The belief that biological life on Earth, or more broadly, the universe as a whole, was created by an intelligent agent (specified or unspecified) rather than being the result of undirected natural processes.
(quote-book)
Anaxagoras (500–428 B.C.) was the first of the Greeks "to attribute the adaptations of Nature to Intelligent Design, and was thus the founder of Teleology," an idea that has played a retarding function in the history of evolution.
2006, Philip Clayton, Zachary R. Simpson, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0199279276, page 735:
Intelligent design means that the various forms of life began abruptly through the agency of an intelligent creator with their distinctive features already intact—fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc.