Darwin himself admitted before he died that his theory was wrong. I can’t remember off the top of my head what discovery led to him saying that, but be found evidence that refuted what he said earlier.
> I can’t remember off the top of my head what discovery led
> to him saying that, but be found evidence that refuted what
> he said earlier.
I believe it was the irreduceable complexity of the human eye.
All the parts have to be there at the same time for it to have any evolutionary value.
Of course, the same can be said for the cell, now that we know, somewhat, of the incredibly complex inner workings of it.
Even Answers in Genesis doesn’t think he renounced evolution.
https://answersingenesis.org/creationism/arguments-to-avoid/darwins-deathbed-conversion-a-legend/
From The Origin of Species (1872), Chapter VI:
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my [Darwin’s] theory would absolutely break down.”
Mocking Darwin because his work might have been flawed is like mocking Newton because he made errors that fell to Einstein to correct. Or diminishing the role of Dr. Christiaan Barnard to the history of medicine for performing an experimental heart transplant because the patient only survived for 18 days.
Because science is a cumulative process. It never would have got anywhere if no scientist ever could put forward a theory unless and until it was perfect and without flaw. Einstein himself never would have reached so high except he was standing on the shoulders of the giants of science who came before him, most notably James Clerk Maxwell. Science only occasionally has any need to be perfect. Close is usually good enough, at least until the science or the technology improves. Consider that Pi has been calculated to a trillion digits (and still was repeating) but NASA successfully put men on the moon only using the first three of them (3.14).
Still, some of Darwin's insights were utterly remarkable because at the time he undertook the voyage of The Beagle, no hominid fossils had yet been found. Absolutely no evidence for the existence of a human ancestor. The first was found only the year previous to the first publication of On the Origin. Very Einstein-like, he had predicted the existence of something that there as yet was absolutely no physical evidence of but later was proved to exist.
Darwin was in fact forced to publish prematurely (which undoubtedly affected the book's thoroughness) because he was about to have his thunder stolen by one Alfred Russel Wallace. Wallace, working in completely different regions of the world and studying completely different forms of life, arrived at the same conclusions (in big pieces) as Darwin had. But Wallace did not suffer from Darwin's many nervous afflictions so even though he had begun his work 17 years later than Darwin, he was prepared to go to press quicker, which forced Darwin's hand.
Repeatability is the hallmark of "good" science and Wallace represents nothing if not repeatability. But the irony is that if Wallace had got to press the sooner of the two, this thread would be arguing Wallace's theory and Darwin would be the forgotten man.
The chief reason that science can't compete against religion is that religion is a matter of faith. Facts are immaterial.
The chief reason that religion can't compete against science is that religion will never admit its mistakes. I has no need to because, by definition, faith has no need of facts. And for this, science mocks it.
But science is constantly re-evaluating itself and changing course whenever it finds it is diverging from the facts. And for this, religion mocks it.
"Darwin himself admitted before he died that his theory was wrong...."
The error that Darwin admitted to was his inclusion of references to "the Creator" in On the Origin.