Anyone can help it - but if they can't, then they don't need to say that they are going to walk away when they clearly are not prepared to.
From ALL his works, ABM. For no one said he did not speak on the transmutation on species - but the issue was that he was never SOLELY focused on that when it came to evolutionary theory.
Darwin spoke of natural selection as the cause of mutations - and he already noted elsewhere that environment also played a significant role in what mutations arise (as you avoided earlier). I can do this all day, Bob, as it's not a problem getting the quotes if you're going to avoid them or deal with them out of context. He also noted in one of the earlier quotes where changes took place both GRADUALLY and RAPIDLY. Skipping over that will never win you an argument
Additionally, claiming "There is no speciation through mutation or natural selection. Speciation was a creation of God" is again WITHOUT any Biblical or Scientific reference - seeing that Darwin already noted that natural selection and mutation were systems that were created BY God. As said before, Darwin never said that evolution was Godless or directionless since in fact,
a reading of the sixth edition of Origin of Species (not
Origin of Life itself) proves that both of these assertions are factually incorrect. In example, Darwin in the sixth edition mention the Creator, and gives the Creator credit for starting the "laws" of evolution. The first passage reads:
To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual.
.
Additionally, Darwin commented "He who believes that each equine [horse] species was independently created, will, I presume, assert that each species has been created with a tendency to vary, both under nature and under domestication[.]" He criticized this view: "It makes the works of God a mere mockery and deception[.]" Anyone reading in context knows that this was clearly a reference to the "works of God. Moreover, In the last sentence of the sixth, edition Darwin placed the Creator at the beginning of life on earth:
There is grandeur in this [natural selection] view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
If we're going to deal with Darwin and the language of others, we can begin by actually dealing with what he said. A very basic place for review on the matter can be seen in
Darwin Correspondence Project » Interactive Timeline (from
here).
Seriously, You can do better than what you have so far, seeing that he had several works and none of the quotes you gave AT ALL say that evolutionary theory was centered solely on transmutation. If this is the best you can do for a man who had several works over decades, then you definitely are not dealing with evolution as the man noted - nor are you actually dealing honestly with what other scientists noted on the concept of evolution (such as Asa Gray). You can start with y
Darwin to Gray on June 18, 1857 - where he notes the following:
Nineteen years (!) ago it occurred to me that whilst otherwise employed on Nat. Hist, I might perhaps do good if I noted any sort of facts bearing on the question of the origin of species; & this I have since been doing. Either species have been independently created, or they have descended from other species, like varieties from one species. I think it can be shown to be probable that man gets his most distinct varieties by preserving such as arise best worth keeping & destroying the others, -- but I [should] fill a quire if I were to go on. To be brief I assume that species arise like our domestic varieties with much extinction; & then test this hypothesis by comparison with as many general & pretty well established propositions as I can find made out, -- in geograph. distribution, geological history -- affinities &c &c &c,. And it seems to me, that supposing that such hypothesis were to explain general propositions, we ought, in accordance with common way of following all sciences, to admit it, till some better hypothesis be found out. For to my mind to say that species were created so & so is no scientific explanation only a reverent way of saying it is so & so. But it is nonsensical trying to show how I try to proceed in compass of a note. But as an honest man I must tell you that I have come to the heteredox conclusion that there are no such things as independently created species -- that species are only strongly defined varieties. I know that this will make you despise me. -- I do not much underrate the many huge difficulties on this view, but yet it seems to me to explain too much, otherwise inexplicable, to be false. ...
I must say one word more in justification (for I feel sure that your tendency will be to despise me & my crotchets) that all my notion about how species change are derived from long-continued study of the works of (& converse with) agriculturists & horticulturists; & I believe I see my way pretty clearly on the means used by nature to change her species & adapt them to the wondrous & exquisitely beautiful contingencies to which every living being is exposed.
Darwin also speaks in regards to addressing the claim that others often bring up when assuming he was speaking about the existence or nonexistence of transitionals, as he was speaking of an "innumerable" series of finely-graded transitionals linking together all extinct and existing forms. As said explictly in Chapter XI of the sixth edition on page 342:
These causes [the imperfection of the fossil record, the limited exploration of the record, poor fossilization of certain body types, etc.], taken conjointly, will to a large extent explain why -- though we do find many links -- we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all extinct and existing forms by the finest graduated steps. It should also be constantly borne in mind that any linking variety between two forms, which might be found, would be ranked, unless the whole chain could be perfectly restored, as a new and distinct species; for it is not pretended that we have any sure criterion by which species and varieties can be discriminated.
Moreover, as it concerns both GRADUAL (Macro-Evolution) and RAPID (Micro-Evolution) CHANGES that he spoke on,
Over all these causes of Change I am convinced that the accumulative action of Selection, whether applied methodically and more quickly, or unconsciously and more slowly, but more efficiently, is by far the predominant Power." Origin p. 43
"We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of ages, and then so imperfect is our view into long past geological ages, that we only see that the forms of life are now different from what they formerly were." Origin p.84
"I can see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and infinite complexity of the coadaptations between all organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of life, which may be effected in the long course of time by nature's power of selection." Origin p. 109
"I doubt whether species under nature ever undergo abrupt changes." Origin p. 454
"The mind cannot possibly grasp the full meaning of the term of a hundred million years; species have changed, and are still slowly changing by the preservation and accumulation of successive slight favourable variations." Origin p. 480
The "accumulation of successive slight favourable variations, Bob. That was directly what Darwin noted - in line with the view of how evolution also involved changes building up on a micro level over time and leading to a gradual overall change. We can go further than (that if necessary, as Chapter 1 of
The Origin of Species is devoted to documenting the existence of variability in populations and the effectiveness of artificial selection:
The key is man's power of cumulative selection: nature gives successive variations; man adds them up in certain directions useful to himself (p. 30)
And of course, if you want to talk on quotes, I'm aware of where others against evolution often go to quote mine out of the original context. One of the basic places covering this is
Quote Mine Project: Darwin Quotes
So thuS, you have YET to make a case at all when it comes to actually dealing with Darwin's specific words on the issue..
None of the quotes at all show where speciation was at any point the center focus of what evolution was described by Darwin to be. They speak of Darwin talking on transitional links and the use of natural selection - but NOT on speciation being the sole definition in evolution - nor do they deal with showing where Darwin already noted the Creator being behind the evolutionary process.
Evolutionary theory is a very complex reality - with other fields connected to it. One basic example is how Mendel's laws on genetics were later melded with Darwin's ideology to better deal with issues in science when seeing how the schools of though harmonized to better explain one another. Despite all of Darwin’s keen observations about how life forms change, he was unable to explain exactly how traits are passed from one generation to another—a key piece of the evolutionary puzzle. Consequently, those who were his immediate successors found answers outside the framework of his theory of natural selection. For by the mid-twentieth century, further work in genetics led researchers back to Darwin - wi
th his work informing them and the result was a revised theory (“
evolutionary synthesis”) that brought together research from many different disciplines. And thus, if we speak on evolution, we need to do so in all the stages it developed in since that is what is spoken of in the world of science today and was spoken of in the decades after Darwin.
I think I found my dog again.
You never lost or intended to lose it, ABM - as this has already happened before on CARM when you couldn't let the issue go because of it being close to you.