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I'm saying that there were many great naturalists before Darwin's time who were very pious people and who knew more about nature than most of us. These were great naturalists; people I would admire for their knowledge of natural science given the time.

Darwin gives courage to the rest of science that we shall end up understanding literally everything, springing from almost nothing - a thought extremely hard to comprehend and believe.

Agricultural practice served Darwin as the material basis for the elaboration of his theory of Evolution, which explained the natural causation of the adaptation we see in the structure of the organic world. That was a great advance in the knowledge of living nature.

Darwin didn't walk around the Galapagos and come up with the theory of evolution. He was exploring, collecting, making observations. It wasn't until he got back and went through the samples that he noticed the differences among them and put them in context.

Darwin recognized the fact that paleontology then seemed to provide evidence against rather for evolution in general or the gradual origin of taxonomic categories in particular.

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

Darwin based his theory on generalizations that were strictly empirical. You can go out and see that organisms do vary, that variations are inherited, and that every organism is capable of increasing its numbers in sufficiently favorable circumstances.

I have often said that I am a passionate Darwinian when it comes to explaining why we exist.

Some theists in evolutionary science acquiesce to these tacit rules and retain a personal faith while accepting a thoroughly naturalistic picture of physical reality.