David Gelernter gives up on Darwin

On the thread about Eric Holloway’s dismissal of criticisms of ID, a commenter, “camsail”, asks whether people have a response to an article in the conservative online magazine Claremont Review of Books by Yale University computer scientist and contrarian David Gelernter. This thread is intended to allow discussion of that article without disrupting the Eric Holloway thread. Let’s take a look … camsail writes:

This supportive review of pro-ID books appears in CRB this month. Given the review author is well respected... I would love to see a comprehensive refutation in response as I really think it will be trumpeted by the ID publicity machine. Sorry for posting it in this thread but I have no other way I'm aware of to communicate. Feel free to delete as off topic. Here's the link to the review: https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/giving-up-darwin/

(I recommend that people save the PDF when they look at the article, as going back too to read it too many times will lead CRB to demand a subscription).

Here is my own reaction to the article:

I read Gelernter's article. Although he is a very competent computer scientist, he mostly just buys into the arguments Stephen Meyer makes in Signature In the Cell and in Darwin's Doubt, plus adding in Doug Axe's recent arguments. He attempts no evaluation of the mathematical arguments people like Dembski and Marks have made. His statements about the Cambrian Explosion seem to be made without taking into account the Small Shelly Fauna, or the fact that extant forms descended from that Explosion show up related to Cnidarians and Ctenophores in evolutionary trees. In short, nothing much new. We've discussed these arguments before. CRB is a conservative publication. Although it has the name "Claremont Review of Books" it seems not to be affiliated with the Claremont Colleges.

I need to correct one statement there -- Gelernter's article refers to one of those books by Meyer, Darwin's Doubt, and does not mention the other, Signature in the Cell.

Anyway, on-topic discussion is welcome. I will, as usual pa-troll against off-topic trolling and also responses to that trolling. Commenter "ds" made a couple of responses in the other thread, and is welcome to copy that text into comments here.