Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins".Young & Edis 2004 pp. 195–196, Section heading: But is it Pseudoscience? ID presents two main arguments against evolutionary explanations: irreducible complexity and specified complexity, asserting that certain biological and informational features of living things are too complex to be the result of natural selection, but these assertions have been rebutted by detailed scientific examination, and evolutionary explanations they claimed to be impossible had been published in peer reviewed research.
The leading proponents of ID are associated with the Discovery Institute, a Christian, politically conservative think tank based in the United States. — Barbara Forrest, 2005, testifying in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial. Wilgoren 2005, "...the institute's Center for Science and Culture has emerged in recent months as the ideological and strategic backbone behind the eruption of skirmishes over science in school districts and state capitals across the country."
Attie, et al. 2006, "The engine behind the ID movement is the Discovery Institute." ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, and is therefore not science.
Although the phrase intelligent design had featured previously in theological discussions of the argument from design, its first publication in its present use as an alternative term for creationism was in Of Pandas and People, s:Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District#E. Application of the Endorsement Test to the ID Policy, pp. 31–33. a 1989 creationist textbook intended for high school biology classes. In 1987, the Edwards v. Aguillard United States Supreme Court decision ruled that "creation science" is not science, and therefore a violation of the Establishment Clause if taught in public school biology classes. After the decision, all mentions of the term "creation science" in the textbook were directly replaced by "intelligent design", and mentions of the term "creation scientists" were replaced by "design proponents". s:Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District#E. Application of the Endorsement Test to the ID Policy p. 32 ff, citing From the mid-1990s onward, the intelligent design movement (IDM), supported by the Discovery Institute, Johnson interviewed in November 2000.
Downey 2006 advocated for the inclusion of intelligent design in public school biology curricula. This led to the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, which ruled that intelligent design was not science, that it "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents", and that the public school district's promotion of it therefore violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. s:Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District#4. Whether ID is Science Page 69 and s:Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District#H. Conclusion p. 136.
ID seeks to challenge the methodological naturalism inherent in modern science. The review is reprinted in full by Access Research Network [archived February 10, 1999].
s:Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District#4. Whether ID is Science, p. 68. "lead defense expert Professor Behe admitted that his broadened definition of science, which encompasses ID, would also embrace astrology." See also As a positive argument against evolution, ID proposes an analogy between natural systems and human artifacts, a version of the theological argument from design for the existence of God. s:Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District#E. Application of the Endorsement Test to the ID Policy pp. 24–25. "the argument for ID is not a new scientific argument, but is rather an old religious argument for the existence of God. He traced this argument back to at least Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, who framed the argument as a syllogism: Wherever complex design exists, there must have been a designer; nature is complex; therefore nature must have had an intelligent designer. ......[T]his argument for the existence of God was advanced early in the 19th century by Reverend Paley... [the teleological argument] The only apparent difference between the argument made by Paley and the argument for ID, as expressed by defense expert witnesses Behe and Minnich, is that ID's 'official position' does not acknowledge that the designer is God." ID proponents then conclude by analogy that the complex features, as defined by ID, are evidence of design. Critics of ID find a false dichotomy in the premise that evidence against evolution constitutes evidence for design. s:Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District#4. Whether ID is Science, p. 64. Originally published in Bios (July 1998) 70:40–45. History
Origin of the concept
In 1910, evolution was not a topic of major religious controversy in America, but in the 1920s, the fundamentalist–modernist controversy in theology resulted in fundamentalist Christian opposition to teaching evolution and resulted in the origins of modern creationism. As a result, teaching of evolution was effectively suspended in US public schools until the 1960s, and when evolution was then reintroduced into the curriculum, there was a series of court cases in which attempts were made to get creationism taught alongside evolution in science classes. Young Earth creationists (YECs) promoted creation science as "an alternative scientific explanation of the world in which we live". This frequently invoked the argument from design to explain complexity in nature as supposedly demonstrating the existence of God.
The argument from design, also known as the teleological argument or "argument from intelligent design", has been presented by theologians for centuries. Ayala writes that "Paley made the strongest possible case for intelligent design", and refers to "Intelligent Design: The Original Version" before discussing ID proponents reviving the argument from design under the pretense that it is scientific. Thomas Aquinas presented this argument in his fifth proof of God's existence as a syllogism. In 1802, William Paley's Natural Theology presented examples of intricate purpose in organisms. His version of the watchmaker analogy argued that a watch has evidently been designed by a craftsman and that it is just as evident that the complexity and adaptation seen in nature must have been designed. He went on to argue that the perfection and diversity of these designs shows the designer to be omnipotent and that this can only be the Christian god.Pennock 1999, pp. 60, 68–70, 242–245 s:Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District#E. Application of the Endorsement Test to the ID Policy, pp. 24–25. Like creation science, intelligent design centers on Paley's religious argument from design, but while Paley's natural theology was open to deistic design through God-given laws, intelligent design seeks scientific confirmation of repeated supposedly miraculous interventions in the history of life. Creation science prefigured the intelligent design arguments of irreducible complexity, even featuring the bacterial flagellum. In the United States, attempts to introduce creation science into schools led to court rulings that it is religious in nature and thus cannot be taught in public school science classrooms. Intelligent design is also presented as science and shares other arguments with creation science but avoids literal Biblical references to such topics as the biblical flood story or using Bible verses to estimate the age of the Earth.
Philosopher Barbara Forrest writes that the intelligent design movement began in 1984 with the book The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories, co-written by the creationist and chemist Charles B. Thaxton and two other authors and published by Jon A. Buell's Foundation for Thought and Ethics.
In March 1986, ID proponent Stephen C. Meyer published a review of this book, discussing how information theory could suggest that messages transmitted by DNA in the cell show "specified complexity" and must have been created by an intelligent agent. He also argued that science is based upon "foundational assumptions" of naturalism that were as much a matter of faith as those of "creation theory". In November of that year, Thaxton described his reasoning as a more sophisticated form of Paley's argument from design. At a conference that Thaxton held in 1988 ("Sources of Information Content in DNA"), he said that his intelligent cause view was compatible with both metaphysical naturalism and supernaturalism.
Intelligent design avoids identifying or naming the intelligent designer—it merely states that one (or more) must exist—but leaders of the movement have said the designer is the Christian God.Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, s:Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District#E. Application of the Endorsement Test to the ID Policy, pages 26–27, "the writings of leading ID proponents reveal that the designer postulated by their argument is the God of Christianity." Examples include: — Phillip E. Johnson (2003)
Johnson 2002, "So the question is: How to win? That's when I began to develop what you now see full-fledged in the 'wedge' strategy: 'Stick with the most important thing'—the mechanism and the building up of information. Get the Bible and the Book of Genesis out of the debate because you do not want to raise the so-called Bible-science dichotomy. Phrase the argument in such a way that you can get it heard in the secular academy and in a way that tends to unify the religious dissenters. That means concentrating on, 'Do you need a Creator to do the creating, or can nature do it on its own?' and refusing to get sidetracked onto other issues, which people are always trying to do." — Stephen C. Meyer Pearcey 2004, pp. 204–205, "By contrast, design theory demonstrates that Christians can sit in the supernaturalist's chair, even in their professional lives, seeing the cosmos through the lens of a comprehensive biblical worldview. Intelligent Design steps boldly into the scientific arena to build a case based on empirical data. It takes Christianity out of the ineffectual realm of value and stakes out a cognitive claim in the realm of objective truth. It restores Christianity to its status as genuine knowledge, equipping us to defend it in the public arena." Whether this lack of specificity about the designer's identity in public discussions is a genuine feature of the concept – or just a posture taken to avoid alienating those who would separate religion from the teaching of science – has been a matter of great debate between supporters and critics of intelligent design. The Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District court ruling held the latter to be the case.
Origin of the term
Since the Middle Ages, discussion of the religious "argument from design" or "teleological argument" in theology, with its concept of "intelligent design", has persistently referred to the theistic Creator God. Although ID proponents chose this provocative label for their proposed alternative to evolutionary explanations, they have de-emphasized their religious antecedents and denied that ID is natural theology, while still presenting ID as supporting the argument for the existence of God. Haught's expert report in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. Dao states that the Discovery Institute said the phrase may have first been used by F. C. S. Schiller: his essay "Darwinism and Design", published in The Contemporary Review for June 1897, evaluated objections to "what has been called the Argument from Design" raised by natural selection, and said "...it will not be possible to rule out the supposition that the process of Evolution may be guided by an intelligent design." pp. 128, 141