Absence of Proof...

I'm almost finished with Ken Miller's fantastic book, Finding Darwin's God (which I'll probably comment on at some point), and what with the president's recent statements about intelligent design, a thought popped into my head that I thought I'd get down.

Recently, Rick Santorum has been flip-flopping about teaching ID in schools but he recently said

We should lay out areas in which the evidence supports evolution and areas in the evidence that does not. And as far as intelligent design is concerned, I really don't believe it's risen to the level of a scientific theory at this point that we would want to teach it alongside of evolution.

I'm happy about the second sentence but the first sentence illustrates perfectly the problem with this entire brouhaha. There is much evidence that supports evolution; only the crazy young earthers deny that. But there is no evidence, and I mean actual evidence, that does not support evolution. I'm not talking "gaps" in the fossil record, kiddos, I'm talking actual evidence that does not support evolution. I'm not even asking for a direct contradiction, just some actual piece of biological evidence (whatever that word means!) that doesn't help evolution one iota.

But see, there isn't any. The closest you can come is claiming that there is no direct line of evidence to support the transition of one species into another. All we have to do, though, is keep digging and we're sure to find it. Because lack of evidence for evolution is not evidence against.