[_Jim]

Again “the absence of evidence is evidence of absence” is a rational and effective defense. The juror will fill in the blanks as he chooses.

One might conclude that Darwin didn’t say anything so we ought to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that means he didn’t have a position on such matters. That we cannot assume he had a motive for not mentioning his presuppositions or if he had any.

What does examination his other works, his writings reveal?

Do y'all use bottled oxygen up where you fly - or is it a pressurized cabin?

[Alamo-Girl]

Actually, his other works, relatives and associates, and contemporaneous reactions to his theory could feed any of the superimpositions that I mentioned.

For instance, Darwin is quoted from a letter to Hooker in 1871 as saying:

It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are now present, which could ever have been present. But if (and oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present, that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed..

NSF: Origin and Evolution of Life on a Frozen Earth

And Thomas Huxley, an "evangelical" atheist considered himself to be Darwin's bulldog.

And then there's Erasmus Darwin, Darwin's grandfather, who is considered to have inspired the Frankenstein story.

And of course his cousin, Sir Francis Galton is considered to be the father of eugenics, a great evil of the last century.

So there exists quite a bit of source material for anyone to fill in the gaps due to the "absence of evidence."