A Moment of Truth?

Some Darwinists are trying to sweep under the rug the difference between convergent and parallel evolution. Why? Because convergent evolution is a difficulty for evolution that has not been solved, and probably won’t be. So, simply conflate and move on is the solution. Yet, apparently, at least one Darwinist is not so keen on the idea:

Arendt and Reznick (TREE 23:26-32) have presented an argument for eliminating the label ‘parallel evolution’, which involves changing the terms of the comparison between convergent and parallel evolutions from the phenotype to the genotype. While parallel evolution has mostly been viewed as a largely genotype focused concept, convergent evolution has not been formulated that way…

I would argue that we ought to ‘save the phenomenon’ of convergent evolution even if it seems inconvenient to the dominant Darwinian and cladistic perspectives on organic evolution. The fact that convergence is not in conformity with the ‘descent with modification’ model of either the neoDarwinian or cladistic programs signals rather that it is an outstanding problem in evolutionary biology. Given the divergence model of organic evolution, there should be no reason to suppose that selection would arrive at similar solutions to similar selective pressures except for very general solutions like streamlining in fluids or in very closely related forms.

It’s refreshing to see a Darwinist that is unafraid to utter the truth, that evolution has problems.