Intelligent design

Intelligent design (ID) is the name given to the contention that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." Intelligent design is also the name given to a movement associated with promoting the concept of intelligent design.

Intelligent design is highly controversial, often explicitly opposing the consensus scientific viewpoint, though it is often itself framed as a scientific hypothesis. Many scientists have vocally dismissed it as unscientific and untestable and it has not achieved widespread academic acceptance.

Many of the leading proponents of intelligent design are fellows and advisors of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank established in 1991. Many prominent proponents are qualified, practising scientists, though very few ID research papers and monographs have successfully passed peer review and made it to publication, underscoring the contentious nature of the issue amongst mainstream scientists.

Opponents of intelligent design contend that it is a religious or philosophical concept which lies outside of the realm of science. They argue that it does not make testable scientific predictions, cannot be tested within the framework of the scientific method and that it does not generate new hypotheses for testing.

Intelligent design is akin to the teleological argument of philosophy, however, as a hypothesis it adds the premise that design can actually be detected in nature by consideration of complex biological systems, the fine-tuning of physical constants or the presence of coded information such as that found in the genome. The considerations which are drawn upon for support of the hypothesis are collated from biology, physics, mathematics and cosmology and are not restricted to philosophical considerations.

Intelligent design is also formally distinct from creationism in that the designer is not required to be supernatural. Although ID theory does not try to identify the designer, writings of ID proponents are frequently used (secondarily) as religious apologetics and many of its leading proponents have stated that they personally believe the designer to be the Christian God. The senior fellows of the Discovery Institute's Centre for Science and Culture include a number of Roman Catholics, a secular (non-religious) Jew, a member of Sun Myung-Moon's Unification Church and numerous protestant Christians.

In Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005), a United States federal court ruled that a public school district requirement for science classes to teach that intelligent design is an alternative to evolution was a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. United States District Judge John E. Jones III ruled that intelligent design is not science and is essentially religious in nature.