Tomorrow marks the tenth anniversary of opening of arguments in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case that resulted in the most absurdly hyped court decision in memory. In 2005, did an obscure Federal judge in Dover, Pennsylvania, at last settle the ultimate scientific question that has fascinated mankind for millennia?

Of course not. The decision by Judge John Jones established nothing about intelligent design — far from being the “death knell” sometimes claimed by Darwin defenders. For a definitive take, see our book Traipsing Into Evolution: Intelligent Design and the Kitzmiller v. Dover Decision. One word summary: Shrug.

In fact, the decade since Dover has been an excellent one for ID. Casey Luskin noted some highlights not long ago:

• Lots of pro-ID peer-reviewed scientific papers published.

• Experimental peer-reviewed research showing the unevolvability of new proteins.

• Theoretical peer-reviewed papers taking down alleged computer simulations of evolution, showing that intelligent design is needed to produce new information.

• A major ID research conference at Cornell leading to the publication of the volume Biological Information: New Perspectives.

• Huge victories for ID in the area of junk DNA, thanks to the ENCODE results.

• Data supportive of ID coming out all the time as the epigenetic revolution proceeds.

• ID pretty much shut down the competition in debates relating to Stephen Meyer’s book Darwin’s Doubt. The book was appraised by one of the world’s top two science journals, Science, (in a tellingly weak review).

• Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller’s No. 1 argument in the Dover trial has now been shot down as the beta-globin pseudogene was found to be functional.

• The Darwin brigade’s favorite argument against Michael Behe was refuted as chloroquine-resistance turns out to be a multimutation feature.

• Major concessions from leading atheists like philosopher Thomas Nagel that ID arguments have merit and should be taken seriously.

• Concessions from influential evolutionists that neo-Darwinism indeed faces serious criticism in biology.

• In recent years, many peer-reviewed articles in the mainstream scientific literature have critiqued Darwinism .

• And revealingly, the more that victories for ID multiply, the more the Darwin lobby tries to suppress free speech for ID proponents, and in turn is forced to squelch their own criticisms of the orthodox evolutionary paradigm.

  
  

See also, “Does the Kitzmiller v. Dover Ruling Show that Intelligent Design is Academically Substandard?“

With the December anniversary of Judge Jones’s decision, you’ll probably hear more from evolution enforcers about its world-shaking significance. That would be predictable. Perhaps we’ll say more later.

In 2007, David DeWolfe, John West, and Casey Luskin predicted in a law review article, “Intelligent Design Will Survive Kitzmiller v. Dover.” Ha! Nice understatement.

Image: U.S. Post Office, Dover, PA, by Smallbones (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons