As for "theory", I quote from Wikipedia:-

"In various sciences, a theory is a logically self-consistent model or framework describing the behavior of a certain natural or social phenomenon, thus either originating from observable facts or supported by them. "

I'm not an expert, I just keep up with NewScientist and other publications. But that website contains incorrect statements. If *I* with my limited knowledge can discredit it, it's in a pretty poor state!

"A severe problem for evolutionists is the absence of transitional forms in the fossil record. ... The opposite is true - no continuum! When fossils are examined they form records of existing and extinct organisms with clearly defined gaps, or missing transitional forms, consistent with a creationist's view of origins."

Incorrect. Archaeology clearly cannot show every specimen of every variant of every species - you're reliant on it dying in the right place at the right time! What you get instead is a series of snapshots - so rather than a full video of a ball being thrown and caught, you get a snapshot of the ball with the thrower, snapshots of the ball in flight, and a snapshot of the ball with the catcher. And every new discovery fills in another snapshot along the way. In fact there are many clear examples of transitional forms: the transition from land animals to whales has at least two transitional forms as proto-whales lost vestigial legs; and a recent specimen of a feathered and winged but flightless dinosaur provides a transitional form on the way to birds.

"Natural selection (the evolution mechanism, along with mutations) is incapable of advancing an organism to a "higher-order"."

Nice try, but define "higher-order". Is more intelligence a "higher order" if it means you're more vulnerable to predators (as humans clearly are)? You could argue that elephants, lions and blue whales are the highest order of being on the planet, since no creature exists which is capable of preying on them using its own physical attributes. This assumes that natural selection has a target it's aiming at, which is untrue.

"The simplest organism capable of independent life, the prokargote bacterial cell, is a masterpiece of miniaturized complexity which makes a spaceship seem rather low-tech."

Except that research into the likely consistency of seawater at the time makes it clear that much of this complexity was unnecessary. A cell requires protection (a cell wall), a means of reproducing, a means of acquiring food and a means of expelling waste. The most recent hypothesis (not a theory, because it has not been confirmed with evidence, and likely will never be) is that the chemical make-up of the seas was such that all the chemicals existed to enable reproduction via simple RNA, the proto-organism would be essentially swimming in food so it wouldn't need any way of feeding, or of expelling waste since any waste products would be washed away, and no protection would be needed since the whole place was a suitable environment without threats.

Remember that even the most primitive bacterium today has had all those billions of years of evolution. To generalise, where creationists most commonly go wrong is assuming "higher" and "lower" orders of creatures, and assuming that evolution-supporters think "lower" orders are "less evolved". This guy falls into the same trap: "In fact, since the environment is constant, it must be asked, `Why did some species evolve and not others?' and `Why did lesser forms survive and more developed ones die off?'" That's an argument from someone who doesn't understand evolution. *ALL* creatures evolved. Some acquired mutations into forms that led them to dominate certain niches, or to dominate generally (eg. humans). Some acquired mutations that did nothing, or didn't change them significantly (eg. sharks, crocodiles). And some acquired mutations which hindered their ability to reach to changing circumstance (eg. dinosaurs) or which put them in direct competition with other creatures in which they lost the competition (eg. sabre-tooth tigers).

That's just a few things.

As a religious belief, you're welcome to ID. As indeed you're welcome to the old Hindu belief that we all live on the back of a turtle, or to the Flying Spaghetti Monster school of thought (look it up on Google). None of them match the evidence, therefore they must all be considered disproved hypotheses. And therefore they shouldn't be taught in science classes, except as an example of how *NOT* to do science.

Graham.