Gosh, you are in a moody. Do you ever engage with what I'm driving at? It's really very simple. We have a thing called evolution. I'm not going to debate its existence with Pete, Jehovah's Witnesses, you or anyone else. As far as I'm concerned, evolution is a phenomenon of planet Earth almost as old as Earth itself. There is no other process that could have led to life and its amazing diversity. Now evolution doesn't need human beings around. It's here, with us or without us. Just like the planet Earth itself, or Mount Everest, or my apple tree. Well I suppose some human or other (me) had to plant that tree, but apple trees in general get on very well without us. It doesn't take a scientist or the scientific method to confirm evolution, because evolution was going on its merry way millions of years before there were any scientists or a scientific method. When we came along, eventually we discerned that evolution seemed a good way of explaining life on Earth, so, with our insatiable curiosity, and applying as best we could the scientific process, we started trying to explain it. That meant having a theory. As it happens, it's a really good theory, so good that it is unlikely ever to be overturned, though never say never. But if an alternative theory does eventually gain the ascendancy, it will still be explaining the self-same phenomenon, not a different or modified one. We can modify the explanation, and we do, but we don't modify the phenomenon (well, except when we indulge in artificial selection, a process that strengthens the explanation, as it happens).

When I say I won't debate its existence, it means I don't regarded the phenomenon of evolution as science. I don't regard Mount Everest as science. There is science in explaining why Everest is where it is, what rocks it's made of, why fossils are found tens of thousands of feet up it, etc. With evolution, the science comes in gathering evidence for its mechanisms, looking at the fossil record, doing population studies and tying it in with our knowledge of biochemistry and genetics. Gravity isn't science. Gravity is a phenomenon that science tries to explain. Gravity, Everest, evolution and my apple tree are things. A fool may deny their existence. If you don't think they're true things, either your understanding of "true" isn't the same as mine, or you think they're not true (in other words, false), or you're just being vexatious. And you're bloody lucky to have any trains at all to get bad-tempered about. Try living in Bude. Thank you Doctor Idiot Beeching.