‘Although many major questions in evolutionary biology remain unanswered,’ wrote Ulrich Kutschera and Karl Niklas in their review of modern evolutionary 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,’ declares 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 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. Instead, they investigate the mechanisms of evolution, how rapidly evolution can take place, and related questions.

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

Unfortunately, no. For what they have in mind is evolution as in the theory of evolution, i.e. the idea that organisms are all linked by common descent, so 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’. Darwin’s phrase ‘descent with modification’ sums up the fact that species change and multiply over time as they go their separate ways. What is much more open to question is whether organisms are all related to each other. A scientific fact has been merged with a religious belief about reality (in this case, materialism, i.e. atheism) 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):

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 parlance 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 hall ave the same ancestor, a scientific explanation should not, surely, presuppose what it is seeking 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 their own (or their representatives’) 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 comes only in the course of 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. The authors highlight ten examples, all of them 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 in this way:

• If none of the intermediates substantiates an evolutionary link between the supposed ancestral state to the supposed descendant state, 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 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 well-documented lineages in the fossil record, such as ammonites, crocodiles and horses. Let us repeat: that organisms have changed form over time is not in dispute, and possibly change of this kind – horizontal evolution – has been going on on a large scale. The magnitude of the transitions postulated is not the issue. The issue is whether fish became animals that walked on land, and the land animals severally evolved into lizards, dinosaurs, turtles, birds, and human beings.

We also need to be aware that gaps of evidence may either be evidence that the postulated evolution did not take place or they may be accidents of a fossil record that is incomplete. Fossilisation is a rare event, so only a small percentage of organisms can be expected to be represented in the fossil record. The discovery of rare species that were rarely fossilised will be even rarer.

The suggested conclusion to be drawn in the case of each alleged transition is given in the final column of the table. We have yet to evaluate them all in depth, and some of the conclusions are therefore tentative, but currently the score looks to be 5 out of 10. The examples that are valid are all horizontal transitions; they do nothing to substantiate the belief that humans evolved from an ancient fish. Separate discussions will be added as time permits.