Evidence of biological evolution still dismissed by leaps in creationist logic

It's 155 years since the publication of one of the world's greatest books, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, by Charles Darwin. It proved a milestone in science, so influential that the main theory of biological evolution is often referred to as Darwinism.

Darwin anticipated his ideas would prove controversial, and there was indeed a flurry of intense criticism.

The year after publication came a public debate about evolution, in which Thomas Henry Huxley - dubbed "Darwin's Bulldog" for his staunch defence of natural selection - was reportedly asked whether it was through his grandfather or grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey.

To some extent, Darwin's theory was a product of its time. Another great naturalist-explorer, Alfred Russell Wallace, simultaneously arrived at very similar notions after travels in South America and Indonesia. Both he and Darwin were influenced by Thomas Malthus, who argued that human population growth was limited by struggles to survive.

In broad terms, the evolutionary theory they described involved individuals of a species varying from one another - and if the variations helped them survive they had more chance of passing on these traits, which could lead to species changing over time.

Like all scientific theories, Darwinism has been tested wherever possible. Among scientists it has held up well. But this has not prevented attacks, chiefly from outside the scientific community.

On 11 November, this newspaper published one such attack in a letter from reader Kevin Ma. To my mind the letter featured leaps in logic, such as apparently suggesting there is no "struggle for existence", and so natural selection cannot produce higher forms: "Therefore lower organisms including primates such as monkeys cannot evolve into human beings."