Admit? No part of the argument is the existence of species. There's no "admission" here. it was never in contention. But a species is no longer the best level to consider evolution at.
This was never in contention by anyone. That includes you and me.
That you observe the outcomes of gene selection at the species level rather then the gene level is a function of what your senses are capable of perceiving not what is actually happening. You also may notice that iron goes rusty, and to you that means it turns from grey to reddish brown. But what's really happening is happening at the molecular level.
Just because an observation can be made at a different, finer scale doesn't mean the observed effects at the current scale don't happen. This is a particularly bizarre claim to make especially since you grant the macroscopic effects in question such as species or iron changing color. The speciation of terrestrial organisms and the changing of color of a visible mass of oxidizing iron are real things - they happen even if the effect is caused by small scale processes.
Correct. But the way those high level features continue is through selection of those genes individually. There is no other level that selection works at.
The obvious counterexample here, which we've been discussing for the past few days, is the existence of species. There is no gene you can point to which specifies what species you are or which you can change to become a different, viable species. It is a property of a higher scale than the single gene level and has survived a billion years or more of natural selection.
I suppose species are a somewhat unreliable emergent property of large numbers of genes experiencing selection. Thus, the existence of species disproves your assertion.
I'm puzzled what was supposed to be wrong with my assertion in the first place. I didn't advocate reading Darwin because he had the perfect model of evolution from the atomic level on up. That is just a red herring.
But having said that, his arguments hold up remarkably well. For all the talk here of modern genetics, blurring of the distinction of species, etc, it remains that most work since has just been a fleshing out of the biological mechanisms by which his theory applies and the collecting of a vast amount of supporting evidence.