released in 2008. Dembski told the Southern Baptist Texan that those who need to see the movie are the "parents of children in high school or college, as well as those children themselves, who may think that the biological sciences are a dispassionate search for truth about life but many of whose practitioners see biology, especially evolutionary biology, as an ideological weapon to destroy faith in God." Dembski has appeared on several television shows, including a 2005 interview with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show with Edward Larson and Ellie Crystal where he said he accepted religion before science.

Writing

In 1998, Dembski published his first book, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities, which became a Cambridge University Press bestselling philosophical monograph.

In 2002, Dembski published his book No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence. Dembski's work, however, was strongly criticized within the scientific community, which argued that there were a number of major logical inconsistencies and evidential gaps in Dembski's hypothesis. David Wolpert, co-creator of the No Free Lunch Theorem on which Dembski based his book, characterised his arguments as "fatally informal and imprecise," "written in jello," reminiscent of philosophical discussion "in art, music, and literature, as well as much of ethics" rather than of scientific debate.

Mathematician Mark Perakh has stated he believes Dembski overemphasizes his own self importance in his writing.

Peer-review controversy

One of the common objections to intelligent design being accepted as valid science is that ID proponents have published no scientific papers in the peer-reviewed scientific literature in support of their conjectures. The ruling in the 2005 Dover trial, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, found that intelligent design had not been tested by the process of being published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal and was not supported by any peer-reviewed research, data or publications. Despite the Dover trial ruling, the Discovery Institute lists Dembski's 1998 book The Design Inference under the heading "Peer-Reviewed Scientific Books Supportive of Intelligent Design Published by Trade Presses or University Presses". The Discovery Institute describes Dembski as a mathematician and philosopher, who includes in his credentials postdoctoral work in physics and in computer science, and a B.A. in psychology.