GRAHAM Butler’s proofs of evolution (Oxford Mail, June 7) are many decades out of date and I am surprised if he is not aware that they are now not held by most scientists on both sides of the debate.

It has been, and remains the case that, despite many false trails and some false claims, the fossil record absolutely refuses to show any reliable sign of gradually changing forms (by which most evolutionists used to say species) and certainly not from primitive to advanced organisms.

The embryology issue was created by falsified images produced by an evolutionist researcher named Haeckl around 1868. Despite his knowing they were fake, Darwin still used them to prop up his theory.

The human embryo does not at any stage have any features of other less developed life forms and what were once claimed to be so are now known to be purely developmental stages of human features.

Evolution of species is not proven and all the evidence points in the opposite direction so what is so sneeringly “fundamentalist” about finding it incompatible with a more reasonable world view?

ALAN BOURNE, Steventon Road, Drayton