These people have been coached to say, ‘There are no fossils, show me the evidence, show me just one fossil…’ and they say it so often that they come to believe it. So I tried the experiment of mentioning three or four fossils to this woman and not letting her get away with simply ignoring them. The results are depressing, and a good example of the commonest tactic used by history-deniers when confronted with the evidence of history - namely, just ignore it and repeat the mantra: ‘Show me the fossils. Where are the fossils? There are no fossils. Just show me one intermediate fossil, that’s all I ask…’

• Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show On Earth

On the evolution of E. coli

E. coli is a common bacterium. Very common. There are about a hundred billion billion of them around the world at any one time, of which about a billion, by Lenski’s calculation, are in your large intestine at this very moment. Most of them are harmless or even beneficial, but nasty strains occasionally hit the headlines. Such periodic evolutionary innovation is not surprising if you do the sums, even though mutations are rare events. If we assume that the probability of a gene mutating during any one act of bacterial reproduction is as low as one in a billion, the numbers of bacteria are so colossal that just about every gene in the genome will have mutated somewhere in the world, every day. As Richard Lenski says, ‘That’s a lot of opportunity for evolution.’

• Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show On Earth

Understanding Guppies, before and after ideology interferes

“My colleague Dr John Endler, recently moved from North America to the University of Exeter, told me the following marvellous - well, also depressing - story. He was travelling on a domestic flight in the United States, and the passenger in the next seat make conversation by asking him what he did. Endler replied that he was a professor of biology, doing research on wild guppy populations in Trinidad. The man became increasingly interested in the research and asked many questions. Intrigued by the elegance of the theory that seemed to underlie the experiments, he asked Endler what that theory was, and who originated it. ONly then did Dr Endler drop what he correctly guessed would be his bombshell: ‘It’s called Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection!’ The man’s whole demeanour instantly changed. His face went red; abruptly, he turned away, refused to speak further and terminated what had hitherto been an amiable conversation. More than amiable, indeed: Dr Endler writes to me that the man had ’ asked some excellent questions before this, indicating that he was enthusiastically and intellectually following the argument. This is really tragic.’

• from The Greatest Show on Earth, by Richard Dawkins

Fossils, spy cameras, and how we know the butler did it

Let’s again make use of our analogy of the detective coming to the scene of a crime to which there were no eye witnesses. The baronet has been shot. Fingerprints, footprints, DNA from a sweat stain on the pistol, and a strong motive all point towards the butler. It’s pretty much an open and shut case, and the jury and everybody in the court is convinced that the butler did it. But a last-minute piece of evidence is discovered, in the nick of time before the jury retires to consider what had seemed to be their inevitable verdict of guilty: somebody remembers that the baronet had installed spy cameras against burglars. With bated breath, the court watches the films. ONe of them shows the butler in the act of opening the drawer in his pantry, taking out a pistol, loading it, and creeping stealthily out of the room with a malevolent gleam in his eye. You might think that this solidifies the case against the butler even further. Mark the sequel, however. The butler’s defense lawyer astutely points out that there was no spy camera in the library where the murder took place, and no spy camera in the corridor leading from the butler’s pantry. He wags his finger, in that compelling way that lawyers have make their own. “There’s a gap in the video record! We don’t know what happened after the butler left the pantry. there is clearly insufficient evidence to convict my client.”

In vain the prosecution lawyer points out that there was a second camera in the billiard room, and this shows, through the open door, the butler, gun at the ready, creeping on tiptoe along the passage towards the library. Surely this plugs the gap in the video record? Surely the case against the butler is now unassailable? But no. Triumphantly the defense lawyer plays his ace. “We don’t know what happened before or after the butler passed the open door of the billiard room. There are now two gaps in the video record. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my case rests. There is now even less evidence against my client than there was before.”

• from The Greatest Show On Earth, by Richard Dawkins

History Written All Over Us

“Throughout this chapter, we shall continually find examples of evolution correcting an initial ‘mistake’ or historical relic by post hoc compensation or tweaking, rather than by going back to the drawing board as a real designer would.”

• The Greatest Show On Earth, By Richard Dawkins