Hi Eddie -
I thank you for your considered response, as well.
It seems that you acknowledge the difference between Meyer’s and Axe’s arguments to design, on the one hand, and the argument for God’s hand in creation based on its operating in a lawlike fashion, on the other. Your understanding of the difference is important common ground between us.
You have a different take on the extent to which EC leaders truly subscribe to the latter than I do. We can live with that, I’m sure.
Agreed. Let’s put that into practice by talking about the ID movement for a moment. In terms of public prominence, the Peter and Paul of the ID movement are Stephen Meyer and Casey Luskin. They both defend the inference to ID from (supposed) lack of scientific explanatory capability. So there is no reason to wonder at why ECs, or the public in general, should not notice the views of Sternberg and Denton. Meyer and Luskin are dominating the conversation in the public square.
Perhaps you should go to the Evolution News and View forum and start a thread entitled “Intelligent Design Leaders Should Distance Themselves More Clearly From God-of-the-Gaps Arguments.”
The only evolutionary model I have ever seen Behe propose is on page 227 of Darwin’s Black Box:
“Suppose that nearly four billion years ago the designer made the first cell, already containing all of the irreducibly complex biochemical systems discussed here and many others. (One can postulate that the designs for systems that were to be used later, such as blood clotting, were present but not ‘turned on.’ In present-day organisms plenty of genes are turned off for a while, sometimes for generations, to be turned on at a later time.) Additionally, suppose the designer placed into the cell some other systems for which we cannot adduce enough evidence to conclude design. The cell containing the designed systems then was left on autopilot to reproduce, mutate, eat and be eaten, bump against rocks, and suffer all the vagaries of life on earth.”
If you can describe how natural mechanisms proximately explain the origin of that first cell 4 billion years ago, expect to receive a call from a committee in Sweden in the very near future. Remember, that first cell needed, according to Behe, to contain all of the expressed DNA instructions found in the biosphere today. If you think the RNA world is not a good explanation for biogenesis, how can you explain Behe’s first cell as any thing other than divine intervention lying outside, not within, natural mechanisms?
If Behe has published a different evolutionary model than the one he outlined in DBB, I would appreciate any links you could provide to it. Not just an affirmation of common descent, but a model of how common descent can be detected and explained by biological mechanisms.
Thanks, and blessed Advent season to you and yours,
Chris Falter