Casey Luskin: How the ID Movement Has Flourished Since the Dover Trial
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Was the modern intelligent design (ID) movement “over after Dover,” as many ID critics hoped it would be? Quite the opposite. In the last two decades ID has flourished as a scientific research program and continues to gain momentum in both academia and the public square. On today’s ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid concludes his conversation with geologist, legal scholar, and Dover trial expert Dr. Casey Luskin. In this segment, marking the 20th anniversary of the Kitzmiller vs. Dover trial of 2005, the pair examine the outcome of the Dover trial, in which a judge ruled that intelligent design was a religious viewpoint, not science, and therefore unconstitutional to teach in public schools. Luskin explains why the Dover ruling was highly flawed and unreliable and how it misrepresented the definition of science and the arguments of ID proponents.
As for the long-term impact, Luskin describes the Dover ruling as a speed bump in the history of the intelligent design movement. He provides examples of how the ID research program has thrived in the last two decades. He highlights the productivity of ID’s research, with hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers being published that make the case for a designing intelligence in nature, bringing the updated count of the movement’s peer-reviewed publications to 329 and counting. Ultimately, Luskin predicts that in the long term, the Dover ruling will become a mere footnote. He anticipates it will be cited as a notable example of how a court should not approach the topic of origins and how not to understand intelligent design.
This is Part 2 of a two-part conversation. Listen to Part 1 or watch it below!
Dig Deeper
- Want more? Read Traipsing Into Evolution, a concise but comprehensive response to federal Judge John E. Jones’s decision in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case.
- Watch the first half of this conversation on our YouTube channel: