Intelligent Design is based on a court ruling, not any scientific evidence. The 1987 ruling of the United States Supreme Court stated that the teaching of Creationism in science class was a violation of the Establishment Clause (prohibits a state's aid to religion) and the First Amendment. To go around this ruling apologists renamed "Creationism" to "Intelligent Design" and avoided naming the creator/designer. The first publication on ID was a book titled 'Of Pandas And People' which was originally written as a creationist book but altered immediately after the court ruling as seen in the rough drafts.

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NO. Science explains HOW something happened or HOW something works. Intelligent Design simply claims that life was designed by an intelligent designer because it looks like it was. Creationism simply claims that life and the universe was created by God because the Bible says it was created by God. Neither of these are explanations of how anything was created.

ID only pretends to be science so Christian apologists can discourage students from learning the actual science which disproves religious based claims. If ID proponents did have an honest motive they would be pushing to get ID into history classes and not science classes since ID only makes the claim of an event occurring and does not try to explain how that event occurred.

ID proponents are attempting to sneak ID into public science classrooms by claiming that it would only be fair to teach the controversy and give equal time. Teaching ID as science would actually not be fair. Before any other idea is considered for school curriculum or textbooks it has to fight its way through the tedious criticism and analysis of the scientific process. ID wishes to be exempt from such standards. There is also no actual controversy regarding the validity of evolution to teach. Over 99.9% of scientists in fields related to life and its history accept evolution as a solid fact and discard ID as mere pseudoscience. Giving ID "equal time" is like giving astronomy AND astrology equal time. Giving ID equal time is bad in terms of scientific policies and even worse in terms of educational policy.

Life appears designed because it was designed, but not by an intelligent designer. A detailed look at the design of life shows a rather sloppy series of designs jury rigged from parts of evolutionary ancestors. From the numerous vestigialities and various life harming flaws it is clear that life was not designed by an "intelligent" designer, rather it was designed through natural means by a non-conscious "designer" with no foresight in its designing process.

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Irreducible Complexity (IC) is an argument made by Michael Behe that certain complex biological systems could not have evolved in stages because the removal of any single interacting part would cause the system to cease functioning. Despite claims made by Behe there has yet to be a single biological example supporting IC. The human eye, bacterial flagellum, and blood clotting cascade were all claimed to be too "irreducibly complex" but scientists already have a firm understanding of how they were able to evolve naturally in stages.

Learn More   •   Blood Clotting Cascade   •   Bacterial Flagellum   •   Human Eye