Athena
TR
Idea / theory / claimBranches1996

Intelligent design

Michael BeheWilliam DembskiStephen MeyerDouglas Axe

This page delivers no verdict; it presents claims and evidence with their sources. No theory in science is absolute. Method

For everyone

According to proponents of intelligent design, some biological structures are so complex that they would not work at all if one part were missing ("irreducible complexity"). They therefore infer that such structures were produced by an intelligent designer rather than by blind, step-by-step processes. Opponents present models showing the stepwise development of these structures and argue that the theory is not scientifically testable. In 2005 a US court held that teaching it as science in public schools was unconstitutional.

For specialists

Behe's examples are the bacterial flagellum, the blood-clotting cascade and the immune system. Dembski's "specified complexity" criterion aims to formalise the design inference as a probabilistic filter. Axe (2004) estimated the prevalence of functional protein folds in sequence space as very low (about 10⁻⁷⁷), a result used by design proponents. Critics point to the flagellum's homology with the type III secretion system, to scenarios of stepwise origin by co-option (exaptation) and to the fact that Axe's estimate rests on a single protein.

Claims

Evidence

Supporting

Philosophical / theological argument

In systems such as the bacterial flagellum, removing any of the core parts has been shown to abolish function.[1]

Experiment

Mutation experiments on one enzyme domain led to the estimate that functional protein sequences are extremely rare among all possible sequences.[3]

Challenging

Genetic data

Flagellar proteins were shown to be homologous to systems with other functions (e.g. the type III secretion system), interpreted as indicating stepwise assembly from parts co-opted from other functions.[4]

Positions

Kitzmiller v. Dover (US Federal Court, 2005)
The court ruled that teaching intelligent design as science in public schools violated the separation of church and state.[5]

Connections

Parent

Views on the origin and diversity of living things

Argues against

Darwin and Wallace, natural selection

Related

Theistic evolution (evolutionary creation)Creationism

This topic is a stop on these journeys

Views on the origin of living things · stop 8/11

Show in tree →

Sources

  1. BookBehe, M. J. (1996). Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. Free Press, New York
  2. BookDembski, W. A. (1998). The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities. Cambridge University Press
  3. ArticleAxe, D. D. (2004). Estimating the prevalence of protein sequences adopting functional enzyme folds. Journal of Molecular Biology 341(5), 1295–1315DOI 10.1016/j.jmb.2004.06.058archive
  4. ArticlePallen, M. J.; Matzke, N. J. (2006). From The Origin of Species to the origin of bacterial flagella. Nature Reviews Microbiology 4, 784–790DOI 10.1038/nrmicro1493archive
  5. Report (2005). Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, 400 F. Supp. 2d 707 (M.D. Pa. 2005). United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania

Search the literature

Look for scholarly work on this topic in other indexes:

Google Scholar ↗Semantic Scholar ↗BASE ↗CORE ↗PubMed ↗DergiPark ↗

Cite this page

APA

Athena contributors. (2026). Intelligent design. Athena: The tree of human knowledge. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://latifkedi.github.io/athena/en/d/akilli-tasarim/

BibTeX
@misc{athena_akilli_tasarim,
  title        = {Intelligent design},
  author       = {{Athena contributors}},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://latifkedi.github.io/athena/en/d/akilli-tasarim/}},
  note         = {Athena: The tree of human knowledge. Accessed: 2026-11-01}
}

Added: September 27, 2026 · Last changed: September 28, 2026 · Page history

✎ Suggest a correction