The author appeared to be claiming that by "Creator" he only meant the design or invention of nature resulting from evolution, but if that were true he wouldn't have used the word "mystery."
Hmmm. I'm not saying you're wrong but then I have heard evolutionary scientists use superlatives pertaining to the mysteries of science, when they didn't really mean anything that alludes to a supernatural God.
I would say your reductio-ad-absurdum was valid but the rule is with a conditional implication, that the consequent must CERTAINLY follow.
Example:
"If you are a human therefore you are a female."
The problem is, if you have a human you may well have a female, but technically speaking it is a false implication because it doesn't follow 100% of the time. (non-sequitur)
Now if he used in the article, a word that certainly IMPLIES some kind of religious statement, then you would have a stronger case that he was saying something none-evolution.
The point to be careful of though, is that even if he did MEAN an intelligent designer, (creator) this doesn't mean that he said something pseudo-scientific, because he could be an agnostic.
I know agnostics, (though I admit they are a minority), that accept that there is an intelligent designer of organisms but this doesn't mean that they believe that the intelligent designer is a supernatural designer. Therefore when people say that it would be a "pseudo-scientific" statement, they are using that phrase as a question-begging-epithet, because they are not clever enough to delineate the difference between arguing a supernatural designer, and merely arguing an intelligent designer, whomever or whatever that designer might be. So their argument might not include a specific designer, but only the conclusion that it was intelligently designed by an intelligence.
Strictly speaking, I myself would not make a religious syllogism for my intelligent design argument. Usually I use the law-of-identity, and the final conclusion of my argument, which does not involve God, is that, "therefore there is an intelligent designer".
When I speak outspokenly about God being that designer, obviously I would admit that I do that by faith, I do that through personal conviction.
So it could be a religious-arguer. But if he doesn't mention who the creator is, then technically speaking the only problem evolutionists have with this paper is their prejudice against something that would only
POSSIBLY SUPPORT theism.
That is the key with these types of public outcries, if this matter did not allude to God existing, I doubt you guys would be talking about peer reviews failing. In my experience evolutionists use peer-review as something to proverbially CLOUT creationists over the head with, I strongly suspect they would only detract from the peer-review epithet, IF and only IF something theistically flavoured worked it's way in there.
This is the first time I have ever known evolutionists to complain about peer review.
Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.