By the way, it would be better if you could learn to use the quote feature of the forum software, by appending the symbol “>" in front of a text you want to quote.
Thank you for sending me the chapter. I will need time to take a look at it and think about it. I would like to warn you that my position on natural theology is likely very different from both Behe and Denis Lamoreaux.
Regarding Fred Hoyle’s comment, it seems that he is basically talking about fine-tuning. First, even if Hoyle’s argument has merit, it does not mean that it is a strictly scientific argument. Simply suggesting that there are interesting and inexplicable relations between certain physical quantities is not enough to establish any scientific thesis. Rather, such an observation is better understood as an invitation for deeper investigation, forming hypotheses to explain them and testing the hypotheses.
I don’t know Joshua’s exact view, but even if modern science was deeply influenced by Bacon, Bacon’s science is not the same as science in the 21st century. Just as society has changed a lot since then, so has the practice of science changed. Back then scientists were not even called scientists, but natural philosophers. Now we see a clear demarcation between science and philosophy which would be surprising in the time of Bacon and Newton. That’s not to say that truth or nature has changed - rather it’s just to say that what is classified as “science” has changed.
Scientists in general don’t like to appeal to the authority of “superintellects”. While Hoyle was a great scientist, we want to analyze his arguments. And just because Hoyle is a scientist doesn’t mean that everything he said and wrote about science is strictly speaking, actually part of science. (Just like an argument by atheist scientists like Dawkins that “science has removed the need for God” is not a scientific argument, but a philosophical argument.) The argument from fine-tuning can be made by atheists or theists, and it could be right or wrong (I’m agnostic about it), but I tend to think most forms of it is not a truly scientific argument.