There is nothing new under the sun

Intelligent Design is nothing new, and not because it is merely a tricksy rewording of Creationism (I would dispute that). Here's a quote from John Ray, one of the foremost natural historians (today he would be a biologist/zoologist/botanist) of the seventeenth century:

There is no greater, at least no more palatable and convincing Argument of the Existence of a Deity than the admirable Art and Wisdom that discovers itself in the make and constitution, the order and disposition, the ends and uses of all the parts and members of this stately fabrick of Heaven and Earth. For if in the works of Art, as for example; a curious Edifice or Machine, counsel, design, and direction to an end appearing in the whole frame and in all the several pieces of it, do necessarily infer the being and operation of some intelligent Architect or Engineer, why shall not also in the Works of Nature, that Grandeur and Magnificence, that excellent contrivance for Beauty, Order, Use, &c. which is observable in them, wherein they do as much transcend the Effect of human Art as infinite Power and Wisdom exceeds finite, infer the existence and efficiency of an Omnipotent and All-wise Creator?
- The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation, 1691.

Darwin's ideas about evolution were nothing new either. The idea that apparent design could come about by chance had been around since the ancient Greek philosophers (seventeenth-century natural philosophers such as Ray were particularly concerned with Epicureanism). And even closer to Darwin's own lifetime (overlapping with it, no less) were ideas about evolution such as Lamarck's. The difference was that Darwin proposed a mechanism (borrowed from social science and economics) - natural selection. This, combined with Mendel's genetics, gave us modern Darwinian evolution - a powerful way of explaining how complexity and the appearance of design could arise "naturally."

The "problem" between science and religion, between evolution and creationism, between Intelligent Design and theistic evolution, comes in the interpretation of the word "naturally." I'm not going to go into a lot of detail right now (I've got a thesis to write!), but if we understand that God is sovereign over all, but chooses to act through certain laws that he created and upholds, then "natural" does not exclude God at all, and the fact that evolutionary theory can explain the development of species through so-called "natural" means does not mean that God was not involved.