The first 35 seconds of this CMI video is a great example of a lame argument that may impress layperson audiences but makes me do a loud face-palm:
(1) No, Darwin was NOT working from an evidence vacuum. Far from it.
(2) Yes, considering that Darwin lived and worked a couple of centuries ago, OF COURSE there was a lot of biology “stuff” that he didn’t know. So what?
Indeed, #2 makes Darwin’s work all the more impressive. He didn’t know anything about DNA and factors like genetic draft and genetic drift—but he built an important foundation for the centuries of discoveries which followed.
@jeffb, I don’t expect everyone to watch the entire video but I just wanted to post it for the general readership who may find the subtopic helpful.
POSTSCRIPT: Of course, I also wince a bit whenever the term “Darwinst” is used. Rhetorically, it does connect—as intended—with other evil “ists” in the minds of many people, much as do words like Marxist, Communist, and Socialist. Besides, my physics affirms the foundational research of Isaac Newton as well as Albert Einstein but I don’t consider myself a “Newtonist” or an “Einsteinist.” When it comes to changes in allele frequencies over time, I simply say that I affirm the evolutionary processes which so effectively explain those changes. I respect Darwin’s work but Darwin holds no special seat of authority or adoration in my appreciation of the explanatory powers of evolutionary theory.
And even though I reject the bad scholarship which tries to cast Darwin as a cruel racist out to destroy civilization—and even if he was the world’s worst racist, and even if he tortured small animals just for fun, and even if he treated his wife poorly—none of that would have ANY impact on my appreciation for the massive piles of evidence which supports evolutionary biology. So the “Darwinist” label always strikes me as a bit silly. [And, yes, I realize that if one looks hard enough, one can even find a few evolution-affirming scientists who speak of “Darwinism”—but that is a linguistic subtopic that is a tangent I don’t want to explore on this thread.]