Only a liberal Protestant and a very liberal Catholic could accept theory of evolution

I AGREE it’s a little unfair to give one person all the public credit, but it’s conventional shorthand in science to attribute foundation ideas to the main originator.

In the case of evolution by natural selection, significant credit is also given to Wallace — but Darwin was definitely the main man. However, there is no scientific basis for giving credit to Darwin’s grandfather, or indeed other 18th or 19th century writers on evolution such as Lamarck (Séan Fitzgerald, Letters, October 5).

Mr Fitzgerald suggests that a quote from Darwin contradicts a claim I had made in an earlier letter (September 20) that ‘order in living things … can be explained without resort to a designer’.