Fair enough.
The author described a very logical consequence of evolution as "freakish" and invited the reader's incredulity. If it's not the bulk of a large article, the rest is no better. "They're still just (lizards/guppies/finches)!" "The progression wasn't logical and directed!" (I.e., it undid itself later.) Arguments of this latter sort are based upon hidden, false assumptions that might slip past the uncritical reader.
You're saying there is a hidden, false assumption. How do you know this?
Evolution has no goal. If the environmental pressures whip you back and forth, back and forth you go.
You're committing a similar taboo to the one you criticize the ID people as doing. Namely, you make the assumption that macro-evolution is right and any observation must be in accordance with it.
Now, I've never heard of McClarren (note my earlier misspelling.) I'm basing my comments assuming his observations are accurate. Are they? If so, he feels they refute macro-evolution. Would they? Does macro-evolution require "slow, steady change" as McClarren claims?
I haven't had time to read the whole (Behe) article,
You'd have to read more of it to get the gist of it. McDonald fails to show a gradual single-step evolution into the mousetrap as we know it. Behe makes McDonald look pretty silly for even trying.
I can see it. The author claims that, after x more decades, a population's evolution had backed up. We are invited to think that this example proves that evolution never goes anywhere. Assumption: If evolution can be shown to have once backed up, then it never does go anywhere.
This type of thing is a staple of the ID literature and they're not going to stop doing it no matter how often the fallacy of it is pointed out, any more than they're going to suddenly get scrupulous in their quoting.
Evolution can back up. The environment changes over time and the pressure on the population is to stay adapted to it.
You'd have to read more of it to get the gist of it. McDonald fails to show a gradual single-step evolution into the mousetrap as we know it. Behe makes McDonald look pretty silly for even trying.
I can't imagine that McDonald undertook to show that a mousetrap evolved, only that Behe's example was never irreducibly complex in the first place. However, I can easily imagine Behe trying to make McDonald look silly.