My suspicion is that there may be a purely bio-chemical track which is evolutionary in the most mechanistic way, and another element of intentionality involved which perhaps has some strong influence. The fact that evolution does describe the development of body forms does not speak one way or the other to the question of whether an individual _is_ a body, or whether he simply _operates_ one. Some people seriously believe they are material beings who occasionally have spiritual experiences. THis leads to an incredible amount of tanglefoot about what those are and where they come from, the kind of confusion that is readily generated by some misestimation in basic premises. A similar amount of confusion arose from the flawed basic premsies of alchemy, and the early cosmological models which were based on Earth-centrism or flat-planet assumptions.
I believe a more elegant and workable model is to assume we are spiritual beings with occasional material experiences. This paradigm aligns better, IMHO, with all the reported phenomena, and reduces the number of necessary arbitraries and ignored data, but it does not reject any of the actual scientific observations in support of Darwin, as far as I can see.
I have no problem with the stew-pot model of developing material forms and evolution, in general, although I think it leaves many questions unanswered -- especially rates of change and the advantages of incomplete transitions, which often get glossed over in discussions.
Well...you asked! :>) Of course it is perfectly possible my opinions on these matters are quite unacceptable to you,in which case I can only suggest we agree to disagree -- I certainly don't want to get into a metaphysical food-fight over it.