Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins". Proponents claim 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." ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, and is therefore not science. The leading proponents of ID are associated with the Discovery Institute, a Christian, politically conservative think tank based in the United States.
The Discovery Institute (DI) is a politically conservative think tank that advocates the pseudoscientific concept of intelligent design (ID). It was founded in 1991 in Seattle as a non-profit offshoot of the Hudson Institute.
William Albert Dembski is an American mathematician, philosopher and theologian. He was a proponent of intelligent design (ID) pseudoscience, specifically the concept of specified complexity, and was a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC). On September 23, 2016, he officially retired from intelligent design, resigning all his "formal associations with the ID community, including [his] Discovery Institute fellowship of 20 years". A February 2021 interview in the CSC's blog Evolution News announced "his return to the intelligent design arena".
Icons of Evolution is a book by Jonathan Wells, an advocate of the pseudoscientific intelligent design argument for the existence of God and fellow of the Discovery Institute, in which Wells criticizes the paradigm of evolution by attacking how it is taught. The book includes a 2002 video companion. In 2000, Wells summarized the book's contents in an article in the American Spectator. Several of the scientists whose work is sourced in the book have written rebuttals to Wells, stating that they were quoted out of context, that their work has been misrepresented, or that it does not imply Wells's conclusions.
The Center for Science and Culture (CSC), formerly known as the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC), is part of the Discovery Institute (DI), a conservative Christian think tank in the United States. The CSC lobbies for the inclusion of creationism in the form of intelligent design (ID) in public-school science curricula as an explanation for the origins of life and the universe while trying to cast doubt on the theory of evolution. These positions have been rejected by the scientific community, which identifies intelligent design as pseudoscientific neo-creationism, whereas the theory of evolution is overwhelmingly accepted as a matter of scientific consensus.
The intelligent design movement is a neo-creationist religious campaign for broad social, academic and political change to promote and support the pseudoscientific idea of intelligent design (ID), which asserts 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." Its chief activities are a campaign to promote public awareness of this concept, the lobbying of policymakers to include its teaching in high school science classes, and legal action, either to defend such teaching or to remove barriers otherwise preventing it. The movement arose out of the creation science movement in the United States, and is driven by a small group of proponents. The Encyclopædia Britannica explains that ID cannot be empirically tested and that it fails to solve the problem of evil; thus, it is neither sound science nor sound theology.
The Wedge Strategy is a creationist political and social action plan authored by the Discovery Institute, the hub of the pseudoscientific intelligent design movement. The strategy was put forth in a Discovery Institute manifesto known as the Wedge Document. Its goal is to change American culture by shaping public policy to reflect politically conservative fundamentalist evangelical Protestant values. The wedge metaphor is attributed to Phillip E. Johnson and depicts a metal wedge splitting a log.
Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins is a controversial 1989 school-level supplementary textbook written by Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon, edited by Charles Thaxton and published by the Texas-based Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE). The textbook endorses the pseudoscientific concept of intelligent design – the argument that life shows evidence of being designed by an intelligent agent which is not named specifically in the book, although proponents understand that it refers to the Christian God. The overview chapter was written by young Earth creationist Nancy Pearcey. They present various polemical arguments against the scientific theory of evolution. Before publication, early drafts used cognates of "creationist". After the Edwards v. Aguillard Supreme Court ruling that creationism is religion and not science, these were changed to refer to "intelligent design". The second edition published in 1993 included a contribution written by Michael Behe.
The "teach the controversy" campaign of the Discovery Institute seeks to promote the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design as part of its attempts to discredit the teaching of evolution in United States public high school science courses. Scientific organizations point out that the institute claims that there is a scientific controversy where in fact none exists.
An intelligent designer, also referred to as an intelligent agent, is the pseudoscientific hypothetical willed and self-aware entity that the intelligent design movement argues had some role in the origin and/or development of life. The term "intelligent cause" is also used, implying their teleological supposition of direction and purpose in features of the universe and of living things.
Barbara Carroll Forrest is a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. She is a critic of intelligent design and the Discovery Institute.
Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, 400 F. Supp. 2d 707 was the first direct challenge brought in the United States federal courts testing a public school district policy that required the teaching of intelligent design (ID), ultimately found by the court to not be science. In October 2004, the Dover Area School District of York County, Pennsylvania, changed its biology teaching curriculum to require that intelligent design be presented as an alternative to evolution theory, and that Of Pandas and People, a textbook advocating intelligent design, was to be used as a reference book. The prominence of this textbook during the trial was such that the case is sometimes referred to as the Dover Panda Trial, a name which recalls the popular name of the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, 80 years earlier. The plaintiffs successfully argued that intelligent design is a form of creationism, and that the school board policy violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The judge's decision sparked considerable response from both supporters and critics.
Neo-creationism is a pseudoscientific movement which aims to restate creationism in terms more likely to be well received by the public, by policy makers, by educators and by the scientific community. It aims to re-frame the debate over the origins of life in non-religious terms and without appeals to scripture. This comes in response to the 1987 ruling by the United States Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard that creationism is an inherently religious concept and that advocating it as correct or accurate in public-school curricula violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Paul A. Nelson is an American philosopher, noted for his advocacy of the pseudosciences of young earth creationism and intelligent design.
Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing is a 2004 anthology edited by William A. Dembski in which fifteen intellectuals, eight of whom are leading intelligent design proponents associated with the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC) and the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design (ISCID), criticise "Darwinism" and make a case for intelligent design. It is published by the publishing wing of the paleoconservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute. The foreword is by John Wilson, editor of the evangelical Christian magazine Christianity Today. The title is a pun on the principle of biology known as common descent. The Discovery Institute is the engine behind the intelligent design movement.
The Discovery Institute has conducted a series of related public relations campaigns which seek to promote intelligent design while attempting to discredit evolutionary biology, which the Institute terms "Darwinism". The Discovery Institute promotes the pseudoscientific intelligent design movement and is represented by Creative Response Concepts, a public relations firm.
This timeline of intelligent design outlines the major events in the development of intelligent design as presented and promoted by the intelligent design movement.
Jay Wesley Richards is an American analytic philosopher who focuses on the intersection of politics, philosophy, and religion. He is the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow in Heritage’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation. He serves as an adjunct professor in the School of Business at the Catholic University of America and the executive editor of The Stream and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute. A former Presbyterian, Richards is now a Catholic.
John G. West is a senior fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute (DI), and associate director and vice president for public policy and legal affairs of its Center for Science and Culture (CSC), which serves as the main hub of the pseudoscientific Intelligent design movement.
The relationship between intelligent design and science has been a contentious one. Intelligent design (ID) is presented by its proponents as science and claims to offer an alternative to evolution. The Discovery Institute, a politically conservative think tank and the leading proponent of intelligent design, launched a campaign entitled "Teach the Controversy", which claims that a controversy exists within the scientific community over evolution. The scientific community rejects intelligent design as a form of creationism, and the basic facts of evolution are not a matter of controversy in science.
