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".
[1][2][3][4][5] 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."
[6] ID is a form of
creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, and is therefore not science.
[7][8][9] The leading proponents of ID are associated with the
Discovery Institute, a Christian, politically conservative
think tank based in the United States.
[n 1]
Although the phrase
intelligent design had featured previously in
theological discussions of the
argument from design,
[10] its first publication in its present use as an alternative term for creationism was in
Of Pandas and People,
[11][12] a 1989 creationist textbook intended for high school biology classes. The term was substituted into drafts of the book, directly replacing references to
creation science and
creationism, after the 1987
Supreme Court's
Edwards v. Aguillard decision barred the teaching of
creation science in
public schools on
constitutional grounds.
[13] From the mid-1990s, the
intelligent design movement (IDM), supported by the Discovery Institute,
[14] advocated inclusion of intelligent design in public school biology curricula.
[7] This led to the 2005
Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, which found 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.
[15]