User:SlimVirgin/ID
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Intelligent design is the proposition that aspects of the universe and the variation of life cannot be explained by reference to random mutation and natural selection alone, and that at least some of the diversity of life is not due to chance.[1] Proponents call this the problem of irreducible complexity, and say it can only be explained by reference to intelligence.[2] The philosopher Thomas Nagel argues that on the face of it this is a scientific claim about what the evidence suggests, one that is not self-evidently absurd,[1] but the argument is rejected by most scientists, who say there are natural explanations for what seems to be irreducible complexity.[3]
The concept is a contemporary version of the teleological argument for the existence of God, though it does not specify the nature of the designer;[4] scientists have called it creationist pseudoscience.[5] Nagel argues that intelligent design is very different from creation science, in that it does not depend on distortion of the evidence, or on the assumption that it is immune to empirical evidence. It depends only on the idea that the hypothesis of a designer makes sense.[1]
Philosopher Robert B. Johnson writes that most commentators inside and outside the intelligent design movement say the modern form of intelligent design began with Darwin on Trial (1991) by Philip E. Johnson, an American law professor. Johnson was influenced by two books: The Blind Watchmaker (1986) by Richard Dawkins, who argued that random mutation and natural selection could alone account for the diversity of life, and Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985) by Michael Denton, who argued that it could not. Johnson wrote in Darwin on Trial that evolutionary biologists argue for Darwinism not on the basis of evidence, but because their philosophy of science disallows any alternative. He organized conferences in 1992 and 1993, after which a listserv was set up to allow proponents to network. In 1996, the Discovery Institute, a conservative Christian think tank, set up its Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture to explore and promote intelligent design, and in November that year a conference at Biola University saw 200 scientists, philosophers, and theologians gather to discuss it.[6]
Efforts to have intelligent design taught in science classes in the United States culminated in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005), when parents of high-school students challenged a school-district requirement that teachers present it 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 that the school district's promotion of it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[7]