Excellent article by @Jerry_Coyne. He presents a light critique of @NLENTS, saying he agrees with 2.5 of his three points.
Misunderstanding #3: Behe frequently speaks as though natural selection (which he often calls Darwinism ) is the only evolutionary force. In reality, natural selection is joined by genetic drift, neutral theory, exaptation, gene flow, sexual selection, hybridization, punctuated equilibrium, frequency-dependent selection, and dozens of other forces. Behe constantly repeats his refrain that natural selection cannot account for everything we see in nature. Yeah, we know. And we’ve known that for a very long time.
Well, here I think Lents has made some semantic errors. For instance, neutral theory is really a theory of selectively neutral alleles that evolve largely through genetic drift, so it’s not something separate from drift, and it’s a theory, not an “evolutionary force.” Exaptation, frequency-dependent selection, and sexual selection ARE subsets of natural selection, not something entirely different. Punctuated equilibrium is not known to be responsible for the evolution of any adaptation, at least not in the convoluted form presented by Gould and Eldredge. And Lents leaves out a truly unique evolutionary force: meiotic drive—evolution occurring through differential segregation of alleles at meiosis. Finally, both exaptation and punctuated equilibrium are not “forces” but phenomena.
Behe does err if he indeed neglects genetic drift in the evolution of adaptations, as it’s undoubtedly been important, including in some pathways Behe sees as “irreducibly complex”. But if I were Lents I wouldn’t leave myself open to criticism by saying that “exaptation” and “frequency-dependent selection” are forces different from natural selection.
Now you might say that my criticism of this one small part of Lents’s piece is going to make Behe happy, as he’ll crow, “See, Coyne takes issue with Lents’s criticism of my book,” but that’s bullshit. As Steve Gould said in his essay “Evolution as fact and theory” (he’s referring to his colleagues’ attempts to make him stop criticizing traditional evolutionary theory because that would play into the hands of creationists)
In some senses, I agree with @Jerry_Coyne.
At the same time, the way ID and Behe describe “natural selection” and “darwinism”, it is exclusively positive selection, and even excludes negative selection (see: Miller: Axe Decisively Confirmed? - #3 by Rumraket). Yes, there is often a mention of other processes (like neutral drift and exaptation, etc.) , but usually just to dismiss them as unimportant and negligible.
There may be a way to explain this more clearly than @NLENTS did. The issue, however, is that they are working from a reduced set of evolutionary mechanisms. They are working from a reduced set of evolutionary mechanisms that they term “darwinism.” That is a central plank on which much of their arguments depend. I think that is what @NLENTS is speaking to here.