In discussing Pigliucci’s review of Jablonka and Lamb’s controversial book Evolution in Four Dimensions, Jason Rosenhouse (a.k.a. Evolutionblog) makes a key point that it’s easy to overlook:
…the problem facing evolutionary biologists is never ‘How could bit of anatomy X possibly have evolved naturally?’ Rather, the question is ‘Of the many possible mechanisms by which this system might have evolved, which is the correct one?’ It seems that scientists are constantly discovering new mechanisms for explaining evolution….
Of course, any talk of fiddling with the neo-Darwinian synthesis tends to make the hearts of creationists go pitter pat. They know that any suggestion that the nineteen fifties version of evolution may have been incomplete can be spun into a statement that evolution is dying. They will conveniently ignore the fact that the discoveries that are persuading scientists of the incompleteness of the original synthesis are all in the direction of making evolutionary change easier, not harder, to explain.
[Emphasis added.]