https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design
Intelligent design (
ID) is the
pseudoscientificview
[1][2][3] 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."
[4]Educators, philosophers, and the scientific community have demonstrated that ID is a religious argument, a form of
creationismwhich lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable
hypotheses.
[5][6][7]Proponents argue that it is "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins" that challenges the
methodological naturalism inherent in modern science,
[8][9]while conceding that they have yet to produce a
scientific theory.
[10]The leading proponents of ID are associated with the
Discovery Institute, a politically conservative
think tank based in the
United States.
[n 1]Although they state that ID is not creationism and deliberately avoid assigning a personality to the designer, many of these proponents express belief that the designer is the Christian deity.
ID presents negative arguments against evolutionary explanations, and its positive argument is an analogy between natural systems and
human artifacts,
[11] a version of the
theologicalargument from designfor the
existence of God.
[n 3] Both
irreducible complexity and
specified complexity present detailed negative assertions that certain features (biological and informational, respectively) are too complex to be the result of natural processes. Proponents then conclude by analogy that these features are evidence of design.
[11][n 4] Detailed scientific examination has rebutted the claims that evolutionary explanations are inadequate, and this premise of intelligent design—that evidence against
evolution constitutes evidence for design—has been criticized as a
false dichotomy