Bombarding the public with evolutionary teaching continues unabated. A recent wide-ranging article in The Conversation proclaimed:

• All life from algae to elephants evolved from a simple, single-celled common ancestor around 3.5 billion years ago;
• For billions of years organisms were ‘stuck’ as being single cells in the seas, then multi-cellularity evolved multiple (perhaps 25) times, independently;
• An unending ‘arms race’ between predators and prey helped drive evolution onto land, and into the air;
• A “sixth mass extinction” is now happening, for which humans are to blame, “wiping out the results of millions of years of evolution”;
• We might one day find that alien life has evolved on other planets, given that Earth shows “the transition to multi-cellularity may be an easy hurdle to jump”.

Astute readers of the article would note however that the evolutionary storytelling is very much ‘divided against itself’. The article states, “there is an apparent contradiction at the heart of evolutionary biology”. I.e. evolution should not be expected to generate increased diversity and complexity, yet according to the evolutionary storyline that’s exactly what happened. Also, “innovations were difficult to ‘uninvent’”, yet the one specific claimed evidence of evolution provided in the article is that of fish in unlit caves losing their eyes. (See creation.com/cave-fish on why it’s devolution, not evolution.)

Incidentally, lest anyone dismiss the article as errant journalism, the author is Matthew Wills, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at the Milner Centre for Evolution, University of Bath. A disclosure statement reveals he receives funding from the John Templeton Foundation (see creation.com/evangelical-colleges-paid-to-teach-evolution and creation.com/the-templeton-foundation-revealed).

• Wills, M., Evolution: why it seems to have a direction and what to expect next; theconversation.com, 2 Jun 2020.

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