Intelligent design timeline

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Contents

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History of ID

An abbreviated chronological list of events in the history of the term "intelligent design" and related foundational concepts.[1]


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BC

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500-1 BC

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500-428

  • Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (500-428 BC, Greek: Αναξαγόρας) was a mediator between the ancient Ionian philosophical tradition and the emergence of the Greek tradition. "Both Plato and Aristotle regard him [Anaxagoras] as the first to attribute the evident structural harmony and order in Nature to some form of intelligent design plan rather than the change concourse of atoms." (Source: Barrow J & Tipler F (1986) The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. 1986/1988, p 32, ISBN 0192821474.)
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~360 BC

  • Plato (427-347 BC) introduces an idea that predates his writings, wherein, "All things do become, have become, and will become, some by nature, some by art, and some by chance."[2]
    • This framework of chance, necessity, and design, is a causal framework of science proposed by intelligent design theorists.
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~50 BC

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45 BC

  • Marcus Cicero (106-43 BC) writes, "let us see whether they are the work of chance, or whether their arrangement is one in which they could not possibly have been combined except by the guidance of consciousness"[5],[6],[7]
    • Cicero formulates an informational/probabilistic account of the cosmos and biological organisms. i.e., an unmistakably seminal description of what William Dembski and others in the ID community would later call Specified Complexity.
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AD

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0-99

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57

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500-599

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AD 543-615

  • Columbanus (AD 543-615)
    "Understand the creation, if you wish to know the Creator."[10]
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800-899

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AD 810-877

  • John Scotus Eriugena (AD 810-877):
    ". . .the eternal light reveals itself in a twofold manner through Scripture and through creation. . ."[11]
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1100-1199

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1200-1299

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1220

  • Bishop Robert Grosseteste (~1175-1253) first recorded steps for experiments to validate a scientific theory. He studied and taught meteorology, light, color and optics and argued that light was the basis of all matter.[13],[14]
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1268

  • Roger Bacon (1214 - 1294), student of Robert Grosseteste, emphasized the experimental method over deduction from authority. He compiled an encyclopedia of science. He proposed and then demonstrated experiments popularizing the scientific method. He believed studying nature would provide knowledge of God and the world.[15]
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1600-1699

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1605

  • Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626) emphasized the experimental method as a sure path to truth. He considered nature to be God's finely crafted machine where man had the ability and duty to discover its workings.[16],[17]
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1687

  • Isaac Newton in Principia, observed: "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."[18]
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1700-1799

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1744

On April 15, 1744, the pioneer of the Principle of Least Action, Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis presented: Derivation of the laws of motion and equilibrium from a metaphysical principle

The French word "dessein" appears 4 times, and 3 times associated with the word "intelligence". For example "marques d’Intelligence & de Dessein". One English translation also uses the phrase "intelligent design" for the French phrase "un choix".[19]

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1776

  • The US Declaration of Independence

The United States of America is founded on the presupposition of, and appeal to, an Intelligent Cause in its first Organic Law, the Declaration of Independence, 1776. This includes: "that all men are created equal,” "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” and entitlement by “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” USC THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE - 1776

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1800-1899

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1802

  • William Paley published Natural Theology with his Watchmaker argument for the existance of a Being who formed and empowered nature.
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1823

  • Thomas Jefferson wrote: ". . . it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, . . .So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent . . ." [20], [21]
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1837

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1847

  • The phrase "intelligent design" occurred in an 1847 issue of Scientific American (unrelated to current use).
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1850

  • Patrick Edward Dove discusses "Intelligence-Intelligent Design" in his book The Theory of Human Progression, and Natural Probability of a Reign of Justice,[23] discusses intelligence, design, relative to mathematics & physical science, and infers a Designer, (pp 476-479 in 1856 ed.)


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1861

  • In Letter 3154 — Darwin, C. R. to Herschel, J. F. W., 23 May [1861] Darwin writes, "The point which you raise on intelligent Design has perplexed me beyond measure; & has been ably discussed by Prof. Asa Gray, with whom I have had much correspondence on the subject.—f4 I am in a complete jumble on the point. One cannot look at this Universe with all living productions & man without believing that all has been intelligently designed; yet when I look to each individual organism, I can see no evidence of this.
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1867

  • George Campbell, Duke of Argyll, in Reign of Law discusses "Purpose and Design." He proposes hummingbirds as structures of "beauty and variety" "designed for mere ornament" as filling Darwin's example that beauty would refute his theory.[24]
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1871

  • Alfred Russel Wallace, co-developer of natural selection, wrote: "[T]he inference I would draw from this class of phenomena is, that a superior intelligence has guided the development of man in a definite direction, and for a special purpose."[25],[26]
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1873

  • The term "intelligent design" is used in an address to the 1873 annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science by Paleyite botanist George James Allman.[27]
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1874

  • John Tyndall argued for rationalism before the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Belfast, citing the arguments of Lucretius (99 BC) of Rome against “intelligent design”.[28]
  • Henry Sidgwick, in his The Methods of Ethics states, "For in speaking of 'conformity to Nature' men commonly imply more or less consciously an intelligent design exhibited in the natural world."[29]
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1892

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1897

F.C.S. Schiller stated, “It will not be possible to rule out the supposition that the process of Evolution may be guided by an intelligent design.”[31],[32] (Cited by Jonathan Witt[33])

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1900-1999

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1904

  • Thomson Jay Hudson defines 'Design' and discusses "intelligent design" in A Scientific demonstration of the future life
  • Ernst Haeckel, in his Wonders of life: A Popular Study of Biological Philosophy, discusses "The familiar comparison of an organism to a machine has given rise to very serious errors in regard to the former, and has, of late, been made the base of false dualistic principles. The modern “machine-theory of life” which is raised thereon demands an intelligent design and a deliberate constructing engineer for the origin of the organism, just as we find in the case of the machine."[34]
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1924-1928

The early pioneers of information theory (who typically remained on a highly theoretical and mathematical plane of thought) saw that informational phenomena in its most abstract form originated by an intelligent cause, and simultaneously recognized the physical meaning of information once disconnected from intelligence.

  • Harry Nyquist discusses information as the "transmission of intelligence," and that the speed of "transmitting intelligence" was effected by the "power, noise, and the frequency of the intelligent signal."[35]
  • R.V.L. Hartley developed the concept of information based on "physical as contrasted with psychological considerations."[36]

Source: Losee B (1999) "The Beginnings of Information Theory." Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 48 (3) 1997, 254-269.

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1953

  • Watson and Crick's paper, A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid, was published on April 25. Their paper forever changed the way biologists and chemists looked at the living cell. The result is that the cell becomes a digital coding-programming entity, and molecular biology and bioinformatics became extremely important fields for biology.
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1967

  • The Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy summarizes the Teleological argument for the existence of God : "Stated most succinctly, the argument runs: The world exhibits teleological order (design, adaptation). Therefore, it was produced by an intelligent designer."
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1968

Michael Polanyi publishes "Life's Irreducible Structure" in the June 21st edition of the journal Science. The paper makes an explicit comparison between technological machines and biological machines. Researchers in the ID community are later inspired by Polanyi's paper to explore the comparison and what it might mean for the biological sciences.

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1979

James E. Horigan used the term "intelligent design" in his book Chance or Design? in much the same way that future scholars and researchers in the intelligent design community would frame their empirical approach. He used the phrases "intelligent design" and "intelligently designed" in his book more than 50 times.[37]

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1981

  • Sir Fred Hoyle, began to propose a hypothesis of "directed panspermia," in which it is proposed that an extraterrestrial "...intelligence which assembled the enzymes..." was responsible for the origin and diversity of life by bombarding our planet with comets laced with viruses. (Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe (1981), Evolution from Space (London: J.M. Dent & Sons), p 139)
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1981-1985

  • Sir Fred Hoyle uses the term "intelligent design" as part of his promotion of panspermia.

[38]

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1982

  • Werner Gitt publishes Am Anfang war die Information Resch-Verlag (In the Beginning was Information)
  • Fred Hoyle gives Royal Institution's Omni Lecture concluding: "that biomaterials with their amazing measure or order must be the outcome of intelligent design."[39]
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1983

  • Raymond G. Boblin and Kerby Anderson publish their article The Straw God of Stephen Gould (JASA 35 (March 1983): 42-44), where they used term intelligent design and wrote:
"How do we know that what we call design isn't a result of intrinsic properties in nature? Can't other forces besides an intelligent Designer bring them about?"
"The recognition of beauty and order indicating intelligent design is inherent within man. Carl Sagan in his book Cosmos uses the same thought process to explain why many believed intelligent life might be present on Mars."
"As Sagan says, "These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings."' Likewise, the closer we look at living systems, the clearer the indication of intelligent design: not only geometrical patterns but informational codes that are contained in DNA."
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1984

  • April: Charles B. Thaxton et al. publish The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories (ISBN 0802224466)
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1985

"If one examines work in modern biology-let's take the coding and replication of genetic information in a cell as the best example-one finds a curious assumption tacitly involved in all such work, namely an assumed analogy to ordering principles characterizing intelligent design... We interpret the behavior of the biological system by analogy with the logical ordering and controlled sequencing of function we have intelligently designed the computer to perform... Isn't it at least an open possibility that just as the computer manifests and fulfills purposes transcending its hardware yet appropriately embodied in it, so the biological system is the result or embodiment of intelligent design, expressing some abstract existence or purpose which transcends the specific chemistry?"

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1986

  • April 15: Agnostic Michael Denton publishes Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (ISBN 091756152X), which sparks subsequent scientific literature detailing the biological and microbiological weaknesses of modern evolutionary theory. [40] This book is mentioned by major intelligent design researchers, such as Michael Behe, as a book that brought them to question many assumptions of historical and modern evolutionary theory, and additionally brought new insight into design-theoretic concepts.
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1988

  • The term intelligent design is mentioned at a conference in Tacoma, Washington, called Sources of Information Content in DNA.[41]
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1989

  • August 1: Percival Davis and Dean Kenyon publish Of Pandas and People, a high-school level textbook that contains information on intelligent design and has been endorsed by some design proponents. The term "intelligent design" first appeared in drafts of the book in 1987. (ISBN 0914513400)
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1991

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1993

  • June 22-24: Landmark meeting between various pioneers of the contemporary intelligent design community, including Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, William Dembski, and others, takes place at Pajaro Dunes, California.
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1996

  • August 2: Michael Behe publishes Darwin's Black Box (ISBN 0743290313), popularizing the phrase "intelligent design" and introducing the concept of "Irreducible Complexity".
  • November 14-17: Mere Creation Conference held at Biola University unites more founders of the intelligent design community including Michael Behe, David Berlinski, Walter Bradley, William Dembski, Sigrid Hartwig-Scherer, Phillip Johnson, Robert Kaita, Steven Meyer, J. P. Moreland, Paul Nelson, Nancy Pearcey, Del Ratzsch, John Mark Reynolds, Hugh Ross, and Jonathan Wells.
  • The Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, subsequently renamed the Center for Science and Culture, is founded as a Discovery Institute program.
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1997

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1998

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1999

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2000-present

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2000

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2000

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2001

  • PBS series Evolution first airs.
  • Ohio -- IDnet and members of the intelligent design community try to have the teaching of intelligent design required by educational curriculum. Jonathan Wells (author of 'Icons of Evolution') and the Santorum Amendment played a major role.
  • June 13: The United States Senate strongly supports the Santorum Amendment (91:8). This is now a primary legal basis for allowing classroom instruction on intelligent design and criticisms of evolution.
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2002

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2003

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2004

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2005

  • John C. Sanford publishes Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome ISBN 1599190028.
  • December 20: U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case rules against inserting intelligent design into the science curriculum, saying that this violates the constitutional separation of church and state.
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2006

  • Google Books search showing more instances of publications with the term "intelligent design" occurring previous to 1980.
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References and notes

  1. ↑ The textual basis of this timeline was formed from pages at ideacenter.org and wikipedia.org
  2. ↑ Plato (360 BC) The Laws, Book X, Athens, Greece
  3. ↑ On the Nature of Things, Lucretius, 50 B.C.E
  4. ↑ John Tyndall, Address Delivered Before the British Association Assembled at Belfast, With Additions. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1874.
  5. ↑ Marcus Cicero (45 BC) On the Nature of the Gods,Book II XXXIV, Rome
  6. ↑ "Can I but wonder here that anyone can persuade himself that certain solid and individual bodies should be moved by their natural forces and gravitation in such a manner that a world so beautiful adorned should be made by fortuitous concourse. He who believes this possible may as well believe, that if a great quantity of the one and twenty letters, composed of gold or any other matter, were thrown upon the ground, they would fall into such order as legibly to form the ‘Annals of Ennius’. I doubt whether fortune could make a single verse of them." -- Marcus Cicero, as he engages the Epicureans, who held that the world came about purely by chance. Cicero is quoted by the stoic Lucilius Balbus in De Natura Deorum.
  7. ↑ De Natura Deorum Book II, XXXVII "if a countless number of the forms of the one and twenty letters, whether in gold or any other material, were to be thrown somewhere, it would be possible, when they had been shaken out upon the ground, for the annals of Ennius to result from them so as to be able to be read consecutively,—a miracle of chance which I incline to think would be impossible even in the case of a single verse. Yet, as the Epicureans assure us, it was from minute particles . . . coming together by chance and accident, that the world was produced"
  8. ↑ Paul (Saul) of Tarsus, 1 Thessalonians 5:21, the New Testament of the Christian Bible
  9. ↑ Paul (Saul) of Tarsus, Romans 1:20, the New Testament of the Christian Bible
  10. ↑ <a href="http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=2502">Glory All Around, By T.M. Moore Breakpoint, 2/19/2008"</a>
  11. ↑ <a href="http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=2502">Glory All Around, By T.M. Moore Breakpoint, 2/19/2008"</a>
  12. ↑ Dan Graves (1996) Scientists of Faith, p18 ISBN 082542724X
  13. ↑ Robert Grosseteste (c.1220) De Luce (Lat. "On Light")
  14. ↑ Grosseteste
  15. ↑ Roger Bacon (1268) On the Experimental Method
  16. ↑ Francis Bacon (1620) The New Organon
  17. ↑ Francis Bacon's Works
  18. ↑ Isaac Newton (1687) Principia, General Scholum, Trans. Andrew Motte
  19. ↑ Cosmological ID in 1744?
  20. ↑ "I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition." Jefferson to John Adams on April 11, 1823, MCM IV, 363
  21. ↑ Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams from Monticello, April 11, 1823
  22. ↑ Charles Babbage, The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, Chapter II, The argument in favour of Design from the changing laws in natural events. p34, 43
  23. ↑ Dove, Patrick Edward (1850) The theory of human progression, and natural probability of a reign of justice. London, Johnstone & Hunter, LC 08031381
  24. ↑ George Campbell, Duke of Argyll, The Reign of Law 1867, London: Strahan, Ch. 5 Creation by Law, s. 235, 276
  25. ↑ 1871 cited by Lewin, R., In the Age of Mankind: A Smithsonian Book of Human Evolution, Smithsonian Books: Washington DC, 1988, p.26
  26. ↑ Compiled by Stephen Jones
  27. ↑ "No physical hypothesis founded on any indisputable fact has yet explained the origin of the primordial protoplasm, and, above all, of its marvellous properties, which render evolution possible—in heredity and in adaptability, for these properties are the cause and not the effect of evolution. For the cause of this cause we have sought in vain among the physical forces which surround us, until we are at last compelled to rest upon an independent volition, a far-seeing intelligent design."
    'The British Association', The Times, Saturday, 20 September, 1873; pg. 10; col A.
  28. ↑ John Tyndall, Address Delivered Before the British Association Assembled at Belfast, With Additions. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1874.
  29. ↑ Sidgwick, Henry (1874) 'The Methods of Ethics'. Macmillan, 1874. p 62.
  30. ↑ George John Romanes, C. Lloyd Morgan (1892) An Exposition of the Darwinian Theory and a Discussion of Post-Darwinian..., pp 278, 280, 281, 283, 284
  31. ↑ Schiller "Contemporary Review" June 1897.
  32. ↑ F.C. S. Schiller, “Darwinism and Design Argument,” in Schiller, Humanism: Philosophical Essays (1903); and 128, 141(2nd Ed. 1912) New York: The Macmillan Co., citing Contemporary Review June 1897.
  33. ↑ Jonathan Witt, "The Origin of Intelligent Design: A brief history of the scientific theory of Intelligent Design", Discovery Institute
  34. ↑ Haeckel, Ernst (1904) Wonders of life: A Popular Study of Biological Philosophy. Watts.
  35. ↑ Nyquist H (1924) "Certain factors affecting telegraph speed." Bell System Technical Journal, 3:324-346.
  36. ↑ Hartley RV (1928) "Transmission of information." Bell System Technical Journal, 7:535-563.
  37. ↑ James E. Horigan (1979) Chance or Design?(Philosophical Library). For example he wrote:
    Any consideration of the idea of a designed universe raises, of course, the question of purpose. To hold that the universe was intelligently designed is to expect that an intelligent Designer would have had reason and purpose to bring the universe, and all that lies within it, into existence. The remarkable purposefulness we will consider in the natural world herein is of itself not demonstrable of ultimate purpose. When one seeks to argue to the existence of an ultimate Designer of the universe on the strength alone of inferences arising from present-day empirical knowledge, and without resort to biblical or other religious references, it restricts one's possible avenues of explanation of purpose that could otherwise be available. No doubt some will find this approach to be in error.
    Selected quotes available from: http://www.manasjournal.org/pdf_library/VolumeXXXV_1982/XXXV-17.pdf and http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/03/chronicle_of_hi.html#comment-167925

  38. ↑ 'Evolution according to Hoyle: Survivors of disaster in an earlier world', By Nicholas Timmins, The Times, Wednesday, 13 January, 1982; pg. 22; Issue 61130; col F.
  39. ↑ Hoyle, Fred, Evolution from Space, Omni Lecture, Royal Institution, London, January 12, 1982; Evolution from Space (1982) pp 27-28 ISBN: 0894900838; Evolution from Space: A Theory of Cosmic Creationism (1984) ISBN: 0671492632 ... "The difference between an intelligent ordering, whether of words, fruit boxes, amino acids, or the Rubik cube, and merely random shufflings can be fantastically large, even as large as a number that would fill the whole volume of Shakespeare's plays with its zeros. So if one proceeds directly and straightforwardly in this matter, without being deflected by a fear of incurring the wrath of scientific opinion, one arrives at the conclusion that biomaterials with their amazing measure or order must be the outcome of intelligent design [my emphasis]. No other possibility I have been able to think of in pondering this issue over quite a long time seems to me to have anything like as high a possibility of being true."
  40. ↑ Denton is a self-identified agnostic. In 1986 he described himself as an agnostic to a Sydney newspaper reporter.
  41. ↑ Stephen C. Meyer, cofounder of the Discovery Institute and vice president of the Center for Science and Culture, reports that the term came up in 1988 at a conference he attended in Tacoma, Washington, called Sources of Information Content in DNA. Meyer attributes the phrase "intelligent design" to Charles Thaxton, one of the authors of The Mystery of Life's Origin.
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