What is the meaning of the theory of intelligent design?

Answer 1

Intelligent design is not a theory, or at least not a scientific one. It is just another word for creationism, and swaps out the word God for the word "designer". In every other way it is identical to creationism. It is not a scientific theory because it involves the supernatural which cannot be tested, proven, or observed and is therefore not science.

• Answer 2

The idea of Intelligent Design means that things in the universe (humans, animals, the water cycle, physical constants, etc.), exhibit vast wisdom and cannot possibly have come about just by random events. The universe must have been deliberately designed.

• The universe has definite design, order, and arrangement which cannot be sufficiently explained outside a theistic worldview. (This is how Abraham, without benefit of teachers, came to reject the chaotic world-view of idolatry and the possibility of Atheism). For example, theoretical physicist and popular science writer Paul Davies (whose early writings were not especially sympathetic to theism) states concerning the fundamental structure of the universe, "the impression of design is overwhelming" (Davies, 1988, p. 203).

• The laws of the universe seem to have been set in such a way that stars, planets and life can exist. Many constants of nature appear to be finely tuned for this, and the odds against this happening by chance are astronomical.
• "To the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation" (Corner, E.J.H., Contemporary Botanical Thought).
• "Nine-tenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by facts. This museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of their views. In all this great museum, there is not a particle of evidence of the transmutation of species" (Dr. Etheridge, Paleontologist of the British Museum).
  

"To postulate that the development and survival of the fittest is entirely a consequence of chance mutations seems to me a hypothesis based on no evidence and irreconcilable with the facts. It amazes me that this is swallowed so uncritically and readily, and for such a long time, by so many scientists without murmur of protest" (Sir Ernest Chain, Nobel Prize winner).

• Mutations are harmful, not beneficial. One of the tasks of DNA and of long-term breeding is to avoid or repair any changes brought about by mutations. This means that our genetic apparatus is programmed to resist change.
• You need DNA to make DNA. No genetic code can be demonstrated to have arisen by chance, together with the ability to read that code and carry out its instructions. Information does not arise spontaneously; and there is an incredible amount of information in even the tiniest cell.
  

"A living cell is so awesomely complex that its interdependent components stagger the imagination and defy evolutionary explanations" (Michael Denton, author).
"The astounding structural complexity of a cell" (U.S. National Library of Medicine).
Concerning a single structure within a cell: "Without the motor protein, the microtubules don't slide and the cilium simply stands rigid. Without nexin, the tubules will slide against each other until they completely move past each other and the cilium disintegrates. Without the tubulin, there are no microtubules and no motion. The cilium is irreducibly complex. Like a mousetrap, it has all the properties of design and none of the properties of natural selection" (Michael Behe, prof. of biophysics).

• "The concept of abiogenesis is not science. It's fantasy" (J.L. Wile, Ph.D.).