“Well, the whole point of Behe's book, Darwin's Black Box, is that natural selection cannot produce biological systems that he labels as "irreducibly complex." From this he concludes such systems must have been directly designed by some intelligent agent.
I don’t see where that supports your original assertion. It looks to me like Behe is saying that evolution must have had a little help here and there.
I freely concede that this opinion is a theological one and not a scientific. However, so is the act of ruling out any intervention by an intelligence.
Could it have happened accidentally? I don’t think science has demonstrated that it could. Likewise, I don’t know that Behe has demonstrated scientifically that it couldn’t. Either opinion, therefore, rests on belief.
“I would have problems with this view on theological grounds, but it is certainly cannot be ruled out (or ruled in) by science.”
Perhaps we should go 1984 on the question and have huge banners everywhere reading, “Science neither proves nor disproves the existence of God.”
I'm really at a loss as to why you are laboring over such an obvious point.
I have been reading and participating in these threads for nearly five years, and have seen this opinion stated in pretty much identical words by nearly everyone arguing the mainstream science side.