Why do people deny evolution?

As he is suggesting, there is a very significant difference between a chance mutation "occurring" and the chance of that particular mutation becoming "fixed (within the species) over time."

Time cannot be discounted and you have no way of factually dismissing it. We know fairly accurately the rate at which mutations are fixed within the STL alleles of human populations. These become a "genetic clock" that is fairly accurate.

what you seem to want to deny is the roel of selection. By doing so you ignore the effects of a changing environment and time.

By doing so you ignore the effects of a changing environment and time.

Under the modern synthesis, populations are primarily seen as plastic and responsive to changes in the environment, producing species that are most strongly marked by adaptive changes. In the postmodern evolutionary view, history dominates — most of the properties of a species are a contingent product of its ancestors’ attributes. “Everything is the way it is because it got that way.” Everything you see in an organism is a consequence of its history, with the addition of a few unique adaptive fillips...

Its interesting how Myers (in the Pharyngula post) seems to ignore the earlier of "neo" texts like Ehrlich who said in his text that most mutations were LETHAL., not that every mutation was relegated to a spot in the "fitness train"

Any evidence from which to speak?

I think we achieved a consensus that stated that, although natural selection wasnt the only thing active in evolution, it was still the primary driving force in adaptation, or endemic speciation.

why not discuss neutral "hypothesis" regarding convergent evolution

As I said before,The arguments used by the "neutral theory" folks, lean toward intelligent Design and Irreducible complexity specifically

Im on the side of science...

You use bold, I cap. so what? I assume that, by bold, you wish to make a point, well,, by my caps, you may assume the same.
Problem?

Ive not been challenged in the assertion that most workers say that All adaptive evolution is natural selection

So far, all the neutral theory is without broad based evidence...

Adaptive evolution results from the propagation of advantageous mutations through positive selection. This is the modern synthesis of the process which Darwin and Wallace originally identified as the mechanism of evolution....Quantifying adaptive evolution in the human genome gives insights into our own evolutionary history and helps to resolve this neutralist-selectionist debate.

Many different studies have attempted to quantify the amount of adaptive evolution in the human genome, the vast majority using the comparative approaches outlined above. Although there are discrepancies between studies, generally there is relatively little evidence of adaptive evolution in protein coding DNA, with estimates of adaptive evolution often near 0% (see Table 1).

...the fact that many estimates are at (or very near to) 0% does not rule out the occurrence of any adaptive evolution in the human genome, but simply shows that positive selection is not frequent enough to be detected by the tests...the debate over the amount of adaptive evolution occurring in human coding DNA is not yet resolved

As just one example, it has been shown (or at least claimed) that grasshoppers and locusts are one and the same species. When threatened with food shortages, grasshoppers can "turn into" locusts by way of regulatory genetic changes.

There is no taxonomic distinction between locust and grasshopper species; the basis for the definition is whether a species forms swarms under intermittently suitable conditions. In English the term "locust" is used for grasshopper species that change morphologically and behaviourally on crowding, forming swarms that develop from bands of immature stages called hoppers. These changes are examples of phase polymorphism; they were first analysed and described by Boris Uvarov who was instrumental in setting up the Anti-Locust Research Centre... they had previously been thought to be separate species.

Swarming behaviour is a response to overcrowding. Increased tactile stimulation of the hind legs causes an increase in levels of serotonin.[9] This causes the locust to change colour, eat much more, and breed much more easily. The transformation of the locust to the swarming form is induced by several contacts per minute over a four-hour period....

The greatest difference between the solitary and gregarious phases is behavioural [but] there are also differences in morphology and development. In the desert locust and the migratory locust for example, the gregaria nymphs become darker with strongly contrasting yellow and black markings, they grow larger and have a longer developmental period...

Within 2 hours, the solitary, green locusts transform into extremely sociable, yellow or red versions that gather in voracious swarms, several billion strong. The transformation is a complicated one – it involves over 500 genes, the presence of other locusts and stimulation of their hind legs. Most of these details have been discovered by Stephen Simpson at the University of Oxford and Malcolm Burrows at Cambridge.

...their genes don’t actually change. That is, they don’t mutate or in any way alter the genetic sequence or DNA. Nothing gets rewritten. Instead, this bug’s DNA — the genetic book with millions of letters that form the instructions for building and operating a grasshopper — gets reread so that the very same book becomes the instructions for operating a locust. Even as one animal becomes the other, as Jekyll becomes Hyde, its genome stays unchanged. ...

Transforming the hopper is gene expression — a change in how the hopper’s genes are ‘expressed’, or read out. Gene expression is what makes a gene meaningful, and it’s vital for distinguishing one species from another....

This raises a question: if merely reading a genome differently can change organisms so wildly, why bother rewriting the genome to evolve? How vital, really, are actual changes in the genetic code? Do we even need DNA changes to adapt to new environments?

...under suitable conditions of drought followed by rapid vegetation growth, serotonin in their brains triggers a dramatic set of changes: they start to breed abundantly, becoming gregarious and nomadic (loosely described as migratory) when their populations become dense enough. They form bands of wingless nymphs which later become swarms of winged adults. Both the bands and the swarms move around and rapidly strip fields and cause damage to crops. The adults are powerful fliers; they can travel great distances, consuming most of the green vegetation wherever the swarm settles...

Swarms have devastated crops and been a contributory cause of famines and human migrations. Swarming behaviour has decreased in the twentieth century, but despite modern surveillance and control methods, the potential for swarming behaviour is still present, and when suitable climatic conditions occur and vigilance lapses, plagues can still occur.

noun, Biology

1. a process in which a feature acquires a function that was not acquired through natural selection.

2. a morphological or physiological feature that predisposes an organism to adapt to a different environment or lifestyle.