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> > DAVID: [i]I'll accept common descent, but natural selection is a tautology that is not proven within itself nor as a possible cause of speciation.[/i]
> > 
> > dhw: [i]Of course natural selection is not a possible cause of speciation. It simply means that nature selects from EXISTING organs and organisms those that will survive. I agree that it’s a kind of tautology, but it’s a neat term to cover various aspects of evolution. However, that was not my point, which is that Darwin’s various theories, right or wrong, are not atheistic.[/i]
> > 
> > DAVID: [i]I know, but if it seems we arrived naturally out of thin air by natural chance, that is what the atheists peddle about Darwin.[/i]
> > 
> > dhw: Just for the purpose of information, not debate: Darwin deliberately and explicitly does NOT consider the origin of life in propounding his theory of evolution, and atheists have no right to use the theory to peddle their views. (Nor for that matter should theists, though most of them seem unaware of his references in [i]Origin[/i] to a creator!) However, I have found a website devoted to his personal views on the subject gleaned through his letters. The article is very long and detailed, and shows some degree of vacillation (inevitable if one is unsure of something), but the two quotes below, taken from letters written near the end of his life, are typical. (Archebiosis is what we now call abiogenesis.)
> > 
> > [b]Charles Darwin and the Origin of Life - PubMed Central (PMC)[/b]
> > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2745620
> > 
> > QUOTE: He was to maintain the same attitude for many years to come, as shown by the letter mailed on March 28, 1882, near the end of his life, to George Charles Wallich (de Beer 1959). In it Darwin wrote that,
> > «My dear Sir,
> > You expressed quite correctly my views where you say that I had intentionally left the question of the Origin of Life uncanvassed as being altogether ultra vires in the present state of our knowledge, & that I dealt only with the manner of succession. I have met with no evidence that seems in the least trustworthy, in favour of the so-called Spontaneous generation. I believe that I have somewhere said (but cannot find the passage) that the principle of continuity renders it probable that the principle of life will hereafter be shown to be a part, or consequence of some general law; but this is only conjecture and not science.
> > 
> > «[...] I should like to live to see Archebiosis proved true, for it would be a discovery of transcendent importance; or, if false, I should like to see it disproved, and the facts otherwise explained; but I shall not live to see all this». (Editor's apt comment: Nor will we.)
> 
> Thank you for this expansion of our knowledge. The atheists still use him however,  and we theists point to the origin of life as a profound reason to believe in God. And I would state that the origin set the groundwork for the subsequent evolution  and therefor the entire process is a continuum and cannot be separated in current discussions