There is more than one explanation of the history of life, so how do we distinguish between them? The flowchart below summarises the key questions. They ask questions of fact, and the final boxes represent the interpretations that follow. The factually correct answers are shown in capitals.

Evolution of organisms over time is a fact, but it does not follow from this that the theory of all organisms evolving progressively from a soup of chemicals is a fact. Organisms evolve over time in the sense that they change. They become more specialised; a distinctive body plan undergoes minor variations that define new species but leave the basic design intact; in a few cases major changes occur, as in the evolution of whales and dolphins (on this website we discuss the similar case of ichthyosaurs).

An argument for common descent cannot, however, be built on exceptional cases, especially when in crucial respects they go in the reverse direction (cetaceans evolved from land mammals, but the theory of evolution says that mammals descend from animals that lived in the sea). When we look at the fossil record, we find it consisting mostly of lineages that left no descendants – trilobites, ammonites, ichthyosaurs, dinosaurs and so on. It is a record of sudden originations and sudden extinctions. Relatively few kinds of organism from the present world can be traced far back along their genealogical pathways, and in no case does the trail end with a radically different and simpler organism. The pattern is wholly unlike what Darwin expected and predicted.

The strength of a theory can only be assessed against alternative possibilities. The alternative in this instance is the possibility that organisms were created with limited potential for evolutionary change (great change in some cases, minor change in others) and the fossil record shows them colonising the Earth progressively as life recovered from a global cataclysm. This alternative is never considered in the literature because it has never been formulated, and it has never been formulated partly because the theory of evolution accords with the spirit of the age, so that there is no incentive to question it, and partly because the crucial evidence of a primeval cataclysm has emerged only quite recently – since the 1970s.

Taking account of the very latest research, this website sets about the task of now formulating the alternative.