I am late in keeping up with this thread so please forgive the lateness of this response!
[my comments in brackets]
[JohnD wrote: ]
"Here's the deal:
1) Evolution occurs. This is true and important. No honest person
sees any controversy about this. [I agree]
2) Many crucial facts about biology make sense in terms of evolution
and not otherwise. This is true and important. No honest person
sees any controversy about this. [I am not sure to which facts you refer]
3) There exist things that evolution does not explain. This is true,
trivial, and utterly unimportant. It in no way calls into question
item (1) or item (2) -- not in the least. You could equally well
say that there are things that Kepler's 1-2-3 law does not explain.
Well, duh! [OK]
Let's stop pretending there is controversy where there is none.
Why do we even need to discuss this? The answer is that over the
last 400 years, people have found ways of reconciling their religion
with Copernican astronomy ... whereas quite a few people have not
yet found ways of reconciling their religion with evolution.
Maybe
in the next few hundred years they'll figure it out. Until then,
they will fight a rear-guard action, attacking science, attacking
scientists, lying about the observed evidence, and lying about
their own activities."
Your logic is as follows: evolution is true and basically indisputable by honest people. Therefore honest religious people must find a way to reconcile their religious beliefs with the indisputable fact of evolution.
The problem as I see it is that while honest people do not dispute that evolution (i.e. changes within a species) occurs it has not yet been established to anywhere near the same level of indisputability that all species evolved from a single or a few common ancestors. I think your logical progression is misleading in that it assumes that since change within a species has been observed that all other postulates of evolutionary theory are therefore true.