Evolution Icon Evolution

In Two Weeks, “Mathematical Challenges” to Darwin Gets Half a Million Views

In Florence, Italy, back in June, Stephen Meyer, David Gelernter, and David Berlinski got together with Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution to talk about “Mathematical Challenges to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.” The episode of Hoover’s interview series, Uncommon Knowledge, has been up now for a little over two weeks and has already amassed more than half a million views on YouTube. Actually, the precise number is 522,800, since July 22. Not bad!

The occasion for their conversation, a delightful hour in length, is Gelernter’s recent essay in The Claremont Review of Books explaining his apostasy from Darwinism. The renowned Yale computer scientist and polymath attributes his change of mind to reading books by Meyer (Darwin’s Doubt, Signature in the Cell) and Berlinski (The Deniable Darwin). 

This is a great and quite funny interaction among vivid personalities and profound scientific and humanistic thinkers. As I’ve pointed out already, the interest lies not only in Dr. Gelernter’s personal journey toward evolution skepticism but in his testimony about how Darwinism is enforced among scientists and scholars in American universities. 

“You take your life in your hands to challenge it intellectually,” says Professor Gelernter, who ought to know. “They will destroy you if you challenge it.” As our friend Denyse O’Leary notes, this comes from someone who has survived not just life in academia, but a terror attack directed at him personally, by the Unabomber, that cost him the use of a hand and an eye. When someone with that background tells you Darwinists will “destroy you” for criticizing their theory, or they’ll try to do so, I’d take that seriously.

If you missed it, see also Robinson and Berlinski in an outstanding one-on-one discussion about The Deniable Darwin.

Correction: Ha, in the time it took me to write this post, another 500+ people watched Robinson, Meyer, Gelernter, and Berlinski. The number of views now stands at 523,314.