The term "intelligent cause" is also used, implying their teleological supposition of direction and purpose in features of the universe and of living things.
[4][5][6][7] The Discovery Institute has claimed that university criticism of intelligent design is tantamount to "endorsement of an anti-religious view".
The ruling not only rendered that public school district's endorsement of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in science classes unconstitutional on the grounds that its inclusion violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, but validated the objections of critics who discounted proponents' claim that the identity was not God.
The point is that God is able to work through derived or surrogate intelligences, which can be anything from angels to organizing principles embedded in nature.
This gives intelligent design incredible traction as a tool for apologetics, opening up the God-question to individuals who think that science has buried God"[15] and "Thus, in its relation to Christianity, intelligent design should be viewed as a ground-clearing operation that gets rid of the intellectual rubbish that for generations has kept Christianity from receiving serious consideration.
[17] Phillip E. Johnson, considered the father of the ID movement has stated the goal of the intelligent design movement: "Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools."
-- Phillip E. Johnson, World Magazine, November 30, 1996 [19] The Discovery Institute's leaked Wedge document sets out the movement's governing goals, including: "To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God."
"Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.
"[20] -- The Wedge Document, a 1999 Discovery Institute pamphletOpinion as to the amount of creation the intelligent designer has done varies within the ID movement.
The fine-tuned universe argument is a central premise or presented as a given in many of the published works of prominent intelligent design proponents, such as William A. Dembski and Michael Behe.
Instead, the most widely accepted explanation is that physical processes such as natural selection can account for the complexity of life and other phenomena and features of the universe.
And it's no solution to raise the theologian's plea that God (or the intelligent designer) is simply immune to the normal demands of scientific explanation,"[23] since such an answer would be unscientific.
This inference to design based upon the appearance of a "purposeful arrangement of parts" is a completely subjective proposition, determined in the eye of each beholder and his/her viewpoint concerning the complexity of a system."
Professor Behe's only response to these seemingly insurmountable points of disanalogy was that the inference still works in science fiction movies.