[Physicist]

What Darwin and his contemporaries did was the persuade us that the ancient idea of a chain of being had to be modified by the notion of common descent, that higher forms did somehow emerge from earlier forms. Maybe we still don't know the how.

Common descent didn't originate with Darwin. Darwin was all about the "how": variation plus natural (or sexual) selection.

Could it not be that Darwin doesn't serve much better than Lamarck?

No, it couldn't, because we can test this in the lab. Even the most strident creationists accept that what they call "microevolution" occurs, and that Darwinism explains the changes we see better than Lamarckism.

[js1138]

Even the most strident creationists accept that what they call "microevolution" occurs...

This actually represents progress. Back in the 1960s, Herbert W. Armstrong's magazine, The Plain Truth denied that mutations ever occur.

In another 200 years, creationists will have moved on to something else.

[RobbyS]

Microevolution is nothing more than variation, with or without natural selection. We can see variation, but does natural selection really explain all outcomes? The old Greeks disputed over what is changeable and what is constant (if anything). If life is defined as motion, then what remains from one minute to another?