 The key assumption being made by Dembski is that design and law and chance are mutually exclusive. This is the very essence of the explanatory filter. But in real life does one want to make this assumption? Suppose that something is put down to chance. Does this mean that law is ruled out? Surely not! If one argues that a Mendelian mutation is chance, what one means is with respect to that particular theory it is chance, but one may well believe that the mutation came about by normal regular causes and that if these were all known, then it would not longer be chance at all but necessity. The point is that chance in this case is a confession of ignorance not, as one might well think the case in the quantum world, an assertion about the way that things are. That is, claims about chance are not ontological assertions, as presumably claims about designers must be. 