Is there more to evolution than just Darwin's finches?

Awhile back I read an article (come to think of it, it was an essay) on the nytimes.com about how almost every time a teacher or textbook mentions evolution, Darwin's name is to follow.  Which is fine...to a degree.  Darwin started the thinking (poor Alfred Wallace is lost in the shuffle) and made his thoughts public in a time where religion still was the reigning thought process.  Darwin observed those wonderful little finches and thought "Hmm...why are there so many little birds on these little islands?"  He pondered and came up with a potential mechanism on what caused the variation in species.

I know I am not the first to say it but it was just sheer dumb luck.  All Darwin did (in a simplistic sense) is look at animals and said (again in a simplistic sense) "the ones that will survive have better abilities to allow them to survive."  Terrific guess but again sheer dumb luck. 

Darwin's hypothesis is in a sense no different from good ole Lammarck.  Lammarck too came up with a guess onto why certain species are around today that were possibly not here before.  I always tell my students, though it may sound ridiculous with the knowledge we have today, Lammarck was using the information he had before him to make his guess.  Darwin did the same thing.  Darwin was missing the key to why certain species are better suited for their environments - DNA and heredity.

And now that we know what DNA is, scientists have added so much more complexity to Darwin's work.  So much so, its as if the science of evolution has evolved.  So many more mechanisms and concepts have been made public to the scientific community which show that evolution is a scientific fact (just some of the mechanisms are theories since we need more time to collect data - Rome wasn't built in a day as they say). 

But the essay talks more about how Darwin is normally given so much credit and talked about so much that we have used his simplistic (compared to today) theories and applied it to almost everything in everyday society.  Social Darwinism, Neo-Darwinism, digital Darwinism (recently saw the phrase) and any other type of Darwinism you can think of, which is why the ideas of Darwin have gone astray.  People are using his thinking in an incorrect way.  For that, we need to somehow correct this in the classroom.  Maybe do not play up Darwin as a folk hero (he did take time to publish his book because he was scared of the repercussions) but just as the starting point to even larger concepts that actually apply to today.  We, as teachers, need to make sure our students truly understand his work so they can reference him correctly, as opposed to the older generations.

Link to nytimes article - http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDkQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2009%2F02%2F10%2Fscience%2F10essa.html%3Fpagewanted%3Dall&ei=IaOoUazJC-264APqmIHQAQ&usg=AFQjCNF8CgaViRxIjJdD94DN0FzvsjS26A&sig2=a7nYoVhGYwrDS-1esn1nlQ&bvm=bv.47244034,d.dmg