@Eddie (@T_aquaticus , @swamidass )
Your ability to establish a “speculation as a possible outcome” never ceases to surprise me! Why do I say that?
Because i suddenly realized that you were NOT saying what i thought you were saying! Please look at the section i quoted for this posting.
If i hadnt already thought through to this point (using my own vocabulary), i never would have recognized the very same idea couched in your own words!!
@eddie, you would have made a great lawyer! You wrote this:
“If Behe had wanted to say that evolution could not produce new body plans, etc., without miraculous intervention, it would have been quite easy for him to say so in the book.”
More than once, i have pointed out the impossibility of using science to confirm an ID stance - - IF the stance is stated like this:
[1] What if God could see for Himself that natural/lawful evolution COULD create flagella for one-celled life with ENOUGH time.
[2] For the flagella case, ENOUGH time could be a VERY VERY long time, while for other modifications, it could simply be a matter of a few years or a few hundred years. The exact time it takes isnt the issue… and SO: one could argue that Behe is not saying these difficult “modifications” are not possible for natural law (and thus, @Eddie, your statement to @T_aquaticus is technically true!
[3] But so what!? This is a duck or weave!!! The real question you are not addressing is that an I.D. researcher (but not, Behe, in my view) could argue that without miraculous (non-lawful) engagement by God (the so-called moment referred to as an “intervention”!) the purely natural way for “un-guided” mutation might take 1 million years longer than God’s purpose allows for! It could be a million years late, or a century too late, or a year or even just a second!
[4] If the I.D. researcher sees God as one who performs miracles all the time, then if the “all natural” mutation is even a second too late for God’s game plan, he can engage in the miraculous to keep the game plan on track!
[5] The Conclusion? There are 2 ways that the mutation in question can be handled:
(i) If we follow the Pool Shot model, God keeps the desired flagella mutation On-Track by programming the outcome at the moment before the Big Bang!; or
(ii) God DOES use miraculous mutation to [intervention] keep his olan exactly on track, but no human (without God’s complete knowledge of Cosmic natural law) would be able to devise a test that would exclude ALL the non-miraculous ways the mutation in question might be accelerated!
And this is why some categories of the miraculous
(as in Paragraph [5] Option “ii” above)
can only be “indicated” … and never confirmed… by Science.