My understanding is that the theory of evolution as described in the “Origin of Species” specifically does not attempt to explain the origin of life, which seems to be the main criticism of the passage. Darwin’s theory was only about how life changed overtime not how it originated. That is a seperate theory “abiogenesis”. And while evolution seems to me, to be a collection of obvious statements *those best suited to their environment, predators, disease pressures, etc. are most likely to carry on their genetics in their offspring, thus causing speciation to occur among ancestral lines separated by different environments, predators, and diseases.* Abiogenesis seems to just be the left over shrugging that someone seeking a theory for the origin of life to point to. I think you are mixing the two theories as an atheist would. hold both theories as true, or in your case both as false, but you don’t need to. You can hold them independently true and/or false. You can think speciation driven by natural selection ie the selection of their predators to be nearly obvious, while holding abiogenesis to be so far unsupported as anything other than an alternative *left overs* theory.