New? Actually, St. Augustine discussed evolution and said that it was one of many theories, and that Christians could agree with it as long as they acknowledged the Lord guided it. That makes this "new" theory about 1500 years old.
It's just that those believing in "scientism" prefer to find the narrowist creationism arguments to ridicule so that Christians will think they can't be logical and scientific. The problem is that "scientism" itself is nonsense from the standpoint of the Philosophy of Science (the only Philosophy course that I took in college that made sense). You see, science is not dogmatic truth, but merely an explantion of what is observed. Each theory approaches the truth but is not the truth, merely the way we explain what is truth.
Christians approach God the same way: Each one of us sees God, but God is much larger than our ability to grasp him, so our explanations are partial and miss the mark (Christians explain that Christ came here to simplify things so that simple people could follow God).
To say "your grandfather was wrong about this, so why should we listen to you?" or "you are associated with these people with whom I am unable to argue, so I have decided to take it out on you" are both examples of faulty argumentation, and both employed liberally by this author.
Progress, ain't it grand?