It is important to consider that what has been understood by the word “origin” or the “transmutation” of species before Darwin’s work were published, was the relatively casual inquiry whether the allied species of each genus had or had not descended from one another and from some common ancestor, by the ordinary method of breeding and by agencies of laws of nature and terms still in process and capable of being thoroughly subject to scientific inquiry. If any natural scientist had been asked at that time whether, hypothesizing that all the different species of each genus had been descended from an ancestral species, and that a broad and complete explanation were to be reached of how each little difference in form, color, or structure might have arose, and how the various distinctive features of habit and of geographic distribution might have been acted about and if this were done, the “origin of species” would be determined, the crucial mystery solved, he would doubtless have responded in the affirmative. Our investigator would plausibly have imparted that he never expected any such extraordinary breakthrough to be reached in his life. Darwin has done this, not merely in the belief of his adherents and admirers, but by the viewpoints of those who questioned the veracity of his explanations. For almost all their dissents and difficulties apply to those greater differences which distinguish genera, families, and orders from each other, not to those which distinguish one species from the species to which it is most nearly aligned, and from the remaining species of the same genus. So are these dissents ubiquitous or merely a cause of incorrect identity?
There is a great deal of dissonance on this, in the evolution creationism debate, including an Oprah Winfrey creationism controversy.
