Sir, - Some points in response to Dr Tassot's article against Darwin's Theory of Evolution (July 18th):
1, While there may be no actual empirical proof of macro-evolution, neither is there any empirical proof that God made and populated the Earth in seven days.
2, The evolution of species is not a gradual process that we would expect to leave behind many transitional states. The big changes happen very quickly, probably in a couple of generations of a species, which is easily lost within the scale of millions of years of fossil record.
3, Evolution is no longer just about species, it's about parts of a system adapting over time to changing conditions. Those parts may be species as a whole, individuals within that species or the genes that influence how they respond to their environment. So while there may be poor direct evidence for molecular evolution, it's integrably tied up in the whole system so it's impossible to separate it out into levels where evolution happens and others where it doesn't. Yours, etc.,
Darragh Smyth, St Marys Road, Oxford.