Darwinian evolution doesn't explain the origin of life.
Actually I have no idea whether Darwin himself took a whack at the "cosmic soup" theory, but the origin of life isn't what Darwinian evolution is about. It's about evolution of species, aka speciation, through natural selection.
He thought this up after studying the famous finches on the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador -- from island to island the finches were remarkably similar except for their beaks, and the beaks seemed to be adapted to the food supply on each island.
So, he hypothesized that the finches shared a common ancestor, and that when baby finches were born, there was an element of randomness in the size and shape of the beaks, and the ones more adapted to the food source in their environment had a reproductive advantage, so tended to reproduce more finches that looked like they did, and so forth.
Not exactly a controversial idea these days.
I don't think Darwin tried to figure out where the first cellular beings came from, and how.
Since nobody actually knows yet -- the cosmic soup theory is out there, and the theory that the building blocks of life existed in outer space is out there, but these are just WAGs (wild ass guesses).
But if they teach that the Judeo-Christian God did it by pointing the Cosmic Finger -- I vote they also teach other creation myths, including my favorite, the one with the Earth on the back of the turtles ("turtles all the way down".) |
