intelligent design

 

theory that some complex biological structures and other aspects of nature show evidence of having been designed by an intelligence. Such biological structures are said to have intricate components that are so highly interdependent and so essential to a particular function or process that the structures could not have developed through Darwinian evolution, and therefore must have been created or somehow guided in their development. Although intelligent design is distinguished from creationism by not relying on the biblical account of creation, it is compatible with a belief in God and is often explicitly linked with such a belief. Also, unlike creationists, its proponents do not challenge the idea that the earth is billions of years old and that life on earth has evolved to some degree. The theory does, however, necessarily reject standard science's reliance on explaining the natural world only through undirected natural causes, believing that any theory that relies on such causes alone is incapable of explaining how all biological structures and processes arose. Thus, despite claims by members of the intelligent-design movement that it is a scientific research program, the work of its adherents has been criticized as unscientific and speculative for inferring a pre-existing intelligence to explain the development of biological structures instead of attempting to develop adequate falsifiable mechanistic explanations. In addition, the theory has been attacked on the grounds that many aspects of nature fail to show any evidence of intelligent design, such as “junk” DNA (see nucleic acid) and the vestigial webbed feet of the frigate bird (which never lands on water).

The idea that nature shows signs of having been designed by an intelligent being dates back at least to ancient Greece. The English theologian William Paley gave the theory its classic formulation in his Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802), in which he argued that the eye and other biological features are perfectly suited for their purposes and that in this suitable design the hand of God can be discerned. The modern intelligent-design movement, however, has its origins in the 1980s with such works as The Mystery of Life's Origins (1984) by Charles Thaxton et al. and Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1986) by Michael Denton. Micheal Behe's Darwin's Black Box (1996) is perhaps the best-known statement of the movement's critique of Darwin and its argument for a role for God or some other intelligence in the design of biological entities. Advocates of intelligent design have campaigned to have it taught in U.S. public schools alongside the Darwinian theory of evolution. A requirement by the Dover, Pa., area school board that students be told that intelligent design represents an alternative explanation for the origin of life was challenged in federal court in 2005 and ruled unconstitutional.

Bibliography

See R. T. Pennock, ed., Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics (2002).

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Intelligent design is the assertion 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."^[1][2] It is a modern form of the traditional teleological argument for the existence of God, modified to avoid specifying the nature or identity of the designer.^[3][4] Its primary proponents, all of whom are associated with the Discovery Institute,^[5][6] believe the designer to be God.^[7] Advocates of intelligent design claim it is a scientific theory,^[8] and seek to fundamentally redefine science to accept supernatural explanations.^[9]

The unequivocal consensus in the scientific community is that intelligent design is not science.^[10][11] The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has stated that "intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life" are not science because they cannot be tested by experiment, do not generate any predictions, and propose no new hypotheses of their own.^[12] The National Science Teachers Association, an organization of American science teachers and the largest organization of science teachers in the world, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have termed it pseudoscience.^[13] Others have concurred, and some have called it junk science.^[14]

"Intelligent design" originated in response to the 1987 United States Supreme Court ruling involving separation of church and state.^[15] Its first significant published use was in Of Pandas and People, a 1989 textbook intended for high-school biology classes.^[16] Several additional books on "intelligent design" were published in the 1990s. By 1995, intelligent design proponents had begun clustering around the Discovery Institute and more publicly advocating the inclusion of intelligent design in public school curricula.^[17] With the Discovery Institute and its Center for Science and Culture serving a central role in planning and funding, the "intelligent design movement" grew increasingly visible in the late 1990s and early 2000s, culminating in the 2005 "Dover trial" challenging the intended use of intelligent design in public school science classes.^[5]

In Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, a group of parents of high-school students challenged a public school district requirement for teachers to present intelligent design in biology classes as an alternative "explanation of the origin of life". U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled that intelligent design is not science, that it "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents", and concluded that the school district's promotion of it therefore violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.^[18]

Overview

The term "intelligent design" came into use after the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the 1987 case of Edwards v. Aguillard that to require the teaching of "creation science" alongside evolution was a violation of the Establishment Clause, which prohibits state aid to religion. In the Edwards case, the Supreme Court had also held that "teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of humankind to school children might be validly done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of science instruction."^[19] In drafts of the creation science textbook Of Pandas and People, almost all derivatives of the word "creation", such as "creationism", were replaced with the words "intelligent design".^[16] The book was published in 1989, followed by a "grass-roots" campaign promoting the use of the book to teach intelligent design in high-school biology classes.^[20]

The same Supreme Court ruling prompted the retired legal scholar Phillip E. Johnson, in his 1991 book Darwin on Trial, to advocate redefining science to allow claims of supernatural creation.^[21] A group including Michael Behe, Stephen C. Meyer and William Dembski joined Johnson in aiming to overturn the methodological naturalism of the scientific method (which he describes as "materialism") and replace it with "theistic realism" through what they later called the "wedge strategy".^[22] Behe contributed to the 1993 revision of Of Pandas and People, setting out the ideas he later called "irreducible complexity".^[23] In 1994 Meyer made contact with the Discovery Institute, and in the following year they obtained funding to set up the Center for Renewal of Science and Culture to promote the intelligent design movement seeking public and political support for teaching "intelligent design" as a creation-based alternative to evolution, particularly in the United States.^[17]

Intelligent design is presented as an alternative to natural explanations for the origin and diversity of life. It stands in opposition to conventional biological science, which relies on the scientific method to explain life through observable processes such as mutation and natural selection.^[24][25] The stated purpose of intelligent design is to investigate whether or not existing empirical evidence implies that life on Earth must have been designed by an intelligent agent or agents. William A. Dembski, one of intelligent design's leading proponents, has said that the fundamental claim of intelligent design is that "there are natural systems that cannot be adequately explained in terms of undirected natural forces and that exhibit features which in any other circumstance we would attribute to intelligence."^[26] In the leaked Discovery Institute manifesto known as the Wedge Document, however, the supporters of the movement were told, "We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design. Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."^[27][28]

Proponents of intelligent design look for evidence of what they term "signs of intelligence": physical properties of an object that point to a designer (see: teleological argument). For example, intelligent design proponents argue that an archaeologist who finds a statue made of stone in a field may justifiably conclude that the statue was designed, and reasonably seek to identify its designer. The archaeologist would not, however, be justified in making the same claim based on an irregularly shaped boulder of the same size. Design proponents argue that living systems show great complexity, from which they infer that some aspects of life have been designed.

Intelligent design proponents say that although evidence pointing to the nature of an "intelligent cause or agent" may not be directly observable, its effects on nature can be detected. Dembski, in Signs of Intelligence, states: "Proponents of intelligent design regard it as a scientific research program that investigates the effects of intelligent causes … not intelligent causes per se." In his view, one cannot test for the identity of influences exterior to a closed system from within, so questions concerning the identity of a designer fall outside the realm of the concept. No rigorous test that can identify these effects has yet been proposed.^[29][30] No articles supporting intelligent design have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, nor has intelligent design been the subject of scientific research or testing.^[31]

Origins of the concept

Philosophers have long debated whether the complexity of nature indicates the existence of a purposeful natural or supernatural designer/creator(s). Amongst the first attested arguments for a designer of the Universe are those recorded in Greek philosophy. In the 4th century BC, Plato posited a "demiurge" of supreme wisdom and intelligence as the creator of the cosmos in his Timaeus.^[32][33] Aristotle also developed the idea of a creator-designer of the cosmos, often called the "Unmoved Mover", in his work Metaphysics.^[34] In De Natura Deorum, or "On the Nature of the Gods" (45 BC), Cicero stated that "the divine power is to be found in a principle of reason which pervades the whole of nature."^[35]

The use of this line of reasoning as applied to a supernatural designer has come to be known as the teleological argument for the existence of God. The most notable forms of this argument were expressed in the 13th century by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae,^[36] design being the fifth of Aquinas' five proofs for God's existence, and by William Paley in his book Natural Theology (1802).^[37] Paley used the watchmaker analogy, which is still used in intelligent design arguments. In the early 19th century, such arguments led to the development of what was called natural theology, the study of nature as a means to understand "the mind of God." This movement fueled the passion for collecting fossils and other biological specimens, which ultimately led to Darwin's theory of the origin of species. Similar reasoning postulating a divine designer is embraced today by many believers in theistic evolution, who consider modern science and the theory of evolution to be fully compatible with the concept of a supernatural designer.

Intelligent design in the late 20th and early 21st century can be seen as a modern development of natural theology that seeks to change the basis of science and undermine evolutionary theory.^[38][39][40] As evolutionary theory has expanded to explain more phenomena, the examples that are held up as evidence of design have changed. But the essential argument remains the same: complex systems imply a designer. Examples offered in the past included the eye (optical system) and the feathered wing; current examples are mostly biochemical: protein functions, blood clotting, and bacterial flagella (see irreducible complexity).

Barbara Forrest describes the intelligent design movement as beginning in 1984 when Jon A. Buell's religious organization the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE) published The Mystery of Life's Origin by creationist chemist Charles B. Thaxton.^[41] In March 1986 Stephen C. Meyer's review described it as using information theory to suggest that messages transmitted by DNA in the cell show "specified complexity" specified by intelligence, and must have originated with an intelligent agent.^[42] In November of that year Thaxton described his reasoning as a more sophisticated form of Paley's argument from design.^[43] At the Sources of Information Content in DNA conference in 1988 he said that his intelligent cause view was compatible with both metaphysical naturalism and supernaturalism,^[44] and the term intelligent design came up.^[45]

Intelligent design deliberately does not try to identify or name the specific agent of creation—it merely states that one (or more) must exist. Although intelligent design itself does not name the designer, the leaders of the intelligent design movement have said that the designer is the Christian God.^{[46][27][47][48]} 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.

Origins of the term

See also: Timeline of intelligent design

Prior to the publication of the book Of Pandas and People in 1989, the words "intelligent design" had been used on several occasions as a descriptive phrase in contexts that are unrelated to the modern use of the term. The phrase "intelligent design" can be found in an 1847 issue of Scientific American, in an 1850 book by Patrick Edward Dove,^[49] and even in a 1861 letter of Charles Darwin.^[50] The words are also used in an address to the 1873 annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science by Paleyite botanist George James Allman:

No physical hypothesis founded on any indisputable fact has yet explained the origin of the primordial protoplasm, and, above all, of its marvellous properties, which render evolution possible—in heredity and in adaptability, for these properties are the cause and not the effect of evolution. For the cause of this cause we have sought in vain among the physical forces which surround us, until we are at last compelled to rest upon an independent volition, a far-seeing intelligent design.^[51]

The phrase can be found again in Humanism, a 1903 book by one of the founders of classical pragmatism, F.C.S. Schiller: "It will not be possible to rule out the supposition that the process of evolution may be guided by an intelligent design." A derivative of the phrase appears in the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1967) in the article on the Teleological argument for the existence of God : "Stated most succinctly, the argument runs: The world exhibits teleological order (design, adaptation). Therefore, it was produced by an intelligent designer." The phrases "intelligent design" and "intelligently designed" were used in a 1979 book Chance or Design? by James Horigan^[52] and the phrase "intelligent design" was used in a 1982 speech by Sir Fred Hoyle in his promotion of panspermia.^[53]

The modern use of the words "intelligent design", as a term intended to describe a field of inquiry, began after the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), ruled that creationism is unconstitutional in public school science curricula. A Discovery Institute report says that Charles Thaxton, editor of Of Pandas and People, had picked the phrase up from a NASA scientist, and thought "That's just what I need, it's a good engineering term."^[54] In drafts of the book over one hundred uses of the root word "creation", such as "creationism" and "creation science", were changed, almost without exception, to intelligent design.^[16] In June 1988 Thaxton held a conference titled Sources of Information Content in DNA in Tacoma, Washington,^[44] and in December decided to use the label "intelligent design" for his new creationist movement.^[55] Stephen C. Meyer was at the conference, and later recalled that "the term came up".^[45] The book Of Pandas and People was published in 1989, and is considered to be the first intelligent design book,^[56][23] as well as the first place where the phrase "intelligent design" appeared in its present use.^[57]

Irreducible complexity

In the context of intelligent design, irreducible complexity was put forward by Michael Behe, who defines it as "a single system which is composed of several well-matched interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning."^[58]

Behe uses the analogy of a mousetrap to illustrate this concept. A mousetrap consists of several interacting pieces—the base, the catch, the spring and the hammer—all of which must be in place for the mousetrap to work. Removal of any one piece destroys the function of the mousetrap. Intelligent design advocates assert that natural selection could not create irreducibly complex systems, because the selectable function is present only when all parts are assembled. Behe argued that irreducibly complex biological mechanisms include the bacterial flagellum of E. coli, the blood clotting cascade, cilia, and the adaptive immune system.^[59][60]

Critics point out that the irreducible complexity argument assumes that the necessary parts of a system have always been necessary and therefore could not have been added sequentially.^[61][62] They argue that something which is at first merely advantageous can later become necessary as other components change. Furthermore, they argue, evolution often proceeds by altering preexisting parts or by removing them from a system, rather than by adding them. This is sometimes called the "scaffolding objection" by an analogy with scaffolding, which can support an "irreducibly complex" building until it is complete and able to stand on its own.^[63] Behe himself has since confessed to "sloppy prose", and that his "argument against Darwinism does not add up to a logical proof."^[64] Irreducible complexity has remained a popular argument among advocates of intelligent design; in the Dover trial, however, the court held that "Professor Behe’s claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large."^[65]

Specified complexity

In 1986 the creationist chemist Charles Thaxton used the term "specified complexity" from information theory when claiming that messages transmitted by DNA in the cell were specified by intelligence, and must have originated with an intelligent agent.^[42] The intelligent design concept of "specified complexity" was developed in the 1990s by mathematician, philosopher, and theologian William Dembski. Dembski states that when something exhibits specified complexity (i.e., is both complex and specified, simultaneously), one can infer that it was produced by an intelligent cause (i.e., that it was designed) rather than being the result of natural processes. He provides the following examples: "A single letter of the alphabet is specified without being complex. A long sentence of random letters is complex without being specified. A Shakespearean sonnet is both complex and specified."^[66] He states that details of living things can be similarly characterized, especially the "patterns" of molecular sequences in functional biological molecules such as DNA.

Dembski defines complex specified information (CSI) as anything with a less than 1 in 10¹⁵⁰ chance of occurring by (natural) chance. Critics say that this renders the argument a tautology: complex specified information cannot occur naturally because Dembski has defined it thus, so the real question becomes whether or not CSI actually exists in nature.^[68][69][70]

The conceptual soundness of Dembski's specified complexity/CSI argument is strongly disputed by the scientific community.^[71] Specified complexity has yet to be shown to have wide applications in other fields as Dembski asserts. John Wilkins and Wesley Elsberry characterize Dembski's "explanatory filter" as eliminative, because it eliminates explanations sequentially: first regularity, then chance, finally defaulting to design. They argue that this procedure is flawed as a model for scientific inference because the asymmetric way it treats the different possible explanations renders it prone to making false conclusions.^[72]

Richard Dawkins, another critic of intelligent design, argues in The God Delusion that allowing for an intelligent designer to account for unlikely complexity only postpones the problem, as such a designer would need to be at least as complex.^[73] Other scientists have argued that evolution through selection is better able to explain the observed complexity, as is evident from the use of selective evolution to design certain electronic, aeronautic and automotive systems which are considered problems too complex for human "intelligent designers".^[74]

Fine-tuned Universe

Intelligent design proponents also raise occasional arguments outside biology, most notably an argument based on the concept of the fine-tuning of universal constants that make matter and life possible and which are argued not to be solely attributable to chance. These include the values of fundamental physical constants, the relative strength of nuclear forces, electromagnetism, gravity between fundamental particles, as well as the ratios of masses of such particles. Intelligent design proponent and Center for Science and Culture fellow Guillermo Gonzalez argues that if any of these values were even slightly different, the universe would be dramatically different, making it impossible for many chemical elements and features of the Universe, such as galaxies, to form.^[75] Thus, proponents argue, an intelligent designer of life was needed to ensure that the requisite features were present to achieve that particular outcome.

Scientists almost unanimously have responded that this argument cannot be tested and is not scientifically productive. Some scientists argue that even when taken as mere speculation, these arguments are poorly supported by existing evidence.^[76] Victor J. Stenger and other critics say both intelligent design and the weak form of the anthropic principle are essentially a tautology; in his view, these arguments amount to the claim that life is able to exist because the Universe is able to support life.^[77][78][79] The claim of the improbability of a life-supporting universe has also been criticized as an argument by lack of imagination for assuming no other forms of life are possible. Life as we know it might not exist if things were different, but a different sort of life might exist in its place. A number of critics also suggest that many of the stated variables appear to be interconnected and that calculations made by mathematicians and physicists suggest that the emergence of a universe similar to ours is quite probable.^[80]

Proponent Granville Sewell has stated that the evolution of complex forms of life represents a decrease of entropy, thereby violating the second law of thermodynamics and supporting intelligent design.^[81][82] Critics assert that this is a misapplication of thermodynamic principles.^[83] The second law applies to closed systems only. If this argument were true, living things could not be born and grow, as this also would be a decrease in entropy. However, like evolution, the growth of living things need not violate the second law of thermodynamics, because living things are not closed systems-- they have external energy sources (e.g. food, oxygen, sunlight) whose production requires an offsetting net increase in entropy.

Intelligent designer

Intelligent design arguments are formulated in secular terms and intentionally avoid identifying the intelligent agent (or agents) they posit. Although they do not state that God is the designer, the designer is often implicitly hypothesized to have intervened in a way that only a god could intervene. Dembski, in The Design Inference, speculates that an alien culture could fulfill these requirements. The authoritative description of intelligent design,^[84] however, explicitly states that the Universe displays features of having been designed. Acknowledging the paradox, Dembski concludes that "no intelligent agent who is strictly physical could have presided over the origin of the universe or the origin of life."^[85] The leading proponents have made statements to their supporters that they believe the designer to be the Christian God, to the exclusion of all other religions.^[46]

Beyond the debate over whether intelligent design is scientific, a number of critics go so far as to argue that existing evidence makes the design hypothesis appear unlikely, irrespective of its status in the world of science. For example, Jerry Coyne, of the University of Chicago, asks why a designer would "give us a pathway for making vitamin C, but then destroy it by disabling one of its enzymes" and why he or she would not "stock oceanic islands with reptiles, mammals, amphibians, and freshwater fish, despite the suitability of such islands for these species." Coyne also points to the fact that "the flora and fauna on those islands resemble that of the nearest mainland, even when the environments are very different" as evidence that species were not placed there by a designer.^[86] Previously, in Darwin's Black Box, Behe had argued that we are simply incapable of understanding the designer's motives, so such questions cannot be answered definitively. Odd designs could, for example, "have been placed there by the designer … for artistic reasons, to show off, for some as-yet undetectable practical purpose, or for some unguessable reason." Coyne responds that in light of the evidence, "either life resulted not from intelligent design, but from evolution; or the intelligent designer is a cosmic prankster who designed everything to make it look as though it had evolved."^[87]

Asserting the need for a designer of complexity also raises the question "What designed the designer?"^[88] Intelligent design proponents say that the question is irrelevant to or outside the scope of intelligent design.^[89] Richard Wein counters that the unanswered questions a theory creates "must be balanced against the improvements in our understanding which the explanation provides. Invoking an unexplained being to explain the origin of other beings (ourselves) is little more than question-begging. The new question raised by the explanation is as problematic as the question which the explanation purports to answer."^[90] Richard Dawkins sees the assertion that the designer does not need to be explained, not as a contribution to knowledge, but as a thought-terminating cliché.^[91][92] In the absence of observable, measurable evidence, the very question "What designed the designer?" leads to an infinite regression from which intelligent design proponents can only escape by resorting to religious creationism or logical contradiction.^[91][93]

Movement

The intelligent design movement is a direct outgrowth of the creationism of the 1980s.^[4] The scientific and academic communities, along with a US Federal court, view intelligent design as either a form of creationism or as a direct descendant that is closely intertwined with traditional creationism;^{[95][96][97][98]} and several authors explicitly refer to it as "intelligent design creationism".^{[99][100][101]}

The movement is headquartered in the Center for Science and Culture (CSC), established in 1996 as the creationist wing of the Discovery Institute to promote a religious agenda^[102] calling for broad social, academic and political changes. The Discovery Institute's intelligent design campaigns are primarily in the United States, although efforts have been made in other countries to promote intelligent design. Leaders of the movement say intelligent design exposes the limitations of scientific orthodoxy and of the secular philosophy of Naturalism. Intelligent design proponents allege that science should not be limited to naturalism and should not demand the adoption of a naturalistic philosophy that dismisses out-of-hand any explanation which contains a supernatural cause. The overall goal of the movement is to "defeat [the] materialist world view" represented by the theory of evolution in favor of "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."^[103]

Phillip E. Johnson stated that the goal of intelligent design is to cast creationism as a scientific concept.^[47][104] All leading intelligent design proponents are fellows or staff of the Discovery Institute and its Center for Science and Culture.^[105] Nearly all intelligent design concepts and the associated movement are the products of the Discovery Institute, which guides the movement and follows its wedge strategy while conducting its Teach the Controversy campaign and their other related programs.

Leading intelligent design proponents have made conflicting statements regarding intelligent design. In statements directed at the general public, they say intelligent design is not religious; when addressing conservative Christian supporters, they state that intelligent design has its foundation in the Bible.^[104] Recognizing the need for support, the institute affirms its Christian, evangelistic orientation: "Alongside a focus on influential opinion-makers, we also seek to build up a popular base of support among our natural constituency, namely, Christians. We will do this primarily through apologetics seminars. We intend these to encourage and equip believers with new scientific evidences that support the faith, as well as to 'popularize' our ideas in the broader culture."^[103]

Barbara Forrest, an expert who has written extensively on the movement, describes this as being due to the Discovery Institute's obfuscating its agenda as a matter of policy. She has written that the movement's "activities betray an aggressive, systematic agenda for promoting not only intelligent design creationism, but the religious world-view that undergirds it."^[106]

Religion and leading proponents

Although arguments for intelligent design are formulated in secular terms and intentionally avoid positing the identity of the designer,^[107] most of the principal intelligent design advocates are evangelical Christians who have stated that in their view the "designer" is God. Phillip E. Johnson, William Dembski, and Stephen C. Meyer are Protestants; Michael Behe is Roman Catholic; and Jonathan Wells, another principal advocate, is a member of the Unification Church. Johnson has stated that cultivating ambiguity by employing secular language in arguments that are carefully crafted to avoid overtones of theistic creationism is a necessary first step for ultimately reintroducing the Christian concept of God as the designer. Johnson explicitly calls for intelligent design proponents to obfuscate their religious motivations so as to avoid having intelligent design identified "as just another way of packaging the Christian evangelical message".^[108] Johnson emphasizes that "the first thing that has to be done is to get the Bible out of the discussion"; "after we have separated materialist prejudice from scientific fact … only then can 'biblical issues' be discussed."^[109]

The strategy of deliberately disguising the religious intent of intelligent design has been described by William Dembski in The Design Inference.^[110] In this work Dembski lists a god or an "alien life force" as two possible options for the identity of the designer; however, in his book Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology, Dembski states that "Christ is indispensable to any scientific theory, even if its practitioners don't have a clue about him. The pragmatics of a scientific theory can, to be sure, be pursued without recourse to Christ. But the conceptual soundness of the theory can in the end only be located in Christ."^[111] Dembski also stated, "ID is part of God's general revelation … Not only does intelligent design rid us of this ideology (materialism), which suffocates the human spirit, but, in my personal experience, I've found that it opens the path for people to come to Christ."^[112] Both Johnson and Dembski cite the Bible's Gospel of John as the foundation of intelligent design.^[46][104]

Barbara Forrest contends such statements reveal that leading proponents see intelligent design as essentially religious in nature, not merely a scientific concept that has implications with which their personal religious beliefs happen to coincide.^[113] She writes that the leading proponents of intelligent design are closely allied with the ultra-conservative Christian Reconstructionism movement. She lists connections of Discovery Institute Fellows Phillip Johnson, Charles Thaxton, Michael Behe, Richard Weikart, Jonathan Wells and Francis Beckwith to leading Christian Reconstructionist organizations, and the extent of the funding provided the Institute by Howard Ahmanson Jr., a leading figure in the Reconstructionist movement.^[114]

Controversy

A key strategy of the intelligent design movement is convincing the general public that there is a debate among scientists about whether life evolved, in order to convince the public, politicians and cultural leaders that schools should "teach the controversy".^[115] There is no such debate, however, within the scientific community; the scientific consensus is that life evolved.^{[116][117][118]} Intelligent design is widely viewed as a stalking horse for its proponents' campaign against what they say is the materialist foundation of science, which they argue leaves no room for the possibility of God.^[119][120]

Advocates for intelligent design seek to keep God and the Bible out of the discussion, and present intelligent design in the language of science as a scientific hypothesis.^[109][107] However, among the general public in the United States the major concern is whether or not conventional evolutionary biology is compatible with belief in God and in the Bible, and concerns about what is taught in schools.^[121] The public controversy was given widespread media coverage in the United States, particularly during the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial in 2005. Prominent coverage of the public controversy was given on the front page of Time magazine with a story on Evolution Wars, on 15 August, 2005. The cover poses the question: "Does God have a place in science class?"^[122] The eventual decision of the court ruled that intelligent design was a religious and creationist position, and answered the question posed by Time magazine with a firm negative, finding that God and intelligent design were both distinct from the material that should be covered in a science class.^[3]

From the standpoint of public-school educational policy, the intelligent design controversy centers on three issues:

1. Can intelligent design be defined as science?
2. If so, does the evidence support it and related explanations of the history of life on Earth?
3. If the answer to either question is negative, is the teaching of such explanations appropriate and legal in public education, specifically in science classes?

Empirical science uses the scientific method to create a posteriori knowledge based on observation and repeated testing of hypotheses and theories. Intelligent design proponents seek to change this fundamental basis of science^[123] by eliminating "methodological naturalism" from science^[124] and replacing it with what the leader of the intelligent design movement, Phillip E. Johnson, calls "theistic realism".^[125] Some have called this approach "methodological supernaturalism", which means belief in a transcendent, nonnatural dimension of reality inhabited by a transcendent, nonnatural deity.^[126] Intelligent design proponents argue that naturalistic explanations fail to explain certain phenomena and that supernatural explanations provide a very simple and intuitive explanation for the origins of life and the universe.^[127] Proponents say that evidence exists in the forms of irreducible complexity and specified complexity that cannot be explained by natural processes.^[1]

Supporters also hold that religious neutrality requires the teaching of both evolution and intelligent design in schools, saying that teaching only evolution unfairly discriminates against those holding creationist beliefs. Teaching both, they argue, allows for the possibility of religious belief, without causing the state to actually promote such beliefs. Many intelligent design followers believe that "Scientism" is itself a religion that promotes secularism and materialism in an attempt to erase theism from public life, and they view their work in the promotion of intelligent design as a way to return religion to a central role in education and other public spheres. Some allege that this larger debate is often the subtext for arguments made over intelligent design, though others note that intelligent design serves as an effective proxy for the religious beliefs of prominent intelligent design proponents in their efforts to advance their religious point of view within society.^{[128][129][130]}

According to critics, intelligent design has not presented a credible scientific case and is an attempt to teach religion in public schools, which the U.S. Constitution forbids under the Establishment Clause. They allege that intelligent design has substituted public support for scientific research.^[131] Some critics have said that if one were to take the proponents of "equal time for all theories" at their word, there would be no logical limit to the number of potential "theories" to be taught in the public school system, including intelligent design parodies such as the Flying Spaghetti Monster "theory". There are innumerable mutually incompatible supernatural explanations for complexity, and intelligent design does not provide a mechanism for discriminating among them. Furthermore, intelligent design is neither observable nor repeatable, which violates the scientific requirement of falsifiability.^{[132][133][134]} Indeed, intelligent design proponent Michael Behe concedes "You can't prove intelligent design by experiment."^[121]

Critics have asserted that intelligent design proponents cannot legitimately infer that an intelligent designer is behind the part of the process that is not understood scientifically, since they have not shown that anything supernatural has occurred. The inference that an intelligent designer created life on Earth, which advocate William Dembski has said could alternately be an "alien" life force,^[110] has been compared to the a priori claim that aliens helped the ancient Egyptians build the pyramids.^[135][136] In both cases, the effect of this outside intelligence is not repeatable, observable or falsifiable, and it violates the principle of parsimony. From a strictly empirical standpoint, one may list what is known about Egyptian construction techniques, but one must admit ignorance about exactly how the Egyptians built the pyramids.

Intelligent design proponents aim to gain support by unifying the religious world—Christians, Jews, Muslims and others who believe in a creator—in challenging Darwinism with a God-friendly alternative theory.^[127] Mainstream religious denominations have responded by expressing support for evolution. They state that their religious faith is fully compatible with science, which is limited to dealing only with the natural world^[137]—a position described by the term theistic evolution.^[138] As well as pointing out that intelligent design is not science, they also reject it for various philosophical and theological reasons.^[139][140] The arguments of intelligent design have been directly challenged by the over 10,000 clergy who signed the Clergy Letter Project. Prominent scientists who strongly express religious faith, such as the astronomer George Coyne and the biologist