• Origin of the Universe

intelligent design
noun
the theory that life, or the universe, cannot have arisen by chance and was designed and created by some intelligent entity.

There are many that feel Intelligent Design is an all encompassing theory for guided creation. For the purpose of this website, Intelligent Design will be used more as the definition above to highlight the evidence for guided creation. Upon concluding that guided creation is a plausible possibility for the origin of everything, researchers can then study the various creation theories.


While the Guided Creation may have religious implications, it is not specifically tied to religion. There are various Intelligent Design and Guided Creation theories that exist today, including theories dealing with an intelligent civilization existing outside of our solar system, which seeded life on earth.

However, it is important to distinguish the differences between Creationism and Intelligent Design (or Guided Creation). Creationism comes from holy writ or cultural stories, where the creator is divine and their written word must be followed literally. Intelligent Design / Guided Creation simply points out all the complexities for life, the earth, the universe etc. and comes to the conclusion that some sort of intelligence had to be involved. Intelligent Design does not follow any entity or describe whom or what the creator is.

Richard Dawkins, the famous Oxford evolutionary biologist, himself has stated there is a possibility that Intelligent Design could be the answer to complex questions, such as the origin of life on earth. However, he specifies that the Intelligent Designer(s) would have had to come about by some sort of Darwinian means, and that they would have come and seeded life on earth. It is important to note, this is in-line with Guided Creation theories.

Many cultures have their own theories describing the origin of the universe and the earth. These theories are typically viewed more as stories, as they were culturally inspired and altered over time (such as the earth being hatched from an egg). Some break down the creation to a single entity, such as the Tibetan Buddhism concept of Adi-Buddha, the ancient Greek story of Gaia (Mother Earth), the Aztec goddess Coatlicue or the ancient Egyptian god Atum. In another type of story, the earth is created from the union of male and female deities, as in the Maori story of Rangi and Papa. In other stories, the universe was created by crafting it from pre-existing materials, such as the corpse of a dead god (as from the Tiamat in the Babylonian epic Enuma Elish), from the giant Ymir in Norse mythology, or from chaotic materials (as in Izanagi and Izanami in Japanese mythology). Other stories include the universe emanating from fundamental principles, such as Brahman and Prakrti, or the yin and yang of the Tao. A widely held theory for the creation of the universe and earth deals with Allah (the Arabic term for God) whom is believed by Muslims to have created all we observe. Muslims study and follow Allah via the Quran. The most widely recognized Creationism theory followed by many, holds that the God of the Bible is the all mighty creator of everything in our universe.

While Creationism and Intelligent Design/Guided Creation theories are seperate from one another, the fact is, no one knows for sure how the universe and the earth were created. The theme of a divine creator has always seemed to exist throughout each culture and will probably always exist. Back in a time period where there was no courier system, email, Internet or cross-continental travel, the idea of a divine creator somehow came about, emerging at some points simultaneously, thousands of miles apart without influence. Perhaps it is simply human nature to fictionalize or hypothesize it's own divine importance by using a greater being to explain creation; or perhaps a higher power extended it's influence or even revealed itself to each of these cultures. Whatever it might be, not knowing all the details for the creation of the universe and earth, cultures created their own interpretations and stories to fill the void of the unknown (either for the wonder of creation or the fear of having nothing after death). Because of this, Creationism will always exist, but that should not take away from Intelligent Design being a plausible solution or counterpart to the origin of the universe, the origin of life and more.

Use the "Topics Menu" to explore various areas of Intelligent Design, including the origin of the universe, the origin of life, the origin of unicellular organisms, DNA and more.