So, Dawkins writes:
Note “may”, indicating that he is not affirming this is as a fact, but only granting it as a possibility.
Does that sound like “embracing” neutral theory? Not to me.
But even if Dawkins personally embraced neutral theory, that’s not the view he conveys in The Blind Watchmaker, which was the only thing he wrote that I was commenting on. The book is a paean to the powers of selection. It must be a long time since you read it – if you read it – for you to have forgotten that emphasis.
– are not what most of the angry reactions to Behe have focused on. Most of them have focused on how random mutations and selection could easily build a whale from an artiodactyl in 9 million years, could easily build a flagellum, could easily turn a swim bladder into lungs, could easily build an eye from a light-sensitive spot, etc.
Sure, I have also seen criticisms of his alleged insistence that every single change has to be selected for (though in fact his remarks on that point are often more qualified than his detractors make out), but not nearly as often as I’ve seen, in response to him and to Meyer, Dembski, Wells, etc.: “Given that there’s time for every gene to have mutated X times over Y million years, there is plenty of time to find the right combinations” (focus on mutations) or “There is a gradual fitness landscape, so selection could build up the new form in small steps” (focus on natural selection). Behe or other ID folks may be twitted every now and then for not granting enough to neutral theory, but when his opponents give their own accounts of how specific complex organs and systems are or might be built up, their accounts are usually loaded with the conventional language of mutation and selection. I haven’t see many accounts with statements like: “This mutation affecting the shape of the wing of the mosquito in very minor ways would neither help nor harm the mosquito’s flying ability, or any of the mosquito’s other physiological functions, so it would therefore be just jim-dandy as the basis for a radical new modification of the mosquito’s body plan.”
So the public is not really going to agonize much over the short-changing of neutral theory. What they see in the internet and popular debate is that Behe thinks that random mutations plus natural selection can make important small changes, but not major changes of biological form, whereas his opponents think that random mutations plus natural selection can build just about anything, given enough time.
Look, I have nothing invested in the label used. If you don’t like “neo-Darwinian”, we don’t need to use it. But it doesn’t change the issue of substance to say “modern evolutionary theory” instead. The point is that “modern evolutionary theory”, like neo-Darwinism before it, says that undirected, unplanned mechanisms can and did generate every complex cellular and bodily structure that has ever emerged, and Behe and the ID folks do not agree with that. You can rename the “Ford Pinto” to the “Ford Modern”, but if the gas tank still explodes, what difference does the packaging make?
Further, at least “neo-Darwinism”, for all the historical ambiguity of the term, reminds us of Darwin, and that suggests that natural selection is going to be top dog among the mechanisms – it indicates something of the content of the theory; “modern evolutionary theory”, on the other hand, indicates zero of the content of the theory. If I spoke of “modern educational theory” or “modern economic theory” or “modern sociological theory”, all differences of opinion among experts in those field would be completely hidden by the generalization, whereas if I speak of “Deweyite educational theory” or “Keynesian economics” or “Weberian social theory”, or “Feminist Theology”, something more precise is indicated.