The Year in ID – 2008 Edition

It has become sort of a tradition for me to present an end-of-year roundup of the "achievements" of the intelligent design movement. Last year I noted that the IDists achieved even less than in the previous year, noting that they had achieved so little that I actually didn't blog much on ID. This year, it looks like they achieved even less and my statement from last year looks even more accurate:

Put bluntly, ID has not moved forward as a science one iota since this time last year. Depressing really. I mean, you'd like the opposition to at least try, otherwise the victories are just too damned easy.

Looking back on this year's coverage of ID, I don't see much that needs to be recounted. The "high point" for the IDists has to have been Expelled though this appears to have badly back-fired on them (see here for my coverage). If it wasn't for the unholy alliance of Steve Fuller with Uncommon Descent, I probably wouldn't be bothering with this post. However, it does give me an excuse to post my (now annual) list of things we didn't see from the main players of the ID movement:

• A peer-reviewed paper by Dembski, Wells, Nelson, Meyer ...
• Or for that matter, a single peer-reviewed article offering either (a) evidence for design, (b) a method to unambiguously detect design, or (c) a theory of how the Designer did the designing, by any fellow of the DI.
• An exposition of Nelson's theory of "ontogenetic depth" (promised in March 2004)
• An article by Nelson & Dembski on problems with common descent (promised in April 2005).
• Nelson's monograph on common descent (currently MIA since the late 90's).

Last year's predictions by me were remarkably accurate:

So what does next year hold for us? I predict more political action from DI flacks, a movie - Expelled - that will make nary a ripple, a quixotic attempt to get Gonzalez tenure that will fail (and result in his being condemned to teach in some place like Liberty University), and the non-appearance of the five desired items above. Stay tuned!

Politically, the DI shifted from "teach the controversy" to bleating about "academic freedom". Expelled bombed and influenced no one. Gonzalez ended up in Grove City College, an "authentically Christian" college in Pennsylvania. The five items are still MIA.

I don't think there is any need to make predictions for 2009 beyond saying there there will be much moaning about the Darwin Bicentennial and "academic freedom." Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, I guess.