Intelligent design

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 have been 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...