I’ve read enough of their writings to know that they understand themselves to be challenging certain widely-held conceptions of evolution. If you want to say that they are deluded, that they don’t understand their own project, you are welcome to say that. But on general principles, is it likely that a graduate student such as yourself would be in a position to correct the theoretical self-understanding of a seasoned veteran of evolutionary theory teaching at Yale? Is it likely that Futuyma would write what he did about Wagner’s book if he thought it offered merely some minor local refinements of current theory? Isn’t it more probable that Wagner is saying something, if not “radical”, at least significantly new and in some tension with previous work? That’s all I’ll say for the moment, until I have more actual passages to talk about. It’s always better to discuss passages where possible. But I like to study works before I talk about them in detail, so you will have to be patient. I have a day job, and can’t spend my whole time reading difficult theoretical books in evolutionary biology!
Good. I applaud your determination to actually hear what people are saying, and not to rely on secondhand accounts. So do you agree or disagree with Steve when he suggests that what Wagner and other people who write “syntheses” are doing is pretty much practically useless for evolutionary theory, or do you see more value in broad intellectual integration than Steve seems to see?
What’s considered “radical” can be relative. It doesn’t mean the same thing to specialists in a field as it does to laymen who’re thinking in much more general terms, for example. Until you clarify which specific claims you want to talk about, and to what extent you consider them “radical”, this discussion is pointless.
That depends on how @glipsnort is using the term “practically” there. I think all scientists (including Steve) find “value” in “intellectual integration”, but that may not translate into “practical” value, depending on how one defines that.
Yet the passage you’re making such a stink over is a secondhand account from your own memory, one in which you can’t even remember who made the original statement or where it came from.
That’s OK, by now no one expects any logical consistency in your arguments.
I remember the pseudonym he was using at the time. That was correctly identified by Steve, who, on seeing my summary remark, immediately said that it sounded like things “benkirk” used to say on BioLogos. Of course, “benkirk” – if he feels his ears ringing – is welcome to join this discussion at any time, and give us the exact passage where he said that evolution would proceed “almost as quickly” with no mutations, and explain how that claim agrees with (or differs from) current mainstream evolutionary theory. That would be most instructive. I would gladly change my interpretation of his remarks if he indicates that he was writing in terse shorthand and leaving out important qualifications.
Conveniently dodging the fact you posted a secondhand account then claimed you don’t rely on secondhand accounts. That’s our Eddie! 
All right, Chris; let’s see if we can start fresh. What admission are you trying to get out of me?
Back at the beginning of this discussion, I said that I accepted the existence of a process called evolution, but did not necessarily accept any account of the mechanism coming from any individual theorist, or from some supposed scientific “consensus.” I said I left the door open and would read up on future developments regarding theories of mechanism. But I have been left with the impression that you find my attitude very unsatisfying, that you think I have some sort of intellectual obligation to endorse something beyond descent with modification. If this is not what you think, then say you are satisfied with my distinction and my approach (not as one you hold, but as one legitimate for me to hold), and we can end this discussion quite peacably. But if my impression is correct, you are going to have to specify the evolutionary “creed” that you think I am bound to accept.
And it will do no good for you to say that I should accept “modern evolutionary science,” because that is far too vague. I would want more precision. Do you want me to accept, for example, that 80% of mutation is under selection? Or only 20%? Or some other number? Has “modern evolutionary theory” decided, for example, that on average 37.5% of mutations are under selection? Where was the scientific conference held where that number was fixed, and who subscribes to it?
Do you want me to agree to rule out any possible teleological factors in the evolutionary process?
Do you want me to rule out genomic self-engineering, on the grounds that “most” (according to your informal estimate) theorists don’t believe in it? Do you want me to rule out self-organizational theory?
What is the list of mechanisms and their relative weighting that you want me to sign on to?
You know, there is a Westminster Confession of faith, and a Chicago Statement on inerrancy, and so on. I can read those statements and decide, before I sign, whether I agree with them. I’m asking you for that level of precision regarding “current evolutionary theory.” What are you demanding that I subscribe to, before you will count me as someone who accepts “evolution”?
Jordan, you’re a nice guy, and I like you. But this discussion is frustrating, because you keep supplying me with new examples, none of which changes the situation. It’s as if you don’t see that all such examples have already been dealt with by my previous answers. I don’t whether this means you are reading too quickly, or I am writing too unclearly, or what, but I don’t see the point in making the same statements over and over again.
I never said or implied that chemists don’t know what Le Chatelier’s principle means or how to use it. I never said anything like that regarding quantum theory, or evolution, or anything else. But you keep arguing as if I was asserting such things.
All I said was that there exist a group of biologists called “evolutionary biologists” or “specialists in evolutionary theory” or whatever you want to call them, whose whole focus in biology is the theory of evolution (not cell biology, not physiology, not genetics, not ecology, all of which can touch on evolution, but the theory of evolution itself), and that among these biologists there are ongoing lively disagreements over evolutionary mechanisms, and that the disagreements are not all over minor details or over things that are “peripheral” (to use a word you or Chris used). Some of them are major disagreements. They do not, of course, disagree over the existence of descent with modification. But their disagreements over the “how” can be quite pronounced.
I have not used the existence of disagreement among evolutionary theorists to argue that evolutionary theory is on the verge of collapse, or that evolution must not be true, or anything of the sort. If you think I am trying to do that, you have me confused with someone else. How many times have I said that the ID theorists I most identify with (Behe, Denton) are those who accept descent with modification, i.e., who treat evolution as if it were a fact? That should be sufficient to let you know that my statements about disagreement over mechanism are not ways of trying to undermine “evolution” understood as a process of organic change over time. But for some reason you refuse to take me at my word, and treat me as if I am trying to undermine belief in descent with modification. How many more times should I have to say that this is not my intention?
There are disagreements, even major disagreements, among cosmologists. Do I conclude from that that modern cosmology is bankrupt, and that we must go back to a literal reading of Genesis? No, I don’t conclude that. But it is not wrong for me to point out that cosmologists have serious disagreements over causal mechanisms. Similarly, it is not wrong to point out that evolutionary theorists have non-trivial disagreements over causal mechanisms.
I’ve said enough on this site against Ham, Creation Science, etc. that it should be clear that I don’t have the agenda of those people. I’m simply asking for an honest recognition that there is non-trivial disagreement among the experts over evolutionary mechanism.
And to make my point as clear as possible, I will refer to Chris’s Venn diagram. Chris alleges that the amount of disagreement is even less than shown in that Venn diagram, i.e., he claims that the circles indicating positions on evolutionary mechanism almost coincide. I content that the level of disagreement is greater than that, and that the circles would have to be moved farther apart to give an accurate analogy to the current differences. That is where Chris and I disagree. And that disagreement has nothing to do with any alleged desire of mine to undermine evolutionary theory. To make this point as clear as possible: I think that evolutionary theory can be a very reasonable pursuit even if there is double or triple the disagreement between experts than there is now.
Chris, on the other hand, seems to think that I am emphasizing the differences among evolutionary theorists in order to cast doubt on evolution, and that seems to be what you think, too. But I have just stated my actual view, and this should dispel any such notion.
Have I finally managed to clarify my position for you? If not, I don’t know what else I can say.
Thanks, and I’ll stop with the examples 
I didn’t think so much that you were trying to cast doubt on evolution, but you do seem to take a pretty agnostic view towards evolutionary mechanisms. That’s OK, as a non-biologist I can’t say I know much about evolutionary theory so I try to hold things loosely. It just seemed like you were then using your own semi-agnostic stance towards mechanisms to cast doubt on the idea that biologists had reasonable consensus around evolutionary mechanisms. I guess I trust scientists like @swamidass, @glipsnort, @evograd, and @Art on these things. They not only know the biology better, they also know their colleagues better.
I saw you and @Chris_Falter as essentially agreeing without realizing it – just coming at it from different perspectives (glass half-full/half-empty type of situation). I tried to bring that out with some illustration but clearly they were misplaced. My bad.
I’m at Stony Brook, and as far as I’m aware, Newman has not been a faculty member here. I suspect you’re thinking of Massimo Pigliucci (who is no longer at Stony Brook), because their names appear next to each other in Suzan Mazur’s book on the Altenberg 16.
Please provide an actual example of where this has happened, and not just some fictitious incident that is the result of your failure to recall or properly understand something you read.
This might be the stupidest OP I have yet read on this group.
Thanks for the correction. Don’t know how the confusion arose, but it’s good to know. From the map I just looked at, though, the place where Newman is (New York Medical College) isn’t all that far from Stony Brook. 
The two statements:
“There is reasonable consensus around evolutionary mechanisms.”
and
“There are areas of sharp and significant disagreement among evolutionary biologists regarding mechanisms.”
are not incompatible!
Yes, most people agree that mutation plays a role, that selection plays a role, that drift plays a role, and so on. But there are some proposed mechanisms which some people think may play a major role, but others think play no role or only a minor role, e.g., organismal re-engineering of the genome in response to environmental triggers; and even where there is agreement on all the mechanisms at play, the weighting makes a difference (someone who thinks that the majority of mutations are under selection differs in a serious way from someone who thinks that only a tiny minority of mutations are under selection, even though both accept that not all mutations are under selection). So a core of agreement does not preclude serious and significant differences.
I was not denying that there is broad general agreement concerning the existence of some mechanisms, but the devil is very much in the details. Baseball and cricket both have guys with bats hitting balls that are pitched at them, and doing some running afterwards, but the differences between the two sports are not merely “peripheral”; they are different enough to be two distinctly different games. The explanation of how evolutionary novelty appears is not exactly the same in Shapiro or Wagner or Coyne etc., even though they may all make use of items from the same bag of explanatory tricks. And the differences aren’t trivial. If any one of them is completely right about how novel biological form arises, then the others must be at least partly wrong.
If all Chris wants me to say is, “mutations, selection, horizontal gene transfer, etc. all play some role in evolution,” I’ll gladly say it. But that’s like saying I know how to bake a cake because I know that it involves some combination of flour, sugar, eggs, milk, etc. I could know exactly what ingredients are needed, and still not have a clue how to bake a cake. Again, the devil is in the details.
That’s why Chris’s Venn diagram is a not a good way of conceptualizing the discussion. It’s not enough to distinguish “fringe” ideas from “core” ideas (which is all the Venn diagram does); one has to properly assemble the causal mechanisms within the accepted core. It’s not enough to say that one should leave rubber bands and orange peels and onions out of the chocolate cake; one has to know the steps for mixing the other ingredients, the temperatures, the times, and so on. So even if Chris thinks we should “write off” the ideas of Shapiro etc. as fringe ideas, and concentrate only on the “tried and true” mechanisms accepted by most biologists, he is still faced with the fact that the particular recipe for combining those tried and true mechanisms differs from evolutionary theorist to evolutionary theorist. He is still faced with the difficulty of deciding which of the theorists offers the right recipe. That is, he can’t say any more than I can about whether Wagner is more right than Coyne, or whether Moran is more right than Lynch. So his proper course of action, in my view, is not to commit himself regarding which theorist’s account is more correct – unless and until he becomes a master of evolutionary theory himself, and is then in a position to judge.
Anyhow, I’ve asked Chris exactly what he would have me profess. We shall see how he answers.
I did not expect you to “plead the 5th” regarding every statement. I find it quite easy to dismiss all the options I listed! They aren’t credible.
So, perhaps I’m not that far off… I think considering the strong interest you have in the matter, your not having a firm view on the matter is especially eccentric.
In fact, it >>is<< a paraphrased version of BenKirk (aka, Benjamin Kirk) wrote ! No doubt he wrote it to many people; he wrote it to me in a BioLogos thread (post #298, towards the end of March 2016):
Title: “Does evolutionary theory provide any useful scientific benefit?”
“George, you are utterly, spectacularly wrong on this. While all cells “experience” (a terrible word choice) mutations, NO NEW MUTATIONS ARE REQUIRED FOR EVOLUTION.
None.
Zip.
Nada.”
“Evolution is changes in allele frequencies over time. We simply don’t need any new alleles (caused by mutations) to get evolution, just heritable variation, which exists and can be objectively measured.
George, please try to understand this: new mutations contribute very little to the quantity of heritable variation (polymorphism) in a population. Before you criticize Steve, you need to get this very, very basic point. Put another way, if God stopped all mutations tomorrow, evolution would chug right along for a very long time.”
Benjamin Kirk and I came to blows on this topic more than once… and he was eventually suspended from BioLogos.
@glipsnort, it was actually in a corner of the thread where I was asking why would we want to introduce “evolution” as a term that applied to cancer. At the time, I thought it was nitpicking. And now, with a little more experience under my belt (as well as more pounds), I have to agree that the term Evolution applied in this way is very educational.
On Benkirk’s side of the conversation, he actually seemed to believe that I thought Evolution required mutations. In this particular iteration of his viewpoint, he was pointing out that “populations of cells” within individuals (for example, a cancer mass) can, logically, be said to Evolve (ironically, because of a mutation!).
But over the months, he kept chasing after me with this Evolution doesn’t need mutations. And while I agreed that Evolution is any change in allele percentages, it seemed that he was becoming more and more fixated that mutations were never ever needed.
@glipsnort, could he really have believed that? Or was it just the way he said that suggested that he believed the more extreme version of this thought?
What I don’t understand, here (in PeacefulScience.Org) is why @eddie thinks the crazed Benjamin Kirk represents any mainstream thinking that mutations are never needed?
George, thanks very much! That is one of the statements that I was remembering. I am sure there was at least one more along very similar lines, but that is the type of benkirk statement on this subject that I had in mind.
I am glad to hear that benkirk’s repeated statements (you indicate that they were repeated in conversation with you many times) came across to you the way they came across to me. Even if he didn’t mean what I took him to mean, the fact that you got the same impression suggests to me that the communication breakdown wasn’t entirely my fault, but owes something to the way way benkirk chose to express himself.
Since I know that my usual detractors will point out that benkirk here doesn’t specify “from bacterium to man,” I will save them the trouble by conceding right away that here he does not insist on that; however, the fact that he does not give any numbers to “a very long time” leaves his meaning in doubt. Is “a very long time” a thousand generations? A million? A hundred million? Who can say, based on that kind of broad statement?
As for your two questions at the end, I will let glipsnort answer the one addressed to him. I will answer the one indirectly addressed to me.
George, I don’t think such statements represent mainstream thinking! But I wanted to hear what the professional biologists here thought about them. If they confirm my view, then my understanding of mainstream thinking is more or less in line with theirs – at least on this point.
Does this not suggest the relative obscurity of the quote you are basing your challenge on? Eddie, even if your recollection is 100% accurate and free of your personal bias, there is no context available. This hypothetical statement cannot be reasonably evaluated without it. But with the limited information we have, @evograd @glipsnort and @swamidass have given perfectly good answers to the challenge you have proposed.
The actual quotes show you don’t.
Which people?
None of that is in the quotes that others found with no problem.
The implication in your misrepresentation, you mean.
The actual quote Walter provided directly contradicts your implication:
He confirmed that your statement is not. I confirm that too.
The statement as given is not the statements that were quoted.
Maybe you should consider writing fewer pages of fantasy and bragging here. That should free up some time.
Your statement did not match the actual quotes.
That being the statement you fabricated because you were too lazy to find an actual quote.
The statement quoted by Walter leaves zero doubt:
You’ve reached a new low in scholarly ethics.
I would add that, as far as I can tell, the context for the statements that @Eddie attributes to Benjamin Kirk puts all of this in a very different light. I will try and frame this in a manner similar to how @Eddie started this thread:
I will give a statement that seems to be the opinion of many that pertains to evolution (the origin of a new species) and underlying mechanisms. The statement runs like this:
“A new species arises when a specific sort of mutation, essential for the attributes of the new species, occurs in an individual in a population of the ancestral species. This individual procreates, the mutation spreads, and eventually a new species arises.”
Is this view of evolution one that virtually every current evolutionary theorist subscribes to? Or is it an outrider, outside of the mainstream of evolutionary thought?