And thus stated, evolutionary theory is fine and dandy.
However two problems do arise in the application:
1. Astronomy is rife with reports of observations that change the way we interpret the universe....The Big bang is the dominating theory but daily someone 'sees' something that questions or revises it. There is still a great deal of searching taking place.
2. Entirely on the other side of the coin, evolution as you define it picked up baggage when it was extended into the 'primordial soup' auto-start from nothing to life. It might be true, it might be sort of true, but there is such a hard-line opposition to any questioning of its truth that many of us (NOT religious) wonder about the lack of searching for new data that I noted exists in astronomy.
Why do those who seem to worship something that was not part of Darwin's findings also seem to fear being shown any other alternative?
Why does their debate seem always to turn to calling the other guy a moron or a raving Christian zealot?
A lot of debate on FR devolves into name-calling. Perhaps the zealot appellation adheres to those who insist in interpreting the Bible as a scientific text--i.e., reading the story of Genesis literallly and trying to mine scientific data from it. The arguments that derive from such a reading do appear to be abjectly illogical and unscientific.
"Evolution picked up baggage....."
I was a student when the primordial soup experiments were happening. It's a different branch of biology..or biochemistry if you like. It was very exciting at that time.
Didn't quite pan out but did add to our knowledge base.
As for stand-theory-on-its-head stuff, that would be the viral insertion of information material. One of the other posters has it on his home page. I'll see if I can track it. The whole thing is standing on a cliff with your toes curled over exciting to biologists.
Unfortunately most anti-evolutionists never get to learn about the good parts.
"Why do those who seem to worship something that was not part of Darwin's findings also seem to fear being shown any other alternative?"
The implications are upsetting them, that's why. For the forecast upon their perceived future standard of living shows stormy weather ahead. They fear they won't get to rent Dr. Strangelove on demand....
Provide an alternative scientific theory and everyone will listen. Don't try to pass off creationism/ID as a scientific theory, however, because they are not. A scientific theory must in principle be falsifiable. That is, it must limit the range of things that could potentially be observed. Since God is the creator in the idea of creationism, and He is omnipotent, it would be impossible for creationism to limit the range of things that could be observed, since by definition God can do anything. ID has thus far been very careful to not make any specific statement about the characteristics of the designer. Without knowledge of the limitations of the designer, it is impossible to make any limitations of the range of things that can be observed. Specify some characteristics of a designer and specify some things that couldn't possibly be observed if ID were true, and then ID becomes a scientific hypothesis. Check out the observations that ID says can't be observed and try to find observations that it says can't be observed. If none of them are actually found, then ID becomes an alternative scientific theory. This very process has been done WRT evolution, which is why it is the accepted scientific theory of how the diversity of life on earth. The point is that it takes more than making (specious) attacks on evolution to establish an alternative idea as a competing scientific theory.