Origin of the concept
Further information: Argument from poor design, Teleological argument, and Watchmaker analogy
A marble bust based on a portrait ca. 370 BC of Plato. The teleological argument, or "argument from design", is an ancient one, held in some form by Plato and Aristotle.
Whether the order and complexity of nature indicates purposeful design has been the subject of debate since the Greeks. In the 4th century BCE, Plato posited a good and wise "demiurge" as the creator and first cause of the cosmos in his Timaeus.[14] In his Metaphysics, Aristotle developed the idea of an "Unmoved Mover".[15][16] In De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods, 45 BCE) Cicero wrote that "the divine power is to be found in a principle of reason which pervades the whole of nature."[17] This line of reasoning has come to be known as the teleological argument for the existence of God. Some well-known forms of it were expressed in the 13th century by Thomas Aquinas and in the 19th century by William Paley. Aquinas, in his Summa Theologiae, used the concept of design in his "fifth proof" for God's existence.[18]
In the early 19th century, Paley's argument from design in Natural Theology (1802), used the watchmaker analogy,[19] and such arguments led to the development of what was called natural theology, the study of nature as way of understanding "the mind of God". This movement fueled the passion for collecting fossils and other biological specimens, which ultimately led to Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859). Similar reasoning postulating a divine designer is embraced today by many believers in theistic evolution, who consider modern science and the theory of evolution to be compatible with the concept of a supernatural designer. In correspondence about the question with Asa Gray, Darwin wrote that "I cannot honestly go as far as you do about Design. I am conscious that I am in an utterly hopeless muddle. I cannot think that the world, as we see it, is the result of chance; & yet I cannot look at each separate thing as the result of Design."[20] Though he had studied Paley's work while at university, by the end of his life he came to regard it as useless for scientific development.[21]
Intelligent design in the late 20th and early 21st century is a development of natural theology that seeks to change the basis of science and undermine evolutionary theory.[n 9] As evolutionary theory expanded to explain more phenomena, the examples held up as evidence of design changed, though the essential argument remains the same: complex systems imply a designer. Past examples have included the eye and the feathered wing; current examples are typically biochemical: protein functions, blood clotting, and bacterial flagella; see irreducible complexity.
Philosopher Barbara Forrest writes that the intelligent design movement began in 1984 with the publication by Jon A. Buell's the Foundation for Thought and Ethics of The Mystery of Life's Origin by Charles B. Thaxton, a chemist and creationist. Thaxton held a conference in 1988, "Sources of Information Content in DNA," which attracted creationists such as Stephen C. Meyer. Forrest writes that, in December 1988, Thaxton decided to use the term "intelligent design," instead of creationism, for the movement.[22]
In March 1986 a review by Meyer used information theory to suggest that messages transmitted by DNA in the cell show "specified complexity" specified by intelligence, and must have originated with an intelligent agent.[23] In November of that year Thaxton described his reasoning as a more sophisticated form of Paley's argument from design.[24] At the Sources of Information Content in DNA conference in 1988 he said that his intelligent cause view was compatible with both metaphysical naturalism and supernaturalism,[25]
Intelligent design avoids identifying or naming the agent of creation—it merely states that one (or more) must exist—but leaders of the movement have said the designer is the Christian God.[n 2][n 3][26][n 10][n 11] Whether this lack of specificity about the designer's identity in public discussions is a genuine feature of the concept, or just a posture taken to avoid alienating those who would separate religion from the teaching of science, has been a matter of great debate between supporters and critics of intelligent design. The Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District court ruling held the latter to be the case.
