[VadeRetro]

Those dots do not connect.

You mean like, "Where are the transitionals?" Nothing will ever connect the dots for you.

When Darwin wrote, you know how much of that figure had been observed? "A" and "N." So long after he's dead we find B through M ordered correctly in the sediments. I keep asking, was he right or was he the luckiest charlatan of all time?

Out for the night.

[Ahban]

You asked if Darwin was right or was he the luckiest charlatan of all time.

I don't think Darwin was a charlatan. He honestly believed what he was saying, and he discovered an important partial truth. His special theory of evolution was mostly right, though recent studies of those same finches might cast doubt on some of the finer points of that.

His general theory was an unsound extrapolation of data, and even evos like yourself now doubt classical darwinian evolution as a total explanation for biotic diversity. That is because the fossil record, while containing some things that could be considered to have a stream of transitionals, contains too many cases of sudden appearence of new forms. That is why Punctuated Equilibrium was advanced as an explanation.

So in conclusion, Darwin was neither totally right, nor that lucky, nor a charlatan. He was a good natrualist who discovered a parital truth and took it too far.