Jewish reactions to intelligent design

The reaction of Jewish leaders and organizations to intelligent design has been primarily concerned with responding to proposals to include intelligent design in public school curricula as a rival scientific hypothesis to modern evolutionary theory.

Intelligent design is an argument for the existence of God,^[1] based on the premise that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."^[2] Proponents claim that their hypothesis is scientific, and that it challenges the dominant scientific model of evolution. This has been dismissed by scientific opposition as pseudoscience,^[3] and in the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District federal court case, United States District Judge John E. Jones III ruled that intelligent design is not science and is essentially religious in nature.^[4]

Scholar Noah J. Efron wrote in 2014:

No American Jewish organization advocates teaching intelligent design in public schools. No Jewish religious body endorses it. Official representatives of all the major streams of Judaism -- Reform, Conservative, Orthodox & Reconstructionist -- have denounced it; only Ultra-Orthodox Jews, who in any case vigilantly oppose sending Jewish children to public school, have expressed sympathy for teaching intelligent design in the schools they refuse to attend, and even then in very small numbers. ... In a famously fractious community ... almost all American Jews agree that intelligent design has no place in the public school science curriculum. And polls consistently show that Jews hold this view far more commonly than members of any other religious or ethnic group in America.^[5]

^ "ID is not a new scientific argument, but is rather an old religious argument for the existence of God. He traced this argument back to at least Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, who framed the argument as a syllogism: Wherever complex design exists, there must have been a designer; nature is complex; therefore nature must have had an intelligent designer." (Known as the teleological argument) Ruling, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, December 2005
^ Discovery Institute, Center for Science and Culture. Questions about Intelligent Design: What is the theory of intelligent design? "The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."
• Primer: Intelligent Design Theory in a Nutshell Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA)
• Intelligent Design Intelligent Design network.
^ National Academy of Sciences, 1999 Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences, Second Edition
^ Ruling, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, Case No. 04cv2688. December 20, 2005
^ Noah J. Efron, A Chosen Calling: Jews in Science in the Twentieth Century (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), pp. 118-19.

[1] "ID is not a new scientific argument, but is rather an old religious argument for the existence of God. He traced this argument back to at least Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, who framed the argument as a syllogism: Wherever complex design exists, there must have been a designer; nature is complex; therefore nature must have had an intelligent designer." (Known as the teleological argument) Ruling, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, December 2005

[DIposition-2] Discovery Institute, Center for Science and Culture. Questions about Intelligent Design: What is the theory of intelligent design? "The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."
• Primer: Intelligent Design Theory in a Nutshell Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA)
• Intelligent Design Intelligent Design network.

[3] National Academy of Sciences, 1999 Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences, Second Edition

[4] Ruling, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, Case No. 04cv2688. December 20, 2005

[5] Noah J. Efron, A Chosen Calling: Jews in Science in the Twentieth Century (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), pp. 118-19.

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