Sir — Ken Weavers (Letters, September 12) asks a number of reasonable questions about the course of human evolution, all of which (given sufficient space) could be readily answered.

Answering just one (which I paraphrase to: how many generations would it take to evolve humans from ape-like ancestors?) may help reduce incredulity that such change is possible.

One can estimate that it took a quarter-million generations (based on separation five million years ago).

Mostly, however, I write to comment on Mr Weavers' assertion that Darwin's Theory of Evolution (by natural selection) 'is still only a theory'. It is a theory of elegant explanatory power consistent with everything that has been learned from anatomy, palaeontology, genetics and geography. It has withstood a century and a half of attempts to disprove it. If any theory has graduated to the level of a law then this is one of them, along with the idea that the Earth is globular and not flat.

If you believe that God created the world and everything in it, you must also believe that this is how he did it.

Jeremy Woodley, Oxford