1. What is Eric Davidson's view of the status of neo-Darwinism?

Davidson should speak for himself:

...classical Darwinian evolution could not have provided an explanation, in a mechanistically relevant way, of how the diverse forms of animal life actually arose during evolution, because it matured before molecular biology provided explanations of the developmental process. To be very brief, the evolutionary theory that grew up before the advent of regulatory molecular biology dealt with the problem of the origin of novel organismal structures in two ways. The first has been to treat the mechanisms generating novel morphological structures as a black box. New forms were considered to arise "because" the environment changed. But while changes in Precambrian or Ordovician weather, continental shifts, or temperature may have contributed crucial selective forces, they do not generate heads or appendicular forms; only genes do that. The second mode of classical argument was that organismal evolution is the product of minute changes in genes and gene products, which occur as point mutations and which accumulate little by little, providing the opportunity for selection and ultimately reproductive isolation. The major forms this argument has taken have focused on stepwise, adaptive changes in protein sequence, but this is probably largely irrelevant to the evolution of any salient features of animal morphology (see, e.g., Miklos, 1993).

E. Davidson, Genomic Regulatory Systems: Development and Evolution (New York, Academic Press, 2001), pp. 19-20.

Note that "neo-Darwinism" is not simply "evolutionary diversification and adaptation happened by some process, and we know natural selection was involved, mainly, probably, somehow." It is a precisely articulated theory making specific claims, still taught in college biology textbooks as the basic [default] account of organismal change. It is this theory that Davidson said was "dead" -- and he did say that in China, in June 1999, to science writer Fred Heeren [I think Fred has the exact exchange on audio tape, although I haven't been able to reach him today; he's away from his office covering the AAAS meeting in St. Louis].

2. Did I argue for intelligent design in my post about Davidson & Erwin?

No.

I mean, really now -- some of you people need to calm the heck down. Have a beer. Watch the Olympics. Get your ass away from the computer screen for longer than five minutes. It is possible to think that neo-Darwinism is in trouble, and NOT to revert instantly to ID. Here is a list of scientists and philosophers, right off the top of my balding head, who fit that description:

-- Massimo Piglucci
-- Brian Goodwin [the whole structuralist group, in fact]
-- Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart
-- Bruce Weber
-- Stuart Kauffman
-- Elliott Sober [thinks universal common descent might not be provably the case, for instance]
-- Mary Jane West-Eberhard
-- Franklin Harold
-- Mad-as-hell-and-not-gonna-take-it-anymore PZ Myers
-- Jeff Schwartz
-- about 7/8s of the evo-devo community, when they're being candid

Et cetera. Face it, the shortcomings of neo-D are not exactly news, if you get my drift.

My advice to readers? Before you accuse someone of misquotation (groundlessly) or of arguing for design when that's not even close to what he or she has written, take a deep breath, count to 10, and let that breath out really slowly. And the urge to fling silly charges will pass.