If you’re rejoining us following your Christmas-New Year’s holiday, you may have missed a highlight of 2017 at Evolution News: the countdown of our top stories of the past year. Looking at them now, I’m struck by how various they are, how they show in a snapshot the fast-“evolving” evolution debate, which is a multidimensional phenomenon.

Here, again, are our headlines from the 10 days leading up to January 1:

• “#1 of Our Top Stories of 2017: Footprints from Crete Deepen Origins Mystery”
• “#2 of Our Top Stories of 2017: Clueless Reporters and Canaanite DNA”
• “#3 of Our Top Stories of 2017: Perfect Eclipse, Coincidence or Conspiracy?”
• “#4 of Our Top Stories of 2017: Wiki Co-Founder Blasts ‘Appallingly Biased’ Wikipedia Entry on ID”
• “#5 of Our Top Stories of 2017: Of Course You Aren’t Living in a Computer Simulation. Here’s Why.”
• “#6 of Our Top Stories of 2017: Dan Brown Pushes Atheism and Intelligent Design. Wait…What?”
• “#7 of Our Top Stories of 2017: Intelligent Design Shines in Brazil with Discovery-Mackenzie Launch”
• “#8 of Our Top Stories of 2017: Theorist Concedes, Evolution ‘Avoids’ Questions”
• “#9 of Our Top Stories of 2017: Genetic Code Complexity Just Tripled”
• “#10 of Our Top Stories of 2017: Nobel Laureate Is ‘80 Percent’ Confident in Intelligent Design”

While looking back with appreciation at the contributions of our writers, bylined and otherwise, I’m also pained by how much, of necessity, had to be left out. I would add, in retrospect, that it’s fascinating and gratifying to see the way a scrappy underdog like ID, taking on the most entrenched and sclerotic scientific orthodoxy there could be, has succeeded in hijacking the minds of our critics.

Here, for example, is a story that comes across my desk just this morning:

• “I BELIEVE IN INTELLIGENT DESIGN … FOR ROBOTS”

It’s a headline today at Wired, a story by reporter Matt Simon. The whole thing makes no sense — Simon is trying to argue that unguided, undesigned evolution by random mutation and natural selection provides a model for human design of robots. He invokes the Cambrian explosion, which, of course, was the subject of Steve Meyer’s most recent book. Mr. Simon predicts that such an “explosion” lies ahead in the diversification of robotic inventions.

One theme of 2017 was the internationalization of ID. Meanwhile we are colonizing the mainstream media, which, revile us as they do, can’t seem to leave us alone. You can expect more stuff like this.

It was a fun year, and a strong one for the ID movement. Now on to 2018!

Photo credit: Shannon Kringen from Seattle [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.