[ml/nj]

Most of what Darwin himself proposed is now observed fact. What you call "a crock" is likely just a creature of your own imagination.

May I quote from Speciation by Coyne and Orr?

So begins The Origin of Species, whose title and first paragraph imply that Darwin will have much to say about speciation. Yet his magnum opus remains largely silent on the "mystery of mysteries," and the little it does say about this mystery is seen by most modern evolutionists as muddled or wrong.

ML/NJ

[BroJoeK]

ml/nj: "Yet his magnum opus remains largely silent on the "mystery of mysteries," and the little it does say about this mystery is seen by most modern evolutionists as muddled or wrong."

Well... Darwin proposed a grand theory based on very limited data.
Today the data available is orders of magnitude greater than in Darwin's day and remarkably well conforms to his basic theory.