Argument

Intelligent design

Overview

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".

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 were 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.

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, 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". From the mid-1990s onward, the intelligent design movement (IDM), supported by the Discovery Institute, 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.

ID seeks to challenge the methodological naturalism inherent in modern science. 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. 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.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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Obj. 2: Further, whatever conclusions are reached in any science must be comprehended under the object of the science. But in Holy Writ we reach conclusions not only concerning God, but concerning many other things, such as creatures and human morality. Therefore God is not the object of this science. _On the contrary,_ The object of the science is that of which it principally treats. But in this science, the…
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
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There is too the faculty of Judiciousness, and also its absence, in virtue of which we call men Judicious or the contrary. Now Judiciousness is neither entirely identical with Knowledge or Opinion (for then all would have been Judicious), nor is it any one specific science, as medical science whose object matter is things wholesome; or…
Aristotle, The Nicomachean ethics of Aristotle
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Add to this the logical consequence of admitting many attributes, viz., the existence of many eternal beings. There cannot be any belief in the unity of God except by admitting that He is one simple substance, without any composition or plurality of elements; one from whatever side you view it, and by whatever test you examine it; not divisible into two parts in any way and by any cause, nor capable of any form of…
Moses Maimonides, The guide for the perplexed
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Intelligent design

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