I'm afraid that I'm one of those "New Age types", supposedly anti-scientific, although I prefer to call it 'spiritually oriented'. And I am very interested in high quality, open-minded science

So I don't suppose anything I could say would persuade a convinced Darwinian. But here's a passing shot. Darwinism is closely related to materialistic and atheistic philosophies, which have never been proved. Philosophy is gradually moving away from materialism, because of its inadequacies. As we move further in that direction, there may be a need to re-evaluate Darwinism.

Some scientists reject philosophy out of hand as an unwarranted intrusion in their work. I hope you're not one of them.