I'm also confused about the distinction you're making, and about your factual claims. Modern evolutionary biology is quite a large theory (or set of theories), and very little of its content predates Darwin.
Yes, you're correct that little of the modern theory pre-dates Darwin, but I just referred to the "basics", by which I meant the ancient Greek formulation that life first arose in the sea, and evolved from there.
The very first post in this thread starts with the words "Hard physical evidence demonstrates that...". From that it winds up discussing the history of European Jews and some couple's miraculous fertility.
Nowadays, perhaps out of intellectual necessity, a scientist will (usually, not always) make the claim that the theory of evolution is irrelevant to the ideas of progess and improvement. He will claim that the word "evolve" actually doesn't mean evolve as the average layperson defines it, i.e., changing from lower to higher. He'll say rather that to evolve merely means to change - backwards, forwards or sideways. The very metaphors "lower, higher, backwards, forwards and sideways" each imply value. (I don't know how to speak of these ideas without metaphor, it may not be possible.) To believe that the introduction of life into the universe is good or bad, or to believe that biological life on earth is hierarchical requires a poet, someone to place a value judgment on the change. So a biologist should, for example, discuss the mechanisms whereby a living cell reproduces itself and stick to that. The biologist need not concen himself with Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany is not a scientific process, it's a historical event. If Nazi Germany still existed, it would be merely an ongoing event. Likewise, the biologist need not concern himself with "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest", they also are not scientific processes. If they occurred (and are occurring), they are historical events. If they didn't, they are myth. Either way, they are not scientific processes. They are mythological concepts whether or not they are "true". A more complex organism is not necessarily a more "fit" organism, and there's no claiming man is "higher" than bacteria unless you mythologize.
You may respond that a historcal event and a myth are two different things. You'd be only partly correct in making that distinction, because all current interpretation of any (and all) historical events is mythological, at least in so far as value is assigned to the event. So my point is that the interpretation, the supplying of meaning and implications to historical events, is properly not done by scientists. It shouldn't be done, and when it is done, it almost always results in the same confusion I see in this thread and many other discussions of evolution.
Put simply: science and mythmaking are both respectable and useful vocations, but they are different. I don't want prophets practicing biology, and I don't want biologists handing down God's law.
Just an opinion, hope I made sense.
