[dr_lew]

It's absurd to say that Darwin "departed the Galapagos a creationist."

If you read his account in The Voyage of the Beagle, you can clearly see the way he's angling. What I see is his famous reluctance to come right out with it.

He compares the fossil and living fauna of Argentina and says, "This wonderful relationship in the same continent between the dead and the living, will, I do not doubt, hereafter throw more light on the appearance of organic beings on our earth, and their disappearance from it, than any other class of facts."

Translation, "The modern fauna obviously evolved from the extinct fauna." And this was before he even GOT to the Galapagos.

[Old Professer]

What we've never been able to make is a good case for nothing, a universe devoid of matter and/or energy, a beginning point.

[Stultis]

It's absurd to say that Darwin "departed the Galapagos a creationist." If you read his account in The Voyage of the Beagle [...] He compares the fossil and living fauna of Argentina and says, "This wonderful relationship in the same continent between the dead and the living, will, I do not doubt, hereafter throw more light on the appearance of organic beings on our earth, and their disappearance from it, than any other class of facts." Translation, "The modern fauna obviously evolved from the extinct fauna." And this was before he even GOT to the Galapagos.

No it wasn't. The Voyage of the Beagle was first published in 1839, and (I'd bet) the text you quote is from the heavily revised and expanded 2nd Edition of 1845.

My first hand knowledge of Darwin's correspondence and notebooks, such as it is, is consistent with Shermer's thesis: Darwin didn't become an evolutionist until after his return to England.