Yes, that’s essentially what I am saying.
Try searching for “Darwinian”. 
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They are, yes. Typically by quoting biologists criticizing Darwinism (by which these biologists invariably mean evolution on smooth or unchanging fitness landscapes, or evolution entirely by positive selection), pretending this means biogists are abandoning the theory of evolution, or even that the concept of natural selection itself has been rejected.
That’s most often how ID proponents use the term “Darwinism” as a strawman.
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It takes the bug responsible for malaria 10^20 multiplication events to acquire the CQR phenotype, a rather modest adaptation. And we are asked to believe that by a blind, undirected mechanism, in less than 10^11 births, a pig-like creature was able to give rise to a fully marine dolphin-like pelagicete whale like Basilosauridae, an adaptation tremendously more demanding than CQR in malaria, requiring a profound anatomical re-engineering of the whole animal. I’m sorry but I don’t have enough faith to believe a thing so extraordinary.
Is it? How so? Explain. Show your math and your assumptions.
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I thank you for providing such an explicit example of the sort of thinking Behe intended his book to inspire in his intended audience. That audience being people ideologically committed to the belief that complex life forms could not exist without the direct intervention of God.
The error you make is in assuming, in the complete absence of any evidence whatsoever, that the mutations that allowed the evolution of whales could not have occurred over the allotted time period.
Here’s a hint for you: When malaria parasites were evolving to develop CQR, were there absolutely no other mutations occurring? Did their phenotype remain completely unchanged, other than the resistance to CQ?
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In the past you’ve said you aren’t a creationist, but this sort of statement sounds like traditional creationism to me. If not by evolution then how do you think whales emerged?
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But it doesn’t involve “faith.” (In any case, I’m really surprised that you would use faith as a pejorative.)
Evolutionary processes explain all sorts of remarkable things that we observe throughout the biosphere. Why do you assume that the creator described in the Bible would be unable to design a universe where such processes accomplish his will in such powerful ways? Do you consider God that limited? Or are you insisting that God only “poofs” things into existence and doesn’t use the processes described in physics and chemistry (and biology) textbooks?
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I am not a young earth creationist for I think that the universe and the earth are much older than what YEC believe. Am I an old earth creationist ? I don’t think so for I view CD (not necessarily universal CD) as the best explanation for many features of the living world. For example, I accept the idea that whale and hippos had a terrestrial common ancestor that lived 55-60 mya. But I reject the idea that the transition from this terrestrial CA to a wholly aquatic animal occurred by RV + NS, that is by a blind, undirected naturalistic process.
There’s nothing profound if you have a basic understanding of the regulatory nature of vertebrate development. You’re assuming that development is mosaic.
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I assume he thinks God is required to fortuitously cause the right mutations to happen. Like without God, the wrong mutations would happen. It’s why Faizal’s question to him is pertinent. This whole idea that what we see must be an intended outcome, and nothing else interesting could have happened in it’s place if God didn’t guide evolution by causing the right mutations is their foundational mistake.
As @Gilbert’s claim that the degree of morphological adaptation separating whales from their ancestors being somehow undermined by CQR in malaria, the evidence from the domestication of crops and livestock should suffice:
You could add many many more plants and animals to this that we have changed quite radically in a short timespan simply by picking variants we desired to seed the next generations. This is quite a lot of morphological evolution in a few thousand years.
By the way, the membrane transport protein t-urf13 evolved during the domestication of maize. You’d think evolving a gated pore forming membrane transport oligomer should be impossible in a large multicellular eukaryote in a few thousand years if the CQR argument was sound. It isn’t.
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All creationists accept certain levels of common ancestry. By stating that you don’t accept universal common descent it sounds like you have adopted some form of creationism.
To me these seem like contradictory statements. If you reject natural evolution, then what other explanation do you have for how the change from terrestrial mammals to aquatic mammals occurred?
If you are not invoking creationism then what do you think actually happened?
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So you espouse guided evolution. That certainly fits what we see much better than any form of separate creation. But have you considered what a weird designer that postulates, more of a tinkerer than anything else, with no coherent plan? Suppose you wanted to build a whale. Would you start with a fish, give it lungs, turn its fins into legs, get rid of its gills, move it onto the land for several hundred million years, and only then put it back into the water and turn its legs back into fins? The history of evolution is full of seemingly random twists and turns, not to mention the frequent mass extinctions. The designer is capricious, myopic, and extremely limited in the sorts of changes he can introduce, so far as the history of life can tell us.
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I think you and @Giltil may have different definitions of “creationism”.
And that’s one reason why the ID movement has never produced a theory to replace evolution and never will.
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If a person is espousing independent created lineages, to me that falls under creationism. It may not be the same as young-Earth creationism specifically, but it falls under the same umbrella.
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But as far as I can see, he isn’t. The most he has committed to is “not necessarily universal”, which leans toward “one or a few”, in Darwin’s phrasing. Agreed, there’s still some ambiguity, but he is at least less of a creationist than most, and the term may not be applicable at all.
A few more questions, then, to add to the ones I have already asked. Don’t feel overwhelmed, you can take as long as you need to answer.
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How many mutations were required for the transition from the MRCA of whales and hippos to whales and to hippos?
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Is this number far greater than would be expected to have occurred over 55-60 million years? If Yes, please show how you calculated this. If No, then explain why you deny this could have happened without God doing it.
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All that aside, what does any of this have to do with the evolution of CQR in malaria?
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Hi Gil
Have you heard or read the works of evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein? He is not an ID proponent but believes exactly like you do that common descent is the best explanation but the mechanism of change is yet to be understood.
To be clear, it seems you are defining creationism strictly in terms of whether one denies common ancestry. That is a reasonable definition, but not one that is universally held. For instance, some consider theistic evolutionism to be a form of creationism, because it entails that a supernatural creator intentionally created at least some of the life forms that have inhabited the earth, albeit indirectly thru evolution. (TBH, I find that a less coherent position than the one endorsed by @Giltil and Behe. TE proponents have to believe that God is directing the evolutionary process without leaving evidence the process is anything but stochastic. Behe, OTOH, believes the fingerprints from God’s handiwork can be discerned in the historical course of evolution.)
I can understand your point but as the saying goes, the ways of the Lord are inscrutable.
Why do you say that the designer is extremely limited in the sorts of changes he can introduce ? As for me, I am amazed by the bewildering diversity and beauty of the living world, something that I would not expect from the RV + NS mechanism.