Thank you oh so very much for sharing your insights, dearest sister in Christ!
Yes, it is pretty amazing, dearest sister in Christ! Yet really, they never argue the point; they just level the accusation, hit-and-run style.
Speaking as a Christian, I have no problem whatsoever with material and efficient causes in nature. These are the stock-in-trade of science. Science also accepts a rather attentuated form of formal cause — initial conditions + the physical laws. What it rules out in principle, however — ever since Francis Bacon — is formal cause, by which Aristotle referred to causal "ends," or purposes. Increasingly it is becoming obvious that biology cannot be done if formal causes continue to be excluded from the scientific method.
Anyhoot, CottShop spoke in an earlier post about Alex Williams' inversely-causal Metainformation, which would be a formal cause. Theoretical biologist Robert Rosen reintroduces formal cause in his relational diagrams as the necessary cause that "closes the causal loop" in complex systems (especially biological ones), such that all causes within the system — formal, material, and especially efficient — take place within the system itself, and not through dependence on causal influences from the surrounding environment. In a multicellular/multi-component system such as a biological organism, this type of "causal closure" would appear to be necessary for the proper organization of the system.
Anyhoot, I'm a Christian, and I just love this stuff!
And I know you do too, my dearest sister in Christ! Thank you ever so much for writing!