Evolution is NOT about Progress- Proving Jerry Coyne and Joshua Swamidass are Ignorant

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Both Jerry Coyne and Joshua Swamidass conflate "evolution" with "universal common descent". Yet "evolution" is not about progress. Traits can be lost which means evolution can makes organisms less complex. Living fossils may resemble their contemporary ancestors but no one says there wasn't any evolution going on during all of those missing generations.

The point is only a complete ignoramus would conflate "evolution" with "universal common descent" as much evolution occurs without anything resembling UCD occurring.

“We do think there is a tendency to look at evolution as progressive,” he said. “We prefer to think of evolution as backwards, sideways, and occasionally forward.”-  David Penny, a molecular biologist at Massey University in New Zealand.

MISCONCEPTION: Evolution results in progress; organisms are always getting better through evolution.

CORRECTION: One important mechanism of evolution, natural selection, does result in the evolution of improved abilities to survive and reproduce; however, this does not mean that evolution is progressive — for several reasons. First, as described in a misconception below (link to "Natural selection produces organisms perfectly suited to their environments"), natural selection does not produce organisms perfectly suited to their environments. It often allows the survival of individuals with a range of traits — individuals that are "good enough" to survive. Hence, evolutionary change is not always necessary for species to persist. Many taxa (like some mosses, fungi, sharks, opossums, and crayfish) have changed little physically over great expanses of time. Second, there are other mechanisms of evolution that don't cause adaptive change. Mutation, migration, and genetic drift may cause populations to evolve in ways that are actually harmful overall or make them less suitable for their environments. For example, the Afrikaner population of South Africa has an unusually high frequency of the gene responsible for Huntington's disease because the gene version drifted to high frequency as the population grew from a small starting population. Finally, the whole idea of "progress" doesn't make sense when it comes to evolution. Climates change, rivers shift course, new competitors invade — and an organism with traits that are beneficial in one situation may be poorly equipped for survival when the environment changes. And even if we focus on a single environment and habitat, the idea of how to measure "progress" is skewed by the perspective of the observer. From a plant's perspective, the best measure of progress might be photosynthetic ability; from a spider's it might be the efficiency of a venom delivery system; from a human's, cognitive ability. It is tempting to see evolution as a grand progressive ladder with Homo sapiens emerging at the top. But evolution produces a tree, not a ladder — and we are just one of many twigs on the tree.

So what is wrong with Jerry and Joshua? Are they really that ignorant with respect to evolution that they have change the definition to suit their ignorance?