No Free Lunch?

William A. Dembski is a mathematician, beloved of cdesign proponentsists. He is known for his use, or I should say, misuse, of David H. Wolpert and William J. Macready's No Free Lunch Theorems, which prove that no search algorithm can be more effective at finding fitless peaks in fitness landscapes than blind chance. 

Dembski, has sold a number of books and made himself a name for himself among intelligent designer spotters, keen to get a reputational boost from his credentials. However, Demski has a miserable record of serious publications compared with other mathematicians. 

What Dembski carefully neglects to mention is that Wolpert and Macready's theorems apply to the entire set of theoretically possible fitness landscapes. It should be no surprise that a hill-climbing algorithm, such as the selection of heritable variations cannot perform any better than random chance when the general fitness landscape has no features, no gradual inclines for "climbing mount impossible", as Dawkins put sit.

Here is David Wolpert on Dembski's work. 

"I say Dembski "attempts to" turn this trick because despite his invoking the NFL theorems, his arguments are fatally informal and imprecise. Like monographs on any philosophical topic in the first category, Dembski's is written in jello. There simply is not enough that is firm in his text, not sufficient precision of formulation, to allow one to declare unambiguously 'right' or 'wrong' when reading through the argument. All one can do is squint, furrow one's brows, and then shrug." David Wolpert. http://www.talkreason.org/articles/jello.cfm