Let’s rearrange his quote a bit.
"If [a scientist “knock[s] out the genes for the flagellum in a bacterium, go[es] into his lab and grow[s] that bug for a long time,” and “it produces anything resembling a flagellum…intelligent design, as I understand it, would be knocked out of the water.”
I REALLY don’t think I’m misrepresenting him, I’m making clearer what he is trying to say. He didn’t say “natural selection produces anything resembling a flagellum,” he said “it,” which seems to refer to the entire process. Unless he thinks that natural selection is the only “mechanism” of evolution! I doubt that.
I’m open to clarifications of this quote. I don’t know how he would be able to endorse Denton’s views AND this view. Denton has said that once we figure out the origin of biological life, it will be so simple, we’ll wonder why we hadn’t found out earlier! Simple because it would be built in to the laws of nature. Sort of like what this post seemed to be about. Spontaneous protein folding "Without Evolution"