Hi, Chris.
Joshua has said that he accepts “descent with modification” as the simplest and least loaded meaning of the word “evolution.” But there is a difference between “evolution” and “a particular theory of evolution.”
You are confusing a process with a theory that accounts for the process. Joshua doubtless, in addition to accepting the process of evolution, accepts a good number of the proposed mechanisms as the cause of evolution. I was not claiming that Joshua agrees with everything I have said about mechanisms. I was claiming only that he agreed with my definition of the term “evolution.”
If you want an analogy, think about gravity. One can accept that there is such a thing as gravity, while doubting that Newton’s account of how gravity actually works is adequate. Indeed, physicists still argue about the nature of gravity. But they do not deny that gravity exists, or that its effects can be calculated, for practical purposes in our daily life, using Newton’s equations. Or think about magnetism. The ancients accepted the fact that the lodestone could attract metal. But they did not have a clear theory about how such a thing could happen. In the Middle Ages theories started to emerge. Those medieval theories are finally polished and expressed in the work of Gilbert, ca. 1600. But not everyone accepted Gilbert’s interpretation of magnetism at the time. Everyone believed in “magnetism” but not everyone believed in “Gilbert’s theory of magnetism.”
Thus, I can accept “descent with modification,” while reserving judgment on the question whether Coyne or Andreas Wagner or Gunter Wagner or Scott Turner or James Shapiro or Dawkins or Margulis or anyone else has adequately explained the process.
I don’t see why so many people here find this distinction so hard to grasp, when it’s pretty basic.