Quote[/b] ]Intelligent design (ID) is the claim that empirical evidence points to the conclusion that life on earth was deliberately designed by an intelligent agent. The Intelligent Design movement is an organized campaign to promote ID arguments in the public sphere, primarily in the United States. The hub of the movement is the Center for Science and Culture, a subsidiary of the Discovery Institute, a politically conservative think tank. The phrase "Intelligent Design," was coined by legal scholar Phillip E. Johnson in his 1991 book ''Darwin on Trial.'' Johnson's argument, and a key tenet of the ID movement, is that the premise of philosophical naturalism, which has dominated not only scientific mehodology but all western intellectual discourse since the nineteenth century, is false. The ID movement presents a case for "reasonable doubt" about the standard scientific model of evolution by natural selection. ID includes arguments that abiogenesis is impossible, that evolution cannot account for the complexity of life, and that the universe is "fine tuned" for living things in a manner that must have been by design. ID proponents argue, by way of an "eliminative inference," that reason dictates we settle upon intelligent causes whenever natural causes cannot suffice to explain some observed phenomena. ID makes no explicit claims about the identity of the intelligent designer, its motives or methods of operation. In practice, ID is often used by its proponents for the purpose of religious apologetics, to argue for the existence of a monothestic God. The ID movement is largely associated with conservative Christians, and in this connection ID is sometimes described as a revision of the argument from design made famous by William Paley in the early 19th century.
ID is rejected by the overwhelming majority of scientists and philosophers of science, who regard ID as a form of pseudoscience.