Carey, read what Provine said:See that? He’s equating natural selection with “adaptation,” and he’s saying that adaptation (or natural selection) is, duh, the “result of many interacting ecological and genetic causes.” IOW, life (like the universe itself) simply evolves.

And indeed Carey, I’m inclined to agree that life, like the universe, evolves, and that this evolution is the result of many interacting causes. And I’m delighted that a Darwinian with Provine’s credentials has enough sense to acknowledge that “natural selection” is not a meaningful theory, or as he says, a “mechanism” or “active cause,” of evolution . . . unlike, say, the superb theory of gravity is indeed a meaningful “mechanism” or “active cause” of the evolution of cosmological things that we observe in our universe.

And so there you have it Carey—evolution is the result of many interacting causes, but “natural selection” is not truly a meaningful theory or mechanism or active cause of evolution.