Darwin, Design & Thomas Aquinas

In a little-recounted episode of the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover intelligent design trial, the plaintiffs (objecting to a four-paragraph statement read in biology class) summoned a curious expert witness: John F. Haught, former chair of Georgetown University's theology department. Asked to identify the antecedents of intelligent design, Professor Haught pointed to Thomas Aquinas's five arguments for the existence of God, “one of which was to argue from the design and complexity and order and pattern in the universe to the existence of an ultimate intelligent designer.”