‘Although many major questions in evolutionary biology remain unanswered,’ wrote Ulrich Kutschera and Karl Niklas in their review of evolution theory, ‘no credible scientist denies evolution as “a fact”.’ ‘Evolution is in effect as much a scientific fact as the existence of atoms or the orbiting of Earth round the Sun,’ states a Nature editorial. In its booklet Science, Evolution and Creationism (newly updated) the National Academy of Sciences says much the same: ‘There is no controversy in the scientific community about whether evolution has occurred. On the contrary, the evidence supporting descent with modification, as Charles Darwin termed it, is both overwhelming and compelling.’

Confidence in the theory is therefore not in short supply. The NAS booklet emphasises the confidence so often that it seems itself to be an argument for accepting the theory. The only uncertainty lies in whether ‘fact’ might be the appropriate word:

… Scientists also use the term “fact” to refer to a scientific explanation that has been tested and confirmed so many times that there is no longer a compelling reason to keep testing it or looking for additional examples. In that respect, the past and continuing occurrence of evolution is a scientific fact. Because the evidence supporting it is so strong, scientists no longer question whether biological evolution has occurred and is continuing to occur.

Perhaps of more interest than this distinction, however, is what the authors mean by ‘evolution’. In one place they define it as ‘descent with modification’, but is this what they mean when they speak of evolution as a fact?

Unfortunately, no. For what they have in mind is evolution as in the theory, the idea that ‘the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees was a species estimated to have lived 6 to 7 million years ago, whereas the common ancestor of humans and the puffer fish was an ancient fish that lived in the Earth’s oceans more than 400 million years ago’. By contrast, the phrase ‘descent with modification’ merely sums up the fact that species change and multiply over time as they go their separate ways. This is a world away from saying that organisms are all related to each other, or that life is just highly organised matter. A scientific fact has been merged with an atheistic belief about reality and the whole package wrapped up as fact in order to promote that belief.

Try working out what ‘evolution’ means in the following passage (p 3 of the booklet):

The theory of evolution is supported by so many observations and experiments that the overwhelming majority of scientists no longer question whether evolution has occurred and continues to occur and instead investigate the processes of evolution.

In normal usage the theory of evolution is not the fact that evolution has occurred but Darwin’s explanation of how it occurs (through natural variants having a slight competitive advantage). Carelessness about what the word means results in belief-driven tautology:

Evolution provides a scientific explanation for why there are so many different kinds of organisms on Earth and how all organisms on this planet are part of an evolutionary lineage.

Evolution provides an explanation for why organisms have evolved! Even if the word is intended to mean the belief that organisms all have the same ancestor, a scientific explanation should not, surely, presuppose what it seeks to prove.

The crucial distinction to be made, we might say, is between horizontal and vertical evolution. Evidence of one is not necessarily evidence of the other, and if evolution in the sense of nature creating itself has not been going on, Darwin’s theory is false; biologists and palaeontologists need to be actively seeking an alternative and guarding against being victims of pro-Darwinian propaganda. Science is about testing hypotheses and theories, not closing alternatives off: something, in principle, the authors of Science, Evolution and Creationism accept. ‘Any scientific explanation has to be testable …. Unless a proposed explanation is framed in a way that some observational evidence could potentially count against it, that explanation cannot be subjected to scientific testing.’ Regrettably the admission appears in a discussion that is silent about the problems of Darwin’s theory and shows no interest in exploring others – except one, the creationist idea that evolution did not happen at all. A potty idea that is explored, of course, only in order that it may be debunked and Darwin’s theory seem reasonable in comparison.

In this section we take a closer look at what scientists understand to be among the most striking examples of evolution in the fossil record. Kutschera and Niklas focus on examples linking major groups of vertebrates and highlight ten, as set out in the table below. All of them were discovered, described or analysed during the previous two decades (as of 2004).

Being key evidence, the examples represent an important test of the theory, and we may put the test this way:

• If none of the intermediates substantiates the supposed transition, we may conclude that evolution is likely to have taken place only on a small scale, and the nature of the fossil record has been misrepresented.

• If all of the intermediates substantiate such a link, then the theory of evolution is validated.

• If some examples appear to be valid intermediates but others not, we must be dealing with something different from the atheistic (in essence pantheistic) scenario whereby nature creates itself.

Evolutionists need to score 10 out of 10. Creationists need to score 0 out of 10.

The intermediate forms span large gaps, very often just at the point where major evolutionary changes are required to bridge major differences in habitat (e.g. sea/land) and in biological organisation (e.g. fish/reptile). If the gaps were not large, they would not be on the list – we are not concerned with intermediates within the more graduated lineages in the fossil record, such as ammonites, crocodiles and horses. To repeat: that organisms have changed over time is not in dispute, and sometimes the change has been large-scale. The issue is whether (in the case of vertebrates) fish actually became animals that walked on land, and land animals severally evolved into lizards, dinosaurs, turtles, birds and human beings.

We also need to be aware that gaps of evidence are either evidence that the transitions never happened or accidents of a fossil record that is incomplete. Since fossilisation is a rare event, only a small percentage of organisms can be expected to be present in the fossil record. The discovery of rare species that were rarely fossilised will be even rarer.

Verdicts are given in the final column. We have not evaluated all the alleged transitions in depth and three of the conclusions are therefore tentative, but currently the score looks to be 5 out of 10, suggesting that evolutionists and creationists both need to reconsider their belief systems. Large-scale, horizontal evolution has certainly occurred, but what we have reviewed here does nothing to substantiate the belief that humans evolved from ancient fish.