Intelligent design
A pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God
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.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Intelligent design” as a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q172618. The Library of Congress control number is sh2002009988. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1989, 1987 and 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “Intelligent design” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.