Talk:Intelligent design/LEAD

Intelligent design (ID) is a proposition 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. "   Though it has not been accepted by the scientific community, its leading proponents, all of whom are affiliated with the Discovery Institute,      claim that intelligent design is a scientific theory that stands on equal footing with, or is superior to, current scientific theories regarding the evolution and origin of life.

The scientific community views intelligent design as unscientific, as pseudoscience  or as junk science. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has stated that intelligent design "and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life" are not science because they cannot be tested by experiment, do not generate any predictions, and propose no new hypotheses of their own.

In Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005), a United States federal court ruled that a public school district requirement for science classes to teach that intelligent design is an alternative to evolution was a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. United States District Judge John E. Jones III ruled that intelligent design is not science and is essentially religious in nature. Jones also noted that intelligent design is not new, but just another version of the teleological argument for the existence of God.