The problem is, as Pete hinted a while back, that the group to which he belongs holds that evolution is the claptrap, children are being taught error, and it is important to prevent this.

This would presumably be because, on the one hand, their immortal souls are at risk, and one the other, that society would be better if it were founded on their beliefs rather than grounded on the ideas that can be drawn from evolution.

Arguing that to teach untruths is child abuse is not, therefore, going to be convincing, since, to them, it is an argument in their favour.

Gradual evolution - I have previously referred to the development of micraster heart urchins in the Chalk. Obviously these are heart urchins at the beginning of the sequence and heart urchins at the end, just heart urchins with different features, so maybe this is not convincing. It can be written off as microevolution. I may add to this the development of the horse (see Wikipedia) where a long sequence from little eohippus to modern equus (which they point out does not necessarily mean that each step is in a direct line of descent from the previous) shows a gradual change in time. Technically, this may be called macroevolution. See distinctions from an Indian university Other examples are given. Darwin's finches, camels, elephants.

However, these too can be argued to be within "kinds" by creationists.

But dinosaurs producing birds, for which change there are more and more genuine transitional fossils being found, would not be. (Yes, Archeoraptor was a fake, but its source fossils were not, and one, Microraptor, was a genuine intermediate between dinosaurs and birds. Arguing from fakes, while ignoring the vast number of genuine evidence is spurious. Piltdown does not invalidate all the African hominims and so disprove evolution. I have suggested Pete would make his song more effective by dropping that reference.)

While fact checking on dino-birds, I found the first google suggestion was a creationist site about evolutionist fraud. It included Piltdown and Archeoraptor, but also a number of cases where there had been misinterpretation, subsequently corrected through the normal processes of science, such as the initial identification of Neanderthals as shambling brutes because of the failure to identify the effects of rickets. It referred to the corrections showing the intelligence, altruism, skills and spiritual dimension of Neanderthals.

I am getting concerned at the way that when I search for scientific details in this field, the early search results are frequently from creationist sites, and I have to be very picky and go through a few pages. If my search terms are very technical, I get the Royal Society, JSTOR, Wiley et al, behind paywalls.

Penny