While this will undoubtedly offend or upset my religious readership, I am a scientist by nature. This fiasco calls out for a response. Sorry, Mom, but I have to be true to myself.
You've heard it. Perhaps it was in reference to your local school district's curriculum. Perhaps your pastor mentioned it during a Sunday sermon. It could have been something you heard while flipping through the TV channels late one evening. There could have been a cursory mention of it in the morning paper. Maybe it's something you believe.
It's intelligent design, and it's slithering its way in from every dark corner. It wants to invade public classrooms disguised as real science. It denies its roots in the conservative Christian movements of the modern era. Politicians and zealots proclaim its merits while denying any opinion about who or what the designer might be; the vast majority of these people also make undeniable statements to their followers and constituencies that they are certain the designing force is the Christian god. Did I mention they also deny it violates the separation of church and state when taught in public schools? It relies on some curious but otherwise unexciting relationships in science which, while providing a certain target for curiosity seekers and conspiracy theorists, does not support the formation of a new inception theory for the universe, especially a "theory" which is nothing more than freshly renamed creationism.
Despite what you have heard, the premise does not contain a single coherent theory, therefore it cannot be defined singularly. Even if we cannot define it, we can describe it thus: a controversial belief that the universe and especially living things present with certain features that one might describe as having been produced; this "production" is not random but is instead one directed by intelligence. The premise attempts to negate all undirected processes; that would include natural selection (evolution). Scientists call it coincidental physics or the anthropic principle (some may use principal inaccurately) when viewed from a cosmological angle.
On a personal level, one thing I deplore wholeheartedly is the attempted use of science to justify religion. The idea itself is reprehensible because the two are mutually exclusive. Many people would like to argue against that point, but I feel diligent in this resolve: religion and science cannot mix. Religion relies solely on faith and can only be experienced fully if one accepts that much, if not all, of what is believed is unprovable and unmeasurable. Science, on the other hand, relies solely on observation and experiment and only calling something absolute when it is proven beyond reproach. Any god or belief in a god, therefore, can never be proven or justified via science. It's like oil and water — they just don't mix.
Perhaps that lets you in on the secret of how I feel about this, but I can assure you that I will give it due diligence and an objective evaluation — before I talk trash about it while pointing and laughing.