 Use of the term "creationism" versus "intelligent design" in the various editions of Of Pandas and People. Intelligent design creationism (often intelligent design, ID, or IDC) is a pseudoscience that maintains that certain aspects of the physical world, and more specifically life, show signs of having been designed, and hence were designed, by an intelligent being (usually, but not always, the God of the Christian religion). The concept is older than science, but only since the 1980s has the term "intelligent design" come into circulation. Supporters of intelligent design (termed design proponents, less respectfully, IDiots, or, once, cdesign proponentsists) usually claim that the idea is not based on Christian creationism, although the existence of the Wedge Document is a pretty big hint that there is a link. It appears to be some form of agnostic creationism, and creationism is inherently religious. Attempts to have ID taught in public schools have been defeated in court, and science papers proposing a "designer" usually cannot get past peer review — although not for reasons of prejudice against the subject matter. Intelligent design has been widely criticised for its failure to state what mechanism drives it, its lack of falsifiability, and many other problems that leave it lacking as a scientific theory. Where it has faced the scrutiny of the law, the US court system (apparently the only one to have considered the question) has appeared to consider it a form of Old-Earth creationism, making its teaching in public schools constitutionally impermissible under the Supreme Court's holding in Edwards v. Aguillard (1987).
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