Here’s a nice reply to UK geneticist Robert Saunders’s recent review of Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell. Particularly gratifying: it’s by an Orthodox rabbi out of Chicago, Moshe Averick, who seems to grasp the subject a lot better than Saunders does.

Averick is particularly good at pointing out the faith, presuppositions and ideological blinders that constrain Saunders’s view, even if the scientist doesn’t seem to recognize it:

[Saunders] is, in effect, admitting that Science has no explanation for the origin of life and the huge amounts of information necessary for life to exist, but asks us to have faith that Science will yet discover a purely naturalistic answer to the question. Here Saunders makes it clear that he has shut off his mind from even considering the possibility of Intelligent Design, which is, of course, a theory that is proposed to explain the origin of life. In the nearly 600 pages of Signature in the Cell, Dr. Meyer rigorously, meticulously, and painstakingly explains why it is — by any reasonable standard — a valid scientific hypotheses.

Rabbi Averick has occasionally crossed swords with fellow Chicagoan Professor Jerry Coyne of Why Evolution Is True fame. He seems to get under Coyne’s skin. Yasher koach.