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QUESTION: Was Charles Darwin a proponent of Intelligent Design?

I have a copy of "The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin, one of several volumes of works by various writers, included in a very old set of "The Harvard Classics".

The Darwin work is labeled as such: First Edition, November 24th, 1859; Sixth Edition, January, 1872; Copyright, 1909 By P. F. Collier & Son.

The Introduction is written by Darwin and here is a sentence from that introduction, "In the last chapter I shall give a brief recapitulation of the whole work, and a few concluding remarks." The last chapter is Chapter XV.

Here is the last sentence written by Darwin, from the final chapter (Chapter XV) of the "The Origin of Species"............

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."

ANSWER: If Poupard's definition of Intelligent Design is correct, ('"Intelligent design," takes both creationism and evolution into consideration and blends them into a congruent theory. "Intelligent design," teaches that evolution did happen, but it was guided by a higher source then just happenstance. It explains that God must have guided evolution to eventually lead to where we are now, or where we will be eventually in the future.') then I say yes, Charles Darwin was a proponent of Intelligent Design, using Darwin's own words as proof.............this should drive the leftists up......the......wall, heh, heh, heh.

Here is the last sentence written by Darwin, from the final chapter (Chapter XV) of the "The Origin of Species"............ "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."

I have the same Harvard Classics volume. Read the two preceding paragraphs, beginning at the bottom of page 527.

Two sample sentences:

When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled. Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity.

And I disagree with Poupard's definition of Intelligent Design. ID is religion pretending to be science in an attemp to fool the unwary.