Christopher, the responses you interpret as snide to questions about neo-darwinian theories are not dismissive, just exasperated. Take any currently accepted theories in science-- you mentioned relativity replacing newtonian dynamics-- and the same criticisms can be found. In a few cases, the criticisms are of sloppy wording or thinking, and are useful. Others have agendas that make them not amenable to serious discussion among specialists in the area questioned. You can find books published decades after Einstein's 1905 and 1915 work, refuting to the authors' satisfaction many aspects of special and general relativity. Occasionally someone took the trouble to point out the assumptions and false steps made in those books, only to find the same arguments cropping up as though the effort to reply had not been made. Asimov took quite seriously the question of whether it behooved those in a science to pay close attention to the Velikovskys in hope of finding a neglected truth. He concluded that it did not, because there were so many notions to look at, that it made more sense to continue work and seek improved formulations directly, not via philosophy or messages from beyond science. The short answer to doubters of neo-darwinian ideas is, set up experiments to demostrate what's lacking. Waddington did it, on inheritance of acquired characreristics, and his efforts were and are taken quite seriously, and form a small but significant part of the current picture. So take specific cases where the consensus seems unable to account for an event, and give some alternative explanations that can be tested against whichever current model you don't like, including punctuated equilibrium if that too is unacceptable. The shortest argument against directed evolution is the Argument From Imperfection: a Director of Evolution must be quite ignorant or quite inept to have made so many false starts, backtrackings, and wasteful byways. The resulting movie is virtually plotless. Pet